Creating Considerate Web Applications

Creating Considerate Web Applications Bojhan Somers & Jimmy Berry Google Summer of Code Project July 2008

About me
Student
Usability Consultant at Usendes
Google Summer of Code Co-mentor
Bojhan.nl

Why does most software suck?
“ Know thy user, and you are not thy only user” - Arnie Lund

Why does most software suck?
How do you expect to do X?

Don Norman

User-centerd Design
Manage expectations
Design first, code second
Adding a feature to core is dangerous
Remove features that are not neccesairy

Disclamer : This is not how you do it.

Finding functionality
Drupal jargon
Optimize for muddeling trough

Do you really readme.txt?

Card Sorting

Online Card Sorting
Optimal Sort

Picture Wordpress Dashboard

Visual seperation of functionality
How do users categorize and label functionality?
Workflow
Embedded functionality? let the user know..

Flexibility
Interface focused on to many target groups
Inflexible interface

4 diffrent screen states
Regular
Blank
Error
Flooded

Blank state
Why?
Introduce the concept
Good first impression
Avoid beginners questions

Blank state best practices
Quick introduction
Give a sample screenshot or screencast to see how the page would look it it has data.
Explain how to get started
Refer to extra documentation if its available

Flooded State
What happends to your interface if you have 20.000 nodes?

Flooded state best practices
Don’t let it constraint your design.
Reconize flooded state
Adaptive interface

Copywriting is interface design!
Instructions is a last resort
Stop writing for everyone
Let someone else do it
Read your interface outloud, does it sound right?

Killing good ideas
Problem A participant was confused of the terminology to describe the web site’s main page. The participant expected to see Home Page used instead of Front Page.
Solution Rethink the term front page. Consider using a more conventional term such as home page.

Killing good ideas
+1

Killing good ideas
“ I'm not sure why Home page should be more consistent than Front page in anyone's vocabulary.”
“ I'm not suprised that people are more familiar with the term home page -- but its a very non specific term used in a wide variety of contexts.”

Killing good ideas
“ How are we going to solve opinion wars, so we can improve the usability of Drupal?”

Allowing good ideas
Data!
Usability testing

Contact Information
Bojhan Somers
[email_address]
Jimmy Berry
[email_address]

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Creating Considerate Web Applications

by Bojhan on Aug 31, 2008

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