The KJ-Technique: A Group Process for Establishing Priorities

In design, our resources are limited. Priorities become a necessity. We need to ensure we are working on the most important parts of the problem. How do we assess what is most important?

Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2004). Articles>Information Design>Project Management>Charts and Graphs

Adopting User-Centered Design Within An Agile Process: A Conversation  

eXtreme Programming and other agile processes provide a middle ground between chaos and over-elaborate processes sometimes referred to as 'death by documentation'. A particular attrtactive aspect of the agile approach for many teams is its willingness to accomodate change no matter how advanced development might be. However, this very flexibility can cause user interface design issues and ensuing usability problems. Adopting a user-centered approach to user interface design can address these issues, as the following simulated conversation between a user-centered design consultant and an XP team leader will explain.

Hudson, William. UIaccess (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Agile>Project Management

How to Scope an Intranet Release

When developing intranet releases, intranet teams often find themselves very constrained by both time and resources. The challenge then becomes delivering sufficient content and capabilities to meet business and user expectations, within the project constraints. This briefing introduces a simple approach to scoping a release that takes all of these factors into account.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2004). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Project Management

Your Website is for Your Most Important Customers

Well-managed websites tend to be those that are narrow in their focus. They do a few things really well rather than attempt to do lots and lots of things.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2006). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>E Commerce

Deconstructing the Design Process

The way to overcome the pressure of a new design is by breaking the process into smaller parts, and defining a step by step strategy that allows you to address each issue of the design separately rather than as a daunting whole. Instead of one monolithic problem, you have lots of small, more manageable problems. Breaking each problem out will also help you arrive at better design results as you will have given close consideration to all aspects of the problem.

Walter, Aarron. AarronWalter.com (2007). Design>Project Management>Advice

You Need a Five-Year Plan for Your Website

Websites change the way an organization communicates with its staff, customers, investors and general public. A change in communication is a major shift for the organization. To effectively implement such a change will take time. You need a five-year plan for your website.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Web Design>Planning>Project Management

Twenty Signs You Don’t Want that Web Design Project

Most clients are good clients, and some clients are great clients. But some jobs are just never going to work out well. Herewith, a few indicators that a project may be headed to the toilet.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. Zeldman.com (2008). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Planning

Early and Often: How to Avoid the Design Revision Death Spiral

A critical component to the success of an interaction design project is close collaboration with clients or stakeholders. Without careful planning and structure this type of collaboration can turn into a significant barrier to project success. Dave Cronin's article, originally presented at the DUX 2005 design conference, discusses the strategies and methods Cooper has adopted to get maximum benefit as a consultancy from clients' feedback and expertise while maintaining creative momentum and achieving deadlines.

Cronin, Dave. Cooper Journal (2005). Articles>Project Management>Design

Setting Priorities

Nearly every company I’ve worked with since becoming a web professional six years ago has lacked an efficient way to decide which things to do first. Put 10 people into a room for an hour, and they’ll surely come up with a wish list a mile long.

Fraser, Janice. Adaptive Path (2002). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Collaboration

Getting Real About Agile Design

Agile is here to stay. The economic difficulties of the past months have finally put waterfall out of its misery; now more than ever, long requirements phases and vaporous up-front documentation aren’t acceptable. Software must be visible and valuable from the start. For many designers, Agile is already a fact of life (and for those less accustomed, some recommended reading follows at the foot of this article). We are reaching the point where we must either acclimatize or risk being bypassed. The good news is that Agile does allow us to still do the things we hold dear—research, develop a vision, and test and improve our designs—we just need new techniques. Now is the time to get real, and prove design can adapt, if we want to stay relevant in these increasingly unreal times.

Bowles, Cennydd. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Agile>Project Management

XML Project Management Best Practices

Three panellists talk about the challenges of managing an XML publishing and documentation project. After brief introductory remarks from each speaker, there will be a general discussion with the audience about the challenges of XML project management in the publishing world.

Hamilton, Kate, Sarah S. O'Keefe and Mike Sherlock. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Project Management>Information Design>XML

Differentiating Your Design: A Visual Approach to Competitive Reviews

A common activity at the outset of many design projects is a competitive review. As a designer, when you encounter a design problem, it’s a natural instinct to try to understand what others are doing to solve the same or similar problems. However, like other design-related activities, if you start a competitive review without a clear purpose and strategy for the activity, doing the review may not be productive.

Hawley, Michael. UXmatters (2009). Design>Project Management>Collaboration>Assessment

Five Ways to Reduce Costs With User Centred Design

User centred design can be a useful and speedy way of increasing efficiency and hence reducing costs. More often that not, design is seen as a way of increasing sales, attracting eyeballs or retaining customers. However at Frontend we've noticed that some of our most successful projects concentrate on cost-reduction and business efficiency. Here's a few ways we've used user centred design to help our clients save money.

Frontend Infocentre (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>Project Management

The Content Conundrum

There’s often an unsettling discrepancy between the stakeholder approved wireframes and visual comps and the actual product in production. What you see in those environments is sometimes a far cry from those polished wireframes and those shiny, pixel-perfect visualizations that were filled with placeholder content (such as lorem ipsum text, dummy copy, and image blocks). What you’re seeing in production environments now holds the real content. The imagery doesn’t support the interactions, is meaningless, useless, or worse, contradictory to the design intent. The copy, headers, and labels are unclear, too long, too short, or simply irrelevant. What happened?

Detzi, Christopher. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>Web Design>Project Management

Information Overload: Conversation with Ricardo Amigo

Dealing with information overload can be a huge stressor in life. Not only trying to keep up with the constant deluge of information that comes at you daily, but also managing that information in an organized way — so that you can find and implement it — can put your sanity in question. In this podcast, I talk with Ricardo Amigo, a translator in Costa Rica, about different ways to manage information overload.

Johnson, Tom H. and Ricardo Amigo. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Interviews>Project Management>Information Design

Organizational Culture 101: A Practical How-To For Interaction Designers

It’s happened to all of us. We walk into what we think is a Web redesign project, only to find we have unwittingly ignited the fires of WW III in our client’s organization. What begins as a simple design project descends – quickly – into an intra-organizational battle, with the unprepared interaction designer caught in the crossfire. What is it about design projects that seem to attract such power struggles? Contrary to what you might think, being stuck in the middle of an internecine battle is actually an opportunity to effect meaningful change on your client’s organization. But it requires a set of practical tools to negotiate these battles and a more sophisticated language and knowledge to exploit these events to create meaningful change.

Ladner, Sam. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>Project Management>Interaction Design>Workplace

Going Viral

Our plan was to market Project Dragonfly virally. Going out now meant that we were a little early and many details were still on the to-do list. As a user centered design practitioner working with an Agile Development process, I was comfortable working in an iterative manner to engage users quickly so that we think through details and bring solutions forward. Yet something about this situation seemed different to me. We wanted the world to broadcast about the benefits of Project Dragonfly while our marketing efforts simply facilitated the conversation.

Arnold, Steve. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>Project Management>Marketing

Websites: Designed by Dogs, Managed by Cats 

Websites are generally designed by dogs. There’s a lot of optimism. The dogs look at the website and think of it as an endless attic. No matter how much stuff you into it, there’s always room for more. The dogs approach each design step with a ‘have gigabytes, must fill’ enthusiasm. And then cats have to manage the website. The dogs let everyone publish and the cats are certainly not going to review all this stuff. The dogs created an architecture where everyone can find everything and now nobody can find anything. The cats shake their heads.

McGovern, Gerry. I Heart Tech Docs (2007). Articles>Web Design>Project Management