#23975
Making Your Design Real: The Form and Behavior Specification
Let's say your development organization has embraced design as a key to creating successful products. You've devoted time and energy to creating the perfect, goal-directed design for your product. Your programmers are ready and eager to start putting that design into code. So…now what? How do you communicate your design to your development team, accurately and in sufficient detail? One approach is to produce a Form & Behavior Specification.
Olshavsky, Ryan. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Design>Project Management>User Interface
#18661
The artless Websites created during the Web's infancy were of necessity built only with simple HTML tags, and were forced to divide up their functionality and content into a maze (a web?) of separate pages. This made a navigation scheme an unavoidable component of any Website design, and of course, a clear, visually arresting navigation scheme was better than an obscure or hidden one. But many Web designers have incorrectly deduced from this that users want navigation schemes. Actually, they'd be happy if there were no navigation at all.
Cooper, Alan. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#23973
Many people have a hard time talking about the distinctions between different kinds of Web development, which makes it difficult to decide how to proceed. This article offers a quick survey of various Web projects and of the techniques that address them.
Korman, Jonathan. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Heuristic Evaluation
#23965
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, published in 1998, introduced the use of personas as a practical interaction design tool. Based on the single-chapter discussion in that book, personas rapidly gained popularity in the software industry due to their unusual power and effectiveness. Had personas been developed in the laboratory, the full story of how they came to be would have been published long ago, but since their use developed over many years in both my practice as a software inventor and architectural consultant and the consulting work of Cooper designers, that is not the case. Since Inmates was published, many people have asked for the history of Cooper personas, and here it is.
Cooper, Alan. Cooper Interaction Design. Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas
#23996
It's easy to assemble a set of user characteristics and call it a persona, but it's not so easy to create personas that are truly effective design and communication tools. If you have begun to create your own personas, here are some tips to help you perfect them.
Goodwin, Kim. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas
#23979
Product Complexity Driving You Crazy? Learn Where to Cut
The more complex your product is, the harder it will be to use. And the harder your product is to use, the more your customers will rely on your technical support department, which tends to increase your costs and decrease your customers' overall satisfaction with the product. The good news is that one of the most simple and effective ways to reduce complexity is to cut unnecessary features from your product. But how do you know which features to cut?
Greenwood, Wayne. Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Design>Project Management>Usability
#23994
Putting People Together to Create New Products
When companies plan out a new product (or service, or business process) they often think of the effort as the coordination of two teams solving different problems. Engineering addresses the question 'what can you make?' Marketing addresses the question 'what can you sell?'
Korman, Jonathan. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>Collaboration>Engineering
#23989
Reconciling Market Segments and Personas
Market segmentation and personas are two different techniques that are often perceived as conflicting methods, but they are actually complementary tools that organizations can use to design and sell successful products.
Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
#23968
RUP and Goal-Directed Design: Toward a New Development Process
Interaction design methodologies, such as Goal-Directed Design, tackle the software development process from the top down by defining specific product requirements and interface behavior based on research and user needs. The Rational Unified Process (RUP) and other agile programming methodologies attack software development from the bottom up. RUP creates fluid efficiencies for iterating product development during the construction phase in order to react to changing product requirements while still producing shipping code.
Cronin, Dave. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>Project Management>Programming
#23998
So You Want to be an Interaction Designer
We get a lot of email from students and usability professionals asking how one goes about becoming an interaction designer, and what background one needs to get into the field. What are good interaction design programs? What real-world skills and experience are required? What, exactly, do interaction designers do on a day-to-day basis?
Reimann, Robert. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Careers>Web Design>Interaction Design
#26079
Technical Writers and Interaction Design
Technical writers are oft-forgotten constituents in the product development cycle. Although they are rarely tasked with participating in product requirements definition and product design, technical writers are in a unique position to affect product design. However, they will find that subtlety and subterfuge are sometimes necessary to make a politically correct impact in an organization that has not embraced interaction design as a formal part of the development process.
Calde, Steve. Cooper Interaction Design (2004). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Interaction Design
#26073
The best designs and the best intentions won't always lead you to success, because the problem goes beyond your product and beyond your design or development process. Building better, more innovative, and more profitable products requires organizational change on a deep and difficult level.
Goodwin, Kim. Cooper Interaction Design (2005). Design>Project Management
#23991
We continue to see companies falling into the same product development traps, to the detriment of their products, their customers, and their business.
Greenwood, Wayne. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>Project Management
#24002
New technologies will introduce as many problems as they solve unless they are focused with good design.
Greenwood, Wayne. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>User Interface
#24000
The great promise of the information age is that computers help us to do everything. The great tragedy of the information age is that computers obstruct everything we do.
Cooper, Alan. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Articles>Usability
#23978
Turning Requirements into Product Definition
How do you get from understanding your users to a vision for an innovative product which will appeal to them?
Korman, Jonathan. Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Design>Project Management>User Centered Design
#26074
Using Personas to Create User Documentation
Personas and other user-modeling techniques are often solely discussed as tools for product definition and design, but they are useful tools in other arenas, as well. Technical writers responsible for creating user documentation can benefit greatly from a well-defined persona set, too.
Calde, Steve. Cooper Interaction Design (2005). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Personas
#24001
Why an awareness of good design has increased at such a dramatic rate in recent months.
Zambito, Tony. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>User Interface>Assessment
#26076
To offset this sometimes irritating tendency to critique and redesign everything we see, I'd like to offer a selection of software that I consider to be truly well-designed. To avoid creating a list that is simply an expression of my personal taste (which of course it is, to some extent), I devised some criteria as necessary aspects of a well-designed software product.
Cronin, Dave. Cooper Interaction Design (2004). Design>Usability>User Interface
