Robby on Rails

Picking up on my last Borat post, Prototypes Are Your Friends, I would like to direct you over to the next post in the series, G’day Project Borat where Brian Ford jumps into the game…

“When we, as developers, began focusing on user-centric design and usability, it was a recognition that users deserved respect and need not be rescued, if you will, by our bright ideas. In a big way, we needed to keep our bright ideas out of the user’s way.”

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I’d like to apologize for not keeping you updated on Project Borat. If you’d like some background, please read Project Borat, an introduction.

“In early stage design, pretend the interface is magic.”[1]

We’re finishing up Iteration 1, which is a prototype and requirement feedback process. When I used to be a house painter, we’d spend time painting small samples for the customer. The customer would come by when the paint was dry and compare the colors to what they had pictured in their mind and once there was an agreement, we’d move forward with purchasing the necessary quantity of paint for their house. Thinking back… I never questioned this “Show them samples” process as it was how the company did business… but now it seems obvious that people must that made many mistakes of buying colors that weren’t exactly what the customer wanted. Then the painters would be required to repaint. Development work resembles this and this is where prototypes come into play. Painting a house is not quite like developing an application… but that reoccurring process of encouraging customer feedback as early as possible is very similar. It is this feedback that builds confidence that you understand the customers desires. However, if you end up with too much of the wrong color of paint… you might be able to paint a few dog houses with it. ;-)

Over the past few weeks, we’ve had several meetings with the Client to discuss prototypes, user interaction, and goals. For example:

• When User does X, what information should they be presented with?
• What types of users will use this application?
• What are some of the goals and intentions of the users?
• Might a user want to do z before x?
• Are users interested in doing something completely different?

During this Iteration we also hit a major milestone for the client. For the first time since they came up with their idea, they were able to see something visual and had semi-functional to play with. The prototype resembled what they had been thinking about conceptually for several months. It can be easy as a developer to forget the importance and excitement that goes along with seeing something that consolidates your ideas… visually for the first time. This process requires a good stream of feedback and asking specific questions about functionality possibilities and not burdening the user with too much information in certain contexts… while still providing them with enough to keep them interested.

In The Art of Project Management, Scott Berkun raises the following questions for iterations and prototypes.

• What requirements does this satisfy? Can we verify this? (Usability, use-cases, etc.)
• What’s good and bad about this design relative to the problem it’s supposed to solve (Pros and cons for each of usability, business, technology, considerations.)
• What data do we need to evaluate this design? (Perhaps a usability study, an informal review by a programmer for engineering sanity, marketing, an expert’s opinion, etc.)
• What did we learn from this design that we should keep in the next attempt? Eliminate?
• Are there any other idea groupings or from other prototypes that we should include?

Another important thing to do during any iteration is to keep a list of open-issues. Berkun suggests using a simple tool for this. We’re using plain text files in subversion and using Textile for markup.

What’s next?

• Idea consolidating
• More prototypes
• Discussing architecture plan
• Scheduling

Until next time…

¹ Alan Cooper & Robert Reimann, About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design. Wiley 2003.