UX

In a blog post by Robert Fabricant (Jan 7, 2013) he calls User Experience “The new Black” borrowing the term from the fashion industry. ( see http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/user-experience-incorporated.html ).

The capacity of the human brain to process information has remained the same—even as the number of types of users for software-based Internet connected devices has increased at an exponential rate. The field of psychology, especially cognitive psychology has, among other things, focused on understanding the processes by which we store information, make decisions, and communicate with others. Understanding the research and the theories of cognitive psychology can help information architects to create better user experiences.

A while back when in a meeting with a client we were discussing the interactions of a system we were designing and one of our development leads spoke about an “Add/Edit” screen that can be used whenever the user wants to either add or edit their content.

ARGH.  I really went nuts inside.  Sure from a development perspective it might be a lot easier to use the same screen for both add and edit – it happens A LOT.

From the user’s perspective “add” and “edit” are two completely different actions. Each should have a uniquely designed interface!

For way too many years we have used that phrase to explain to developers that it is important for them to try to understand their users.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

When it didn’t work, we tried to explain about users using most of the standard, and many of the non-standard techniques: