2014-05-19



Today, I took part in my first usability test. It was a  web  ap-
plication   (for  graphical  browsers  with  JS  activated,  ``of
course'') -- technologically, not my league! Testing  this  stuff
was  a  lot  of fun, nonetheless. The project is already in a ma-
tured development state and has a lot of good (and  funny!)  art-
work.   I  think  fans of such graphical web stuff could like the
web application. I, personally, would never use such a  thing  --
not because it would be bad, but because this this not my world.

I learned a lot for myself from this test. Most important is:

1) Limit yourself to few powerful concepts and  build  everything
else upon them.

2) Care for the details, since  failures  there  draw  from  your
``irritation  budget''.  But  that budget is of much greater need
for the hard conceptional decisions that you need to make.

3) Use your product yourself! If it doesn't hit you,  why  should
it hit someone else?


And generally: The best you can have (in any development team) is
an  amazingly  good  chief designer. He must not get entangled in
long decision processes (which usually lead to  average  results)
because he's the weapon *against* them. He just needs to be real-
ly good and he needs to have the power and freedom to  shape  the
product. Then he'll care to create a hitting product.

(This advice is heavily influenced by Fred Brooks, of course.)



http://marmaro.de/lue/        markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>