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User Experience Is Your Brand, Dummy!

I'm loving this insightful article on the clash between corporate branding guidelines and actual user experience in UX Magazine. 

When corporate marketing departments dream of brand design, they only dream as far as they need. The expensive and time consuming process of extending the brand into an interactive concept is usually pushed off until it becomes absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, by the time some serious rethinking is required, a lot of people have gotten stuck in the mud of static branding. It’s completely natural for companies to resist straying from the handful of predefined styles that were never meant to address web forms, widgets, calendars and menuing systems.

It describes the situation in many organizations spot on and also excels by not solely blaiming the marketing department for this problem. So if your work has the slightest to do with branding and communication go read it.

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Prototyping With XHTML And Javascript - Why On Earth?

In the past months I have come across quite a few UI-guys arguing that prototyping web interfaces should be done using  XHTML and  javascript. The underlying argument being that it's much easier to produce a fair representation of the final product if designers get into code mode.

At UX London Richard Rutter and James Box from Clearleft  held a workshop about wireframing. They gave a presentation on how they use html and javascript to go from paper to functional html-prototypes in an effort to mimic the ajax responses of real world web pages. The two designers said that the code needed wasn't that hard to learn and that you really ought to know how to build a web page, when you are an interface designer.

Admittedly they both seemed like very skilled designers and they definitely knew what they were doing. What's more I certainly agree that building a functional prototype will take you much closer to the target than static screen dumps. But I don't think designers need to know code much less be able to code a web page from scratch. It simply isn't their job and concentrating on it will eventually take their focus away from the core task of delivering great user experience. 

I also noticed a lot of worried frowns on the foreheads of Rutter and Box's spectators when they whipped out the actual code needed.

Now, I'm nearing 41 years of age and really don't need those extra frowns so I stay as much away from code as I can. In stead I use Axure RP which is an easy to learn wysiwyg tool that doesn't require any coding skills. All the same the software is able to mimic ajax functionality at any rate.

This means that I don't have to spend my time with divs, ids and scripting. I am able to simply drag and drop the desired functionality into place. If I went the extra mile and coded the application there is little doubt that programmers would frown at the result. In other words: My code would suck.

So why go the extra mile of the Clearleft people and code the darn thing from head to body?  Well, I think the main problem of many UI-designers is that they are Mac-people and as of now Axure RP is not available for Mac. I think it will be in the not to distant future. But until then if you really want fast results without code, you have to switch to a pc.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Axure, nor was I paid for this post. I am simply a happy customer :-)

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Why Wire Frames Need Design

UX professionals shouldn't be afraid of stepping on the toes of web designers! That is the message from Stephen Turberk over at UX'ers home turf Boxes And Arrows.

Turbek recounts how a black and white wireframe can often alienate it's audience because it is so far from looking like the real thing. This is especially a problem when conducting usability tests with wireframes, writes Turbek:

"Visual affordances, such as color and underlining links are key to using a site, and these cues make a significant difference in a usability test. Users cannot confidently predict how they would use a page if they don’t recognize links or can’t read what the page expects them to."

I tend to agree with Turbek and see a necessity for including such basic elements as logos,  brand colors and some graphics when wireframing. Otherwise the person or group who are giving feedback will be too far removed from the onset. Over time this practice has landed me quite a few comments from both UX colleagues and web designers who think I have stepped over the line. It seems to be the common perception that wireframes ought to be toned down - invisible almost! 

Like me, Stephen Turbek doesn't think so and puts it this way:

"Just because project teams understand the purpose of wire frames, that doesn’t mean everyone will. Similar to listening to someone sing out loud to his iPod: we only hear the singing, while the person hears the whole orchestra. Likewise, the test subject knows only that “the page isn’t going to look like what they see,” but what they see is all they have to react to."

Eloquently put!

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