Go with the flow

The SPIN meeting in Cape Town this month again impressed with a high quality presentation. Phil Barrett from Flow highlighted the importance of user interaction design by elaborating on the role of the user experience designer in the software development process. He inspired us to think about better user interfaces, ensured us that Agile has room for UI design, and certainly made some of us wish we could have him in our team. I could not attempt even a summary of all the good things that were said. Instead I would like to share with you three key ideas that I took home from Phil's talk (obviously, these are heavily laden with my own egocentric perspectives J).

The first is that better user experience is money in your pocket. It is not about being nice, doing the right thing or getting a warm and fuzzy feeling – it is about selling software or converting website visitors into website customers. It is also about beating your competitor, and keeping your customers from looking around for better solutions. In short it might be a good idea to spend some money on user interaction – even if you think your software works well.

The second idea is that user interaction design can easily reach a local maximum. When you start coding you have in mind a particular solution – and as you code you become more and more tied into the many small design decisions you make along the way. Small increments are relatively inexpensive and each one improves the system ever so slightly. However, at some point change becomes difficult and your user interface could end up with a feel that is, in a very practical sense, at an optimal solution. At this juncture the identification of a better solution does not help because changing to this brave new world is simply not cost effective. You are stuck at a local maximum - it is the "payback" for all those short-cuts you took when the coding started. Avoid this situation by thinking through your user experience design carefully – and aim for that higher maximum from the start (this is very much like the concept of entropy I discussed in a previous blog)

The third concept revolves around the role of the user experience designer. The way I see it follows purely from the pig and chicken perspective:

• If the application does not work, roll your eyes (if you must) toward the developer and the tester
  
• If the application does the wrong thing, place the blame on the doorstep of the business analyst
  
• If the application does the thing wrong, the user experience designer is your culprit

If you are not equipped or entitled to hire a user experience designer, Phil suggests that you could interview the users yourself. Focus on having an open honest conversation – ask politely, then listen carefully at the reply. Wait for four seconds before offering your comment. Good advice, I'd say!