Ready, set, go!

by AlignedDeb on Dec.03, 2008, under Need a hand?

Welcome! Thanks for stopping by!

Since I’m such a huge fan of context - Here’s a little bit to get you started: I’m expanding my business and starting this blog, want to tell you a bit about me and hear from you about your UX pain. My goal is to always provide you a resource to help you hit the ground running with your User Experience.

Here I am taking the plunge. I have to admit that a blog is a very “oxymoronish” activity for me. I am actually a bit of a luddite when it comes to the web. Ok.. So how on earth does a web application UX designer survive by railing against new interactions and technologies on the web? Let’s just say that it is actually a survival mechanism. By waiting and watching I find myself jumping into technologies after I’ve seen enough adoption to make them feel solid. That’s a very good thing for a UX designer… it keeps the peace with the development team. AMEN.

I’m ready to rock and roll and put my 10 years of experience as a UX Designer out there for all. My main focus is small development teams. Startups, small teams in established organizations, basically the team that needs UX support but for one or many reasons doesn’t have a UX person on staff or available. Fear not, help is here.

Enough about me… I want to hear about you. What are your UX issues that you grapple with day to day? What subjects are near and dear to you when it comes to usability? Do you care? Tell all and don’t hold back.

If you could have one user experience pain point fixed what would it be?

Thanks for the input.. And great to have you onboard!

:about me, Help with user experience, Intro, pain points, small development teams

6 comments for this entry:

Mark Knowlton
December 5th, 2008 on 10:33 am
My biggest complaint is that ‘intuitive’ means different things to a non-technical business user than it does to an engineer or a purely visual/artistic person. Engineers influence the UI, because their plumbing connects to it. UI/UX people are sometimes in their own world, and can take a ‘well, WE know better’ attitude. I would like the discovery to start with ‘What tasks will a person using this application perform, and what is the absolutely easiest way to have the UI tell them what do to next?’
AlignedDeb
December 5th, 2008 on 10:58 am
Thanks for the comment Mark. I totally agree. This is a great idea to expand upon for future posts! Thank you!

Building software is not about ego’s, it’s about creating something for people to use. The other point - how does the UI team communicate with the development team to me is our (UX designers) main purpose as a part of the development process. Creating documentation that supports and communicates to the dev team in a way that gives them what they need is critical. In the end it’s all about communication, and in this situation about “visual” communication.
Daniel Szuc
December 5th, 2008 on 12:18 pm
I think we get too caught up in our own UX jargon.

We would benefit by clearing up how we communicate and simplifying our message organizationally.

This includes finding easy ways to implement UX into product developments and helping teams understand the value proposition of what they are building UP FRONT! Thanks for listening Deb
Ruth Kaplan
December 9th, 2008 on 12:40 am
One big issue for me is that even today, many people think user experience design is visual design or layout. It’s tricky to get across that all the ways a system responds is part of the experience design, so even if a process is open and collaborative, there is a big gain in applying ux methodology to workflows.

Thanks!
AlignedDeb
December 9th, 2008 on 8:49 am
Very true Ruth! In many ways the larger issue is really focusing the “brand” of user experience. A lot of work has been done to try and clarify not only the UX role but the divisions within the practice as well. But to Daniel’s point above… It seems as though we really need to work on our language and find a “speak” that helps “our users” understand our role clearly.

Thanks for your thoughts and the comments!
Disciples or Detractors - the pitfalls of UX language - aligned structures
December 18th, 2008 on 6:38 am
[...] good friend Dano (Daniel Szuc, ApogeeHK) posted the above comment on my opening post Ready, Set, Go!. Thought a lot about it. Then I happened to pick up my fav quick read, Science News, that [...]