User Involvement Methods for Great User Interface Design
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Posted On :
Feb-04-2011
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Article Word Count :
772
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Whether people are users of school services or web and software user interfaces, actively involving users gives them a voice and enables them to sound their experiential opinions.
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What is User Involvement?
In the simplest of terms user involvement means actively involving people who receive or experience a service or process. Whether people are users of school services or web and software user interfaces, actively involving users gives them a voice and enables them to sound their experiential opinions. This enriches the product because users are good at generating ideas that can lead to new innovations and/or improvements. User involvement can also increase the success of a software product or service because when users feel valued and involved they are likely to become loyal customers and engage not only in using a product but also in spreading the good word about it.
In computer science user involvement is often a crucial component for the successful construction of successful user interface designs . Whether you involve your users by conducting usability tests or surveys for general user feedback, interface design requires a level of user involvement in order to continually improve and iterate evolving websites or software applications towards success.
Categorizing user involvement methods
There are endless ways to involve your users in the design and post-design processes, but typically involving users in user interface design implies some form of usability testing. This means that the best way to involve your users is by usability testing during the development process of your user interface (a process that arguably never ends). However, usability test is an umbrella term for user involvement methods. There is still a way of breaking methods down further so that you can optimize user involvement based on your goals and/or the user’s needs. Categorizing ways that users can be involved with your user interface design process and hence the creation of great user interface designs can help you better understand how your users can contribute and can also assist you in choosing the optimal usability testing method.
User involvement methods can typically be divided into the following categories: ask, observe, and participate.
• Ask: This category means asking users about what they want, need, or think of an interface design. You can also ask how these people employ the application and why and what this implies for the user interface (UI) design. Asking is inquiry into the motivations of users. This can be done in the form of usability tests that require interviews, surveys, or recorded conversations.
• Observe: This category simply means watching what users do when they work with an application and use the UI. This is especially useful because users often do something very different than what they say they will do. Watch your users in daily life as they operate a website or app in order to get a better understanding of their experiences and needs. One usability testing method that works well within the observe category is video-ethnography in which you use controlled observation that makes it possible to watch and video-tape users carrying out specific tasks with an interface design.
• Participate: This category means allowing users to be co-designers in the UI development process. It gives them the power to give direct input on the UI design. This category does not really fit into the usability testing paradigm in the same vein as the others, but it does help designers think of users as shareholders of an application.
Combining categories and creating unique user involvement methods
Categorizing the ways in which you can involve users in the user interface design process gives you a better idea of how to optimize their connection and commitment to your interface design. This is because you are able to approach iterating and improving the interface design from a specified understanding of how users involve themselves with your product. When choosing which involvement category to use as your user involvement method, remember that you do not have to pick one; in fact, it benefits you to use more than one category. For example, combining the ask and observe categories can lead to information that not only tells you the user’s motivations and desires relating to the UI, but also tells you how those motivations and desires change based on their actions. Thus, the user involvement (usability testing) methods of interviewing and video ethnography can give you a fuller picture of your user and as a result you can create a more successful user interface design. This is just one example of the many category/user involvement/usability method combinations that you can make, the options are numerous and consequently so is the potential for a user-friendly interface design .
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Article Source :
http://www.articleseen.com/Article_User Involvement Methods for Great User Interface Design_51477.aspx
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Author Resource :
Pidoco.com – Interface Design, Wireframing Software, Wireframe Tool , Interface Design Software, Interface Prototyping, Usability Testing, Wireframes and Clickable Wireframes. User centered design for improved user interface design or UI design.
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Keywords :
interface design, ui design, ui prototyping, interface design software, interface design tool, wireframe software, wireframe ,
Category :
Computers
:
Software
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