What User Interface Designerscan Learn from Architecture

Aye MoahUser Experience Engineer

Choicestream

Twitter: @ayemoahEmail: ayemoah@gmail.com

Blog: http://thinkstick.net

Why Architecture?

• Design

Why Architecture?

• Design• Solving human problems

Why Architecture?

• Design• Solving human problems • Working within constraints

Why Architecture?

• Design• Solving human problems • Working within constraints• Evoke emotional response

Balancing Act

Notable Quotes

“Beauty and brains, pleasure and usability, they should go hand in hand.”

Donald Norman, 2003

“Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

Architecture is an old profession.

• Actually… It’s quite ANCIENT!

4000 years ago vs. 40 years ago

Relatively speaking.

Certificate from the Stonemasons Guild of Strasbourg. Engraving 1771.

4 Things

1. Be the hub2. Claim the role of architects3. Don’t be afraid to throw away good ideas4. Don’t break paradigm

1. Be the hub.

1. Be the hub.

Talking to Engineers

1. Present the root cause of an issue as a problem to be solved.

Talking to Engineers

2. Speak with numbers.

Detour: Good numbers to know

• Working Memory Capacity *1

– 7+/- 2 information chunks– Retention time : ~ 7 sec

• Reading Capacity– Average reading speed : 250 wpm for college

educated– Optimal font size : 12 point *2

– Luminosity contrast ratio : 10:1 *3

Talking to Engineers

3. Keep up with current technology

• Frank Lloyd Wright / Cantilever / Falling Water (1935)

• Type ahead filtering in web applications/AJAX

Talking to Product Management

• Help them with Competitive Analysis

• Get involved from the beginning

• Usability should be part of the priorities that a product manager juggles

Talking to Project Management

• Understand software development methodologies– Waterfall– Spiral– Agile (Scrum, XP)

• Don’t forget Mythical Man-Month• Books

– Getting Real– Peopleware– Business of Software

Talking to QA Engineers

• QA Engineers think in terms of test cases– Positive– Negative– Edge and Exceptions

Talking to Customer Support

• Customer Support knows customers better than the customers know themselves

• # of users calling to ask how to use software is a pretty accurate assessment of usability

4 Things

1. Be the hub2. Claim the role of an architect3. Don’t be afraid to throw away good ideas4. Don’t break paradigm

2. Claim the role of an architect

• Architect vs. Interior Designer “Space planning with decoration applied to “dress it up” is

not architecture. Architecture resides in the DNA of a building, in an embedded sensibility that infuses its whole.”

• Architect vs. Engineer“Engineers tend to be concerned with physical things in and of themselves. Architects are more directly concerned with the human interface with physical things.”

2. Claim the role of an architect

• Earn the right to influence how a software is built by – Learning basic computer science principles– Understanding System Architecture Diagrams,

Object Model Diagrams• Be deserving of Virtual Tiara• Danger of bozo bit

Detour : Tiara Story

a programmer asks Joel Spolsky to intervene in some debate he is having with a program manager.

Joel : “Who is going to write the code?” Programmer : “I am…”Joel : “OK, who checks things into source control?”Programmer : “Me, I guess, …”Joel : “So what’s the problem, exactly? You have

absolute control over the state of each and every bit in the final product. What else do you need? A tiara?”

4 Things

1. Be the hub2. Claim the role of an architect3. Don’t be afraid to throw away good ideas4. Don’t break paradigm

3. Don’t be afraid to throw away good ideas

• Not every idea a creator conjures up belongs in the work at hand

• The cliché “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should” is relevant

• Jamming up all cool interface components != best design for your product

• Be wary of suggestions and make conscious decisions of what fits

3. Don’t be afraid to throw away good ideas

“Beauty is due more to harmonious relationships among the elements of a composition rather than to the elements themselves.” Page 28 - 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, Matthew Frederick, 2007

http://www.borders.com/online/store/Home

4 Things

1. Be the hub2. Claim the role of an architect3. Don’t be afraid to throw away good ideas4. Don’t break paradigms

4. Don’t break paradigms

• Users are accustomed to them• The time it takes to do a task decreases with

practice *1

Tn = T1 * n-α

Tn : Time it takes to do a task for the nth time

α : ranges from 0.2 to 0.6

• First time : 3 seconds 10th time : 0.75 seconds

4. Don’t break paradigms

• Paradigms tend to be well researched• Microsoft has collected 1.3 Billion sessions on

Office 2003.*5

• No need to reinvent a wheel researched a million times over

Unless that’s your core feature

• Google Maps– Click and drag to navigate within the map– Continuous display of map data

Unless that’s your core feature

• iPhone – No physical keyboard– Direct manipulation of interface with touch

screen

Open Debate

• They have – a name “Architect” (officially, Registered Architect)– well defined responsibilities and requirements– education, experience and examination required

to become a licensed architect– Architect Registration Examination (ARE)

• So what about us?

Poll questions

• Current Title• Current Responsibilities • What should it be?

– User Interface Designer– User Experience Engineer– Interaction Designer– Information Architect …

• What regulations and standards do you think we need?

References1. MIT OCW Lecture Notes from User Interface Design and Implementation Class

http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-831Fall-2004/0A79F491-80BA-4E19-885C-1E7E481FA2A3/0/L4.pdf

2. Software Usability Research Laboratory Wichita State University http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/41/onlinetext.asp

3. Web Accessibility Tools Consortium http://www.wat-c.org/tools/CCA/1.1/#what4. 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick, 20075. Inside Deep Thought (Why the UI, Part 6 by Jensen Harris, Lead Program

Manager of Officehttp://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/31/487247.aspx