Chronological Overview of The Task-Centered UI Design Process
- Identify your audience and understand the world they live in such that the interface can tie into their tasks
- Identify concrete representative tasks that users perform in which the system must accomplish. This will make for a good initial skeleton outline
- Conduct research on existing user interfaces and look for ways on how to improve upon them without having to blatantly plagerize. No sense in reinventing the wheel
- Try to scribble the conceptual interface on to paper rather than hitting the computer. Heading straight to the computer forces the UI designer to commit to too many decisions early in the process; With each task conceptualized, prioritize it under a key representative task as discovered in the second step. If it fails to be significant, discard the idea. If it is very significant, consider making it a new representative task
- Re-analyze your design by attempting to quantify some of the properties that make up the system. An example would be to count keystrokes and mental operations (decisions) for the tasks the design is intended to support. See GOMS analysis and cognitive walkthrough
- Prototype your design! Attempt to emulate results users would expect visually
- Test your design with a sample of your target audience. Experience has shown that the real problems occur at this phase. As the design is being tested, gather real-time feedback like video taping them to collect immediate responses to performing system tasks
- Develop the UI system by means of an iterative process. Ensure that required objectives are met for that iteration
- Develop the code for the UI design with the intention that certain pieces of it will change in the future. Build it using object-oriented principals so that the system can evolve with change, not fight it
- Those who are responsible for the UI design or make contributions to it should not be kept quarantined from the rest of the system development effort. UI designers should be rotated from implementing the design to actually dealing with the target users. The idea is that surprise innovations may occur if general awareness is increased
- The UI design cannot be designed once and be like that forever. Users will evolve and their tasks will change. Thus, be mindful that the UI may have to go through an update to address changes how users perform tasks. Designers need to stay on top of these changes
Reference
Lewis, Clayton and Rieman, John. Task-Centered User Interface Design: A Practical Introduction. Colorado, Shareware 1994
