Getting buy-in to introduce usability testing

Dec 19, 2012 By Kok Chiann in Thoughts No Comments Tags: Clarifying Investments, Quick Wins, ROI, Usability, Usability Testing, User Testing, Users, UX, UX Design

First, check out this video of Dr. House speaking to a patient who didn’t know how to use an inhaler. It’s a really good starting point in communicating the fact that there are times when users are just….dumb.

Instead of putting the blame on users and leaving it at that, there are times when it is more sensible and worthwhile to invest in finding the issues our users are facing and uncover root causes of their frustrations. Usability testing to the rescue.

If you ask any UX professional out there on what they think about usability testing, I’m guessing everyone will say stuff along the lines of – Awesome, Absolutely critical, Important, The Qualitative Input we got was priceless.

It’s a great idea, and the sad part is when it stays as an idea, and not part of the product development processes. As a realist, I’m a believer that every piece of investment must be justified and make economical sense, that includes usability testing.

So how do we get buy-in to have it introduced?
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Coupling between systems and what it means to UX

Nov 16, 2012 By Kok Chiann in Thoughts No Comments Tags: business value, coupling, Product Management, ROI, Scope Management, UX, Value

The topic for today is coupling.

It’s a programming term, so i’m pretty sure its hard to explain to non-technical audiences like my mom, so instead of trying your best to define and give example of how systems are coupled or not… think of it like the construction of towers.
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Testing Differences: Quality Assurance & Usability

Mar 4, 2012 By Kok Chiann in Thoughts No Comments Tags: Personas, Projects, QA vs UX, Quality Assurance Testing, Regression Testing, RIA, Testing, Usability, Usability Testing, UX

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So…is it a quality or usability bug? But wait…quality means usability as well no?

I was thinking a lot about the difference between the testing done by Quality Assurance/Testers and User Experience Designers, many have different perceptions and some might argue that its the same thing. It’s tough to draw the line sometimes but I personally would agree to disagree because they share similarities in some areas but are vastly different in objectives, approach, required expertise, and much more.

Why Prototype?

Sep 6, 2011 By Kok Chiann in Thoughts No Comments Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Communication, Consistency, Expression Blend, Feedback, Prototype, Prototyping, Rapid, Sketchflow, UI, UX

Great video from TED.com on Prototyping

When it comes to software development, especially for RIA or complex enterprise solutions, prototypes are one of the many important steps that are usually neglected as many fail to recognize its value and how much of a positive impact it would be.

The Multi-Select Control Dilemma

Aug 11, 2011 By Kok Chiann in Thoughts 1 Comment Tags: Control, Design, Designer, Enterprise, GUI, Information Architecture, Multi-Select, Multiple Options, Multiselect, RIA, Scalability, Solution, Styling, UI, UI Pattern, UX

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When it comes to forms, there are loads of situations where our applications would like the user to be presented with a list of options and allow them to choose not only one, but multiple choices. Achieving that is simple, lets just use a checkbox list!

That’s works great, with 3 choices that is, what if we have a list of like…50 choices?

Ouch, that…might not work out. Even referring to books and sites on UI Patterns didn’t get me the best solution to deal with this scenario, so its back to the drawing table for me.

It wasn’t easy to decide on the best approach, so I’ll step through some of the solutions that I’ve thought of to deal with this problem and cap things up with a conclusion at the very end.

Layout Design 101

Aug 3, 2011 By Kok Chiann in Thoughts 2 Comments Tags: Design, Designer, GUI, Information Architecture, Layout, Planning, Prototyping, RIA, Scalability, UI, UX

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Photo courtesy of flickr user Jason Robb

One of the highest impact design decisions when it comes to software is none other than the overall layout, which should in turn determine the placement and arrangement of information throughout applications.

Many considerations will need to be made to determine the optimal layout to present information, and especially for applications that deal with a huge amount of data, complex processes, client facing, depended upon to perform day-to-day operations by organizations and people and many more. Such decisions could prove to be very impactful indeed – even to the extent of deciding the success or failure of an application.

Here are a few steps that could help get you going when masterminding the overall layout of your applications.

Hello World!

Jul 15, 2011 By Kok Chiann in Thoughts No Comments Tags: Blend, Design, Designer, Prototyping, RIA, Sketchflow, UI, UX, XAML

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It’s great to finally have RIA Blog up and running!

As you might have already expected, this blog will focused on everything related to UI/UX design for RIA solutions. It will also lean more towards XAML-based technologies like Silverlight and WPF, of course with some HTML5/CSS3 as garnishing.