Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web & Mobile Application Design

by Hoekman, Robert, Jr.

• ISBN13: 9780321749857
• ISBN10: 0321749855
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-11-16
• Publisher: New Riders

Summary

Designing the Obviousbelongs in the toolbox of every person charged with the design and development of Web-based software, from the CEO to the programming team. Designing the Obvious explores the character traits of great Web applications and uses them as guiding principles of application design so the end result of every project instills customer satisfaction and loyalty. These principles include building only whats necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity.Designing the Obviousdoes not offer a one-size-fits-all development process--in fact, it lets you use whatever process you like. Instead, it offers practical advice about how to achieve the qualities of great Web-based applications and consistently and successfully reproduce them.

Author Biography

Robert Hoekman, Jr., is a user experience strategist who has worked with MySpace, Seth Godin (Squidoo), Automattic (WordPress), and countless others, and has spoken at industry events all over the world, including An Event Apart, Web App Summit, and SXSWi. He is the author of Designing the Moment and Web Anatomy, and has written dozens of articles on user experience. Learn more about Robert at www.rhjr.net. He is @rhjr on Twitter.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. x
Author Biography	p. xi
Defining the Obvious	p. 3
What Is 'the Obvious'?	p. 6
Qualities of a great application	p. 8
How Do You Design the Obvious?	p. 10
Turn qualities into goals	p. 10
The Framework for Obvious Design	p. 12
Know what to build	p. 14
Know what makes it great	p. 14
Know the best way to implement it	p. 15
Lead with Why, Follow with What	p. 17
Know Your Motivation	p. 19
What follows Why	p. 22
Make Authentic Decisions	p. 24
Audit the user experience	p. 24
Define the vision	p. 28
Plan the new design	p. 31
Implement it	p. 32
Measure everything	p. 32
Having vision	p. 34
Ignore the User, Know the Situation	p. 35
Designing for the User	p. 37
Designing for the Activity	p. 44
Solve for the Situation	p. 47
Understand How Users Think They Do Things	p. 55
Understand How Users Actually Do Things	p. 57
Find Out the Truth	p. 61
Contextual inquiry	p. 63
Remote user research	p. 66
Surveys	p. 67
Write Use Cases	p. 68
Task-flow diagrams	p. 74
My advice	p. 76
Build Only What Is Absolutely Necessary	p. 77
More features, More frustration	p. 78
So what's a geek to do?	p. 79
Think Different	p. 80
The dashboard and New Invoice screen	p. 81
The finished invoice	p. 82
The result	p. 83
Think Mobile	p. 84
Hey, it's your life	p. 87
Not present at time of photo	p. 87
Drop Nice-to-Have Features	p. 88
The Unnecessary Test	p. 89
The 60-Second Deadline	p. 90
Aim low	p. 92
Interface Surgery	p. 93
Reevaluate nice-to-have features later	p. 98
Let them speak	p. 99
Support the User's Mental Model	p. 101
Understanding mental models	p. 103
Design for Mental Models	p. 104
Making metaphors that work	p. 107
Interface Surgery: Converting an implementation model design into a mental model design	p. 111
Eliminate Implementation Models	p. 119
Create wireframes to nail things down	p. 119
Prototype the Design	p. 127
Test It Out	p. 130
Turn Beginners into Intermediates, Immediately	p. 139
Use Up-to-Speed Aids	p. 141
Provide a welcome screen	p. 145
Fill the blank slate with something useful	p. 147
Give instructive hints	p. 149
Interface Surgery: Applying instructive design	p. 153
Choose Good Defaults	p. 160
Integrate preferences	p. 163
Design for Information	p. 163
Card sorting	p. 166
Stop Getting Up to Speed and Speed Things Up	p. 168
Reuse the welcome screen as a notification system	p. 169
Use one-click interfaces	p. 170
Use design patterns to make things familiar	p. 171
Provide Help Documents, Because Help Is for Experts	p. 173
Be Persuasive	p. 175
Draw a Finish Line	p. 176
Ownership	p. 177
Solve a Significant Problem	p. 178
Make It Explainable	p. 180
Know Your Psychology	p. 181
Reciprocity	p. 181
Commitment and consistency	p. 182
Social proof	p. 184
Authority	p. 185
Liking	p. 186
Scarcity	p. 187
Ethical persuasion	p. 188
Handle Errors Wisely	p. 189
Prevent and Catch Errors with Poka-yoke Devices	p. 191
Poka-yoke on the web	p. 192
Prevention devices	p. 193
Detection devices	p. 195
Turn errors into opportunities	p. 200
Feeling smart	p. 202
Ditch Anything Modal	p. 203
Redesigning rude behavior	p. 204
Replace it with modeless assistants	p. 205
Write Error Messages That Help Instead of Hurt	p. 207
Interface Surgery	p. 209
Create Forgiving Software	p. 211
Good software promotes good practices	p. 213
Design for Uniformity, Consistency, and Meaning	p. 217
Design for Uniformity	p. 220
Be Consistent Across Applications	p. 229
Understanding design patterns	p. 230
Intelligent inconsistency	p. 233
Leverage Irregularity to Create Meaning and Importance	p. 234
Interface Surgery: Surfacing the bananas in a process	p. 237
Reduce and Refine	p. 243
Cluttered task flows	p. 244
The path to simplicity	p. 245
Clean Up the Mess	p. 246
Reducing the pixel-to-data ratio	p. 247
Minimizing copy	p. 248
Designing white space	p. 251
Cleaning up task flows	p. 255
Practice Kaizen	p. 258
The 5S approach	p. 259
Eliminate Waste	p. 262
Cleaning up your process	p. 263
Put Just-in-Time Design and Review to Work	p. 265
Don't Innovate When You Can Elevate	p. 269
Innovation	p. 270
The problem with innovative thinking	p. 270
Elevation	p. 272
Elevate the User Experience	p. 272
Elevation is about being more polite	p. 273
Elevation means giving your software a better personality	p. 274
Elevation means understanding good design	p. 276
Seek Out and Learn from Great Examples	p. 277
Inspiration	p. 278
Elevate the standards	p. 278
Take Out All the Good Lines	p. 279
Get in the Game	p. 280
Index	p. 283
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