Dec. UX Meetup summary

Last night’s UX Meetup was about using Axure.  Fred Beecher and Lori Baker brought examples to illustrate the capabilities of Axure as an interactive prototyping tool — exciting stuff!  The notes are below.

 

We were welcomed by a student soon to be looking for a job in the field of IA, so we spent a little time discussing “What is IA”?  Here are some notes from that discussion:

 

“What is IA?”

  • Where things go and what they’re called
  • IA’s use research to make recommendations
  • IA’s also advocate for standard web conventions (there are only a few conventions – always have a home button, clickable logo, back button goes back)
  • IA started with librarians
  • Librarians will teach you the system to the library (like the Dewey Decimal System) – on the web, there is no one to help – thus our job is to design systems where people won’t need help
  • People have goals, but the goal is never to use the site – it has to do with the use of the product (we need to get out of the way as much as possible)
  • Business value of UX design: goal is to get people to give you money (it’s a competitive advantage)
  • Outstanding question: Thermostats – are they usable?

 

 

Axure

  • “Thou shalt not change production code”  this is a tool for designers to play around and practice
  • Axure is the designers sandbox
  • Prototype is a communication tool to the developers
  • DO NOT USE PROTOTYPE FOR PRODUCTION CODE
  • Design in code slows everybody down, because everyone wants to be a designer
  • Easier to be quicker on your feet, more flexible to have a flexible design
  • Changing flash is a big deal, changing a prototype is not a big deal
  • Axure creates “Wireframes that move”
  • We are not developers, Axure makes me do things I couldn’t do and without making code
  • Use Axure for a POC (proof of concept) test – we learned that this isn’t the way everyone wants to search
  • Really important to do the test plan first before building the prototype
  • Axure prototypes help build confidence that you’ll release with usable functionality
  • Axure style editor allows you to change font, background color, headers across the prototype, like CSS to a website
  • When adding functionality for a current system, good to use a high visual and high interactive fidelity prototype so that users can still visualize the current system with the new functionality
  • Good for user testing, getting feedback
  • Also great for communicating with developers
  • “Designed by developers for designers”
  • Wireframing, prototyping and documentation in one tool
  • $589 for a license, includes 1 year of free updates ($150 after that to keep up with updates – 2 releases per year)
  • Keep things black and white to prevent people from using the prototype as the final product
  • Testing before the design and after the design to make sure things are interpreted correctly when you handed off the design
  • Slap and map – slapping up a design and a sitemap to use to display functionality — adds higher visual fidelity
  • In-line frame would import html file that has the swf embed file – for clicking around, you’d need to code the swf file to have that functionality
  • Don’t add a ton of flash