With World Usability Day on the horizon I thought I would make a post  about how  ConceptShare is used for usability design. We certainly use it for everything  here (marketing, inteface, web) and a lot of our testers are using it for their web apps  interface design along with  general web design interfaces and navigation.

ConceptShare works best when it is initiated early in the design process. It’s the equivalent  of “Hey check this out so far tell me what you think”. That’s easy if you are all in the same room, but that’s not always the case.  

Usually someone mentions an feature requirement and the first step is to jump into Photoshop and quickly mock something up. I have a library on my computer of blank interfaces, buttons, dropdowns etc  so I can mash up something pretty quickly. I then upload it in to workspace inside of ConceptShare. Because it’s not a live site and just a mockup I start by adding comments and draw arrows indicated what I meant to happened when buttons are clicked. Depending on the action I will also upload the end result of a click like the form that would open etc. ConceptShare makes it easy to describe what I had in mind for the actions and point to the button in question in context..

Previously I would  have to send the screen.jpg by email and try to describe the actions and design intentions in the body of the email. Or if I had more time I would use the brush and text tool in Photoshop to draw and comment . Neither of these methods are very interactive for my partners of who I need their feedback to continue. They would have ended up replying to my email with small useless feedback that doesn’t help me out much, stuff like ‘looks good’. Providing them more tools and the ability to reply to my initial comments put things in context and lets them know what I want feedback on. Now I get comments like “Do we really want this to be a pop-up?  I think this should open inline”.

 

I usually invite Scott first because our developers are busy building the last features we requested. We go back and forth  over the next little while entering the workspace at different times and differently locations and I get the first feedback from another person that can comment on if the interface feels natural and they can understand what happens next. This would be the equivalent of the a paper prototype I suppose. After Scott’s comments and maybe a few others. I go back to the drawing board and make some changes and start the process again. Sometimes we go through 4-7 versions before we bring the developer in. We then bring the developer in, again these are all flat screens. The development team can now comment from 2 perspectives. 1) another voice about how natural the button location or actions are and 2) a development perspective on implementation and perhaps insight into what would take longer or changing things because we did this same function somewhere else so let’s keep consistent or save some time by making it similar. The developer has the ability to see how the screen developed to this point and I have the ability to reply to their comments to answer questions or debate decisions. This all happens over time and we don’t all have to be in the workspace. When we are we use the real-time chat quite a bit. If the comments require it. I go back for a final screen with the new comments and all user get a email letting them know a new design is there for the picking. 

Overall this really speeds  our development process because after I upload a screen I can then start working on something else in ConceptShare like our brochure or our website. I don’t have to wait or book a meeting at 1pm so we can all be there at the same time. We don’t work like that and most people don’t as much anymore.

Categories: GUI, Usability ~ ~ Trackback