Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Sandie Allen
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
New England software experts put UI/UX specialists on a pedestal
By Galen Moore
BP hones skills through MIT programs
IBM aims to make wireless sensors easy to code
MHT's Galen Moore: N.E. firms target individual carbon footprints
Once an afterthought, user-interface (UI) design has become religion. Businesses developing software are bringing in user-experience (UX) experts to consult at the earliest stages, conducting interviews, focus groups and A-B testing of prototype websites.
The increased demand for good design, which began with the iPhone and online social networks and games, has come to the call center and the shopping mall security desk. Developers must try to predict how a human will use even the most mundane applications. As it turns out, that’s not an easy thing to do. Combining user focus with a good aesthetic eye? Near impossible. The UI or UX designer has a seat at the head of the table, and companies are under pressure to fill it with the best talent possible.
We asked dozens of people in New England’s software industry to name the UI designer they’d kill to hire, and from those responses we distilled the list to the following six. Each shared a few thoughts on what makes design effective, and how that has changed in the past decade.
Karen Donoghue
Independent contractor, Cambridge
Designing since 1997
Recent projects: Kodak’s Framechannel platform; The Associated Press’ Apple iPhone app; Motorola flip phone user interface
Design philosophy: “Bones before skin. When working on a new product design, I focus on the key features, architecture and interactions in the experience.”
How has UI/UX design changed in the past decade?
“Software development cycles happen much faster now. They are often happening at a lightning-fast pace. It is more difficult and risky to make large changes later in the development process.”
What’s more important than good design? “It’s really about balancing constraints. When you are designing product experiences that combine hardware and software, if the hardware constraints are too tight, it impinges the ability for the software experience to really serve the user’s goals.”
Thoughts on Donoghue
Thinking Screen Media Inc. (formerly Frame Media) COO and founder Jon Finegold worked with Karen Donoghue on software for Kodak’s Framechannel family of connected picture frames and media players.
“She had a lab where she would bring in people from the outside and say ‘here’s your device, go to it,’ and sit there and watch them. Where do they struggle? What questions do they ask? We might have rolled out 30 modifications to that platform over the course of a few months, based on this iterative process.”
Paul DiCristina
Independent contractor, Concord
Designing since 1992
Recent projects: Lose It! app for iPhone; application interface for VideoIQ Inc.
Design philosophy: “First off, you have to understand (the project). The first day to the first week might be just understanding what it’s doing.”
How has UI/UX design changed in the past decade? “The funny thing is that when I do stuff targeted more to enterprise, the consumer world has definitely bled over there. I get asked a lot to tart things up and make things more ‘consumerish.’ ”
What’s a good designer’s core skill? “You need to be able to envision a clear user model — to see the structure and create a structure so that people can find their way. Everything else kind of hangs off that structure.”
Thoughts on DiCristina
FitNow Inc. CEO Charles Teague hired Paul DiCristina to help design his company’s Lose It! app for the iPhone.
“One of the things that’s really unique about Paul, and this is going to sound crazy, is that he’s very good at working with very few pixels. If you say to him, ‘I need to show a carton of milk, but you need to do it in 28-by-28 pixels,’ he does just a spectacular job of producing something that is really great. It turns out, that is an insanely difficult problem.”
Coryndon Luxmoore
Independent contractor, Providence, R.I.
Designing since 1996
Recent projects: CVS online pharmacy; L.L. Bean call center application; Con-way Freight’s NASCAR website
Design philosophy: “You need to understand who your actors are. It’s important to talk to your customers. It’s important to test your customers with prototypes.”
How has UI/UX design changed in the past decade?
“I think part of the success that you see with the iPhone applications — being more successful than the website — is because they are more limited. It does one thing or a couple of things very well, and that’s easy to understand, easy to appreciate the value.”
What’s more important than good design?
“Task-based testing. You could spend a single day testing a prototype with real customers and you’ll find 80 percent of your problems.“
Thoughts on Luxmoore
Dennis Natale, VP of sales at Ember Corp., worked with Coryndon Luxmoore in the early 2000s, building web applications for the New York Independent System Operator.
“He understood intimately the energy trading business and could speak to you as though he was an energy commodity trader. You just don’t wake up one day and understand that. The CIO of NYISO loved Coryndon, because he could talk to him about his business and make him understand his vision for the project. My job was easier when I had Coryndon in the room.”
Eric Sagalyn
Tippingpoint Labs LLC, Newton
Designing since 2000
Recent projects: Drync LLC’s iPhone app; Where Inc.
Design philosophy: “I want to make a product that has a user in mind. I see myself advocating on behalf of that user.”
How do you know what the user wants?
“Some of it is testing. Some of it is talking with people. It’s bringing it up in conversation and trying to solicit feedback without people knowing that they’re giving it. The old focus group model doesn’t work very well.”
What’s more important than good design?
“I think making a user happy with their experience is the most important thing. It could be an awful design and accomplish that. I’m not going to begrudge a bad design that makes people happy.”
Ethan Marcotte
Happy Cog Studios, Cambridge
Designing since 1995
Recent projects: creative.mozilla.org; climatecentral.org; co-wrote ‘Handcrafted CSS’ with Dan Cederholm
Design philosophy: “I’ve never really liked the term, ‘users.’ It’s kind of a nasty word — in every connotation. I try to counsel clients to think about the humans, the actual people, who are going to be using this site.”
How has UI/UX design changed in the past decade?
“A lot of businesses, they start asking for user-focused design by name. We don’t have to do a lot of the selling we used to do. We’re working with some really savvy companies.”
Define “good design.”
“Design solves problems. I think the fascinating thing for me about movie poster design is, how do you take this two-hour-long thing and distill it down to a 2.5-by-4-foot frame? How well does this talk to me? How well does it present a solution?”
Matt McMillan
Virtual Goods Market Inc., Cambridge
Designing since 2000
Recent projects: CourseNotes app for iPad; viximo.com; kaneva.com
Design philosophy: “It doesn’t matter how pretty it is if it’s not usable. It’s the experience and the usability along with the aesthetic quality.”
What technological advance has meant the most in your job?
“The advances that CSS and HTML have taken. It allows me to get out of Photoshop sooner. I don’t have to worry about, ‘Is that the right color button?’ I can jump in there, build it, and get a feel for it. The sooner you get to a working product, the better it’s going to be.”
Define “good design.”
“It’s fun, it’s fast, and they don’t even know you put hundreds of hours into it. Everything’s just a no-brainer: Why wouldn’t you do it that way? But that’s the hardest thing to do.“
Comments
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.
RSS Feeds
