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Jared Spool 4.42
Description:
Everyone wants an "intuitive" interface: the users, the designers, and the content publishers. But building them is hard. User Interface Engineering's recent research has given insight into why it's hard and how to get past major obstacles.
To build an "intuitive" interface, a designer has to do two things: (1) Take complete advantage of what the user already knows, so what they see is completely familiar to them and (2) make the act of learning anything new completely imperceptible to the user. It turns out, if the interface requires the user to realize they are learning something, the "intuitive" label disappears instantly.
In this talk, Jared will show:
- How users need both tool knowledge and domain knowledge to complete their tasks
- How simple problems with designs can cause big problems for users
- What successful teams are doing to create experiences that delight
Jared will show examples from Microsoft Word, MSN, Google Talk, Flickr, Avis, and many more.
Links: Website
Jared Spool is a polished speaker, delivering an engaging talk with clarity and humor. During the talk he supported his thesis with numerous examples, some well-known. I look forward to seeing more of his talks.
A twitter-sized summary of his talk might be: Understand your users and their level of skill and knowledge; understand the skill level needed to use your software; identify any gaps between the actual and needed skills; design the software to bridge these skill gaps (which may vary by user); and test your assumptions with real users to make sure you did everything right.
I further summarized some of the points from his talk in a short blog post for those seeking further detail. link text