MORAE brings you More..

by Don Burnett

Usability test and user experience research can very time consuming in any design and development environment. Morae by TechSmith.com is software for usability testing and user experience research that helps you identify site and application design problems and share them with stakeholders.

Usability is such a big category these days, and even the government has gotten into the act with standards for this. If you are a developer either for platform applications or web applications you cannot afford to ignore this.

There are not many products that make this process easier to work through, when I say "usability" people confuse this "accessibility" which really isn't quite the same thing.. You need to find something that will be helpful at measuring these metrics. MORAE brings software that helps to automate this process in a good way.

What tools does Morae bring to the party?

You can instantly calculate and graph standard usability measurements, so you can focus on understanding results. This is important especially if you have a large project and the metrics come from a monumental set of data.

The graphing and visualization features are really very powerful. They allow your gathered data to be almost immediately understandable and meaningful. You can then take these to your team and help them to focus on areas of need of improvement.

But it's not all just graphing, the product comes with a video recorder option that lets you create custom studies, test cases, and record onscreen activity during test sessions. You can observe the interactivity also on other machines over a LAN, so you can keep the test environments separate, to keep the results as "scientific" as possible. The recorder option also allows notes and markers to be made during recordings, to mark events and user interactions and how the interface can respond.

This is a very well received application, with users such as the United States Air Force Academy and Stanford University. If you want to read more, they have a great white paper that you can read. I really recommend if you are interested in Usability that you check this program out, whether you develop for the web, platform applications this is a great place to start making your life easier and more productive for you team immediately.

Technorati tags: Morae, Usability, UI Design, User Experience Design process, TechSmith

More UX@UM Content

by Don Burnett

If you missed the UX@UM day presentations, or are one of the many people anxious to get at the content. We have been able to upload about half of the content (the other half is coming, there is just a lot of it, and most of what is left includes video tutorials, so it's just a matter of getting it all uploaded and online. If you'd like to look at the presentations and some of the other content, you can check it out on my Windows Live SkyDrive..

Click on the drive here to access the content..

Technorati tags: User Experience Design, http://technorati.com/tags/UX@UM, Silverlight, Expression Web, Expression Media, Expression Blend, WPF, University of Michigan, Content

Wild Week of Cool Stuff

by Don Burnett

Well it's been a great last week for me. Follow me for a moment..

Monday: Halo 3 Launch Event

Thursday: Microsoft Across America MSDN Event- William J. Steele was in town to give a great presentation on LINQ, WCF, and Silverlight.. I hadn't really thought a lot about LINQ, but after Mr. Steele's demonstration I realized it's importance. It's data mapping and connectivity capabilities are very impressive. It virtually lets you represent data as objects from just about any source out there (LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Objects, LINQ to File System, and LINQ to Flickr). It makes queries and business logic a lot easier to abstract your data to a much higher level, and the days of talking to a data reader. No more talking to a data reader. There was also a great talk on the history of messaging on the platform and how WCF solves a legacy of issues with messaging. It was a fantastic few hours of information.

Friday: UX@UM was an unparalleled success. We opened a dialog about user experience design among the development and design communities at University of Michigan. We are working to get all of the content from the presentations (including streaming video). There was much interest in standards based web development and extending that functionality with the Silverlight plug-in.

Silverlight Deployment?

David Tesar has released a great deployment guide if you are adding Silverlight to your corporate environment. It's a MUST DOWNLOAD and will give all that you need to know to deploy safely in a corporate or academic setting.

Technorati tags: Silverlight Deployment Guide, User Experience Design, Expression Studio, LINQ, WCF

UX@UM Michigan Expression Day 2007 Sold Out!

by Don Burnett

Introduction
User Experience based design and development is a hot topic today. It's on the words of business and advertising but it's also in a few unexpected places, including Academia.. I have been working with local and regional User Experience Evangelists from Microsoft and with University of Michigan folks to bring a special day of user experience exploration and training to University of Michigan. I am pleased to tell you that the event is SOLD OUT.. If this event interests you and you can't make it to this event or you are a U-M person who wants to attend never fear. We have a wait list and we are planning on working with the University to make another event like this available soon If you are a U-M person click here to get on the waitlist. If you are not a U-M person and want to attend a local event like this send me an email, and we'll get you on the waitlist for a similar (but non-academic) event. don@donburnett.com.

Event Information

Friday, September 28
9:00 am - 5:00 pm

UM Duderstadt Center
3336 AC/BD

Devote a day to take your user experience knowledge to the next level. We've brought together top user experience evangelists--whose applications are used by people around the world--to present a special UM-only program on best practices for creating standards-based sites and demonstrations on how you can leverage rich media and interactivity with Microsoft Expression Studio.

Speakers

Chris Bernard is a user experience evangelist for Microsoft. He works in software design, development and business domains to communicate Microsoft's position on the importance of user experience in software design. Prior to his work at Microsoft, he was creative director at a large technology-focused professional services company. Chris brings over 14 years of expertise in design, consulting, strategy, business frameworks, design research, analysis, synthesis, planning and implementation. His mission as a design professional is applying principles of contextual research, cultural, human, physical and social factors to the products, services and systems that he develops. Chris has an M.S. in Marketing Communications from the Stuart Graduate School of Business and a M.D.M (Master of Design Methods) from the Institute of Design. Both schools are affiliated with the Illinois Institute of Technology. http://chrisbernard.blogs.com/

Eric Burke is a software engineer who was on the team responsible for Yahoo! soon to be released Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista, done all with Microsoft WPF technologies. Eric has had much experience with developing applications that have enhanced user experiences. He will be discussing the design process with Chris Bernard.

Josh Holmes is an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft. Prior to joining Microsoft, Josh was a consultant working with a variety of clients ranging from large Fortune 500 firms to smaller sized companies. Josh is a frequent speaker and lead panelist at national and international software development conferences focusing on emerging technologies, software design and development with an emphasis on mobility and RIA (Rich Internet Applications). Community focused, Josh has founded and/or run many technology organizations from the Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group to the Ann Arbor Computer Society and was on the forming committee for CodeMash. http://www.joshholmes.com/.

Ken Arbogast-Wilson is founder and creative director of WTW Design Group, a southeast Michigan firm focused on design, marketing and advertising. Ken has a BBA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Michigan State University. He has been creating singular designs for more than thirteen years. Ken has expertise in concepting, design, drawing, copywriting, editing, marketing planning, communication consulting, and anything involved with new technology. In addition to running WTW Design Group, Ken manages media development and production for the University of Michigan College of Architecture + Urban Planning. Prior to that, Ken worked for a variety of companies including M-CARE (UM's managed care provider), Cellular One, and Marshall Field & Company, Chicago. http://wtwdesign.com/

Don Burnett is a technology evangelist, project manager, interactive designer, and nationally recognized technology blogger specializing in rich media application development for web and desktop. Don's past work for creating, designing, and deploying multimedia applications and products include Disney Interactive, SegaSoft, Universal Interactive, and MediaOne. http://blog.donburnett.com/

Agenda

8:30 am-9:15 am
Check-in and refreshments
9:15 am-9:30 am
Welcome
Ken Arbogast-Wilson
Keynote Session
9:30-10:30 am
The Importance of User Experience Design

Chris Bernard

10:30-11:30 am

Introduction of Expression Studio, WPF and Web Demos

Chris Bernard, Josh Holmes, Don Burnett

11:30 am-1:00 pm

Lunch on your own

How-to Sessions

Option 1
1:00-2:00 pm
Designing Windows Experiences
Don Burnett
Option 2
1:00-2:00 pm
Designing Rich Web Experiences
Josh Holmes
Panel Discussion Sessions

Option 1
2:00-3:00 pm
The Value of User Experience Design in Education
Chris Bernard
Option 2
2:00-3:00 pm
Integrating Expression with Your Tools Arsenal

Don Burnett

3:00 pm-3:15 pm

Break

Capstone Session

3:15 pm-5:00 pm

Design Process for Yahoo Messenger with Expression Designer Tools

Chris Bernard and Eric Burke
Closing remarks
Chris Bernard and Josh Holmes

Technorati tags: Expression Studio, User Experience Design, University of Michigan, Expression Day 2007, Microsoft, Silverlight, WPF, Web 2.0, Design, Development

Rich Internet Applications (Someone gets it!!)

by Don Burnett

<soapbox=off/>

Ryan Stewart (Mr Adobe Blogger and RIA Advocate) has a great column on RIA that points to a guy who has a great blog that I didn't know about named Matt Voerman who seems to be a great user experience designer/developer. Note: He's also with Adobe. The column of interest is a series called RIA Motivators which talks about the reasoning for creating RIA applications and talks a lot about the business model and the why's and how's. I suggest everyone read this blog, it says exactly what I have been on the soapbox about for the last few months.

Points I have made before and I agree with:

Quoting Matt Voerman..

• UX is not just eye-candy to make the application look pretty.
• Usability Experts and UX Designers are not second class citizens of your devteam.
• Ensure that your UX team are continually upskilled/ trained/ educated.
• It’s imperative that not only the devteam, but all key project stake holders, be educated on the importance of UX

There is a great designer in Australia who believes that anyone in the RIA space who is a designer at this time is also a developer and integrator.. I personally don't agree with him on this but, I think it's just a problem with how the UX designer is seen in the developer community. I think we all need to address this and change and give each team member the respect they deserve and recognize their specialized skills for what they are.

Too many developers in the Microsoft world of development still think they are the "Lone Ranger" and have a God complex about development and like to control all aspects of the project instead of letting the project manager share that with other team members. That's why development team managers need to hire and respect the advice of usability experts and UX designers. You will be much more successful as a team and in the end you will have a better project. In the end User-Centric Design with consistency and coherence across the entire project is what matters.,

If you just don't get what I am saying or don't agree with it, then I think you should go out and do a "homework assignment"

Go seek out a UX designer and talk to them about your latest project. See if they have the same sensibilities as you do and are thinking about things the way you are. If they are, congratulations, you still need their advice but you are on your way. If you don't see the same things as being important, then you need to go out and hire this guy, kidnap him, whatever you need to do because they are your best hope for future success. No I am not advocating you break the law here, kidnapping is a little extreme.

Technorati tags: RIA, Soapbox, User Experience Design, Useability