« Now what? | Main | "Shovel-Ready" »
March 24, 2009
De-Sign: Non-designery Project Manager Perspectives
This is the first in a series of posts about how we designed the user experience and aesthetic elements of the signs. We're not entirely finished with the UX part - we have the look and feel nailed down, and we have an interaction map, and we know what functionality is supposed to be there. As we progress, I'll share more about this.
This post is mine, about the process from the project manager's perspective.
I'm trying to talk Laura Rodrian into writing one too - she's the very talented designer who we've been working with on the UX and static signage designs.
Before I go further on this topic, let me share the designs with you as they stand today. There is a wealth of literature about user experience design. It's an industry and a subculture. I have been shocked to find out how deep the theory behind this stuff goes, and I find myself getting very interested in it - it's a big part of our lives and will only become bigger. As touch-enabled devices become more ubiquitous (watch these (second one especially)!), we are going to feel acutely the impact that BAD user interaction design has on us.
You've been there. "Where the hell is the save button," "why do I have to click so many times to print this," or "why does this icon look like a hot dog when it means 'File?'"
It was imperative that we get this right. Luckily, we have an amazing Human-Computer Interaction program at U-M, where the most talented User Experience designers in the world are trained. Some of them happened to already work for a department that was participating in our pilot, and we took advantage of them. That is, we, uh, leveraged their skills.
Posted by dchase at March 24, 2009 05:28 PM