Edge of Chaos | Agile Development Blog

How does a great design differ from a good or mediocre design? Often the difference is just in the smallest details. These details shape user experience and greatly affect the way we feel about a product. The product may look great, but people remain cold using it. They don’t feel it is designed for them.

Views functionality in TargetProcess is not a rocket science. There are thousands of applications with views. View is such a boring page to work with usually .

New Views in TargetProcess are crafted with great attention to details. Every single detail is thought out. Every single decision was debated. Let’s dig into details. I will show and explain all of them.

Inline Edit

Inline edit (edit-in-place) is a huge thing. It allows you to edit everything very quickly. These two words are important: everything and quickly. In our new View you can indeed edit everything and do that really quick. But this is not all. Watch these two very short videos.

Inline edit in JIRA

Now compare it with inline edit in TargetProcess

The difference is clear. When you are editing something in JIRA, the effort value jumps back and forth. It is somewhat confusing and unpleasant. Effort in TargetProcess stands stone still as you edit it.  This produces a totally different feeling. When everything is still you feel that things are under control.  The jumps, on the contrary, are quite distracting,  and you feel that something is not good (but often can’t say what exactly).

People assignments

People assignments component has all the small details that make it just awesome. Avatars enable quick recognition. You may think that avatars are not important, but with time you’re so used to them that you identify a person in a split second. Humans recognize image patterns much faster than words. With first and last names only you have to read. With avatars you just scan.

Quick filter is the fastest way to find someone  if you have a large development team.

Popular actions are available on the top. Quite often you want to assign work to yourself or un-assign work. It is always a good idea to put popular actions to a visible place.

Moreover, potentially dangerous actions are marked red on mouseover, which secures them from accidental clicks.  Also, the red mark builds up quick memory for actions. For Unassign, you will point mouse cursor and click quickly if the button is red without reading.

Links and Actions

There are two types of links: some links represent actions and some links are usual links. There should be a clear distinction between the  two types of links, thus action links have a different underline style (dotted):

If you can perform an action (like edit), you miss an opportunity to jump to entity. This problem was resolved by adding a tiny icon. The icon is an idiomatic pattern to navigate away from the current page.

When a property is empty, it is not clear if  you can edit it or not. You point cursor to an empty row and think something like “Hmm, is it possible to edit something here?” Then you click, and it appears that it is indeed possible to edit this value. But why make people think? The clear message is shown in an empty row when you move mouse over it:

Hidden Stuff

It is a good idea to show only relevant details. For example, you want to change release or iteration. Releases and iterations have end date, you have many releases and iterations that are already done. Most likely you don’t want to assign a user story to an old release. Thus, old releases are hidden by default.

Mouse over pattern is everywhere. So, all actions are hidden by default. You need to move a mouse cursor over a comment to edit or delete it. Thus interface is clean and not burdened with repeated buttons. There is one disadvantage in this approach: available actions are invisible by default for new users, and they might not be actually aware that they can edit something. But we consider this a good trade-off. We don’t design for new users,  we mainly design for people who continuously use our product.

Multi-attach

How often you do you need to upload several files, one by one? It is intolerable in a modern web application. People should be able to upload all the files at once:

Layout

The general layout is pretty straightforward. You have a content area with title, tags, description, attachments and comments on the left, and more details area with miscellaneous information on the right. This separation is logical.

The layout of the area on the right is beautiful. The most important information is on top. For example, status of a user story and its progress. Then you see all assigned people with estimated effort. Everything is lined-up and there are no unclear labels or weird information. Only relevant information is visible. You can also hide information blocks if you want to.

This is it. New views are in beta and more improvements are coming. Stay tuned and give us your feedback. We live by it.

Feedback cycles are very important in software development process. To create cool products we need to get feedback as early as possible, and we need this feedback fast. Design Ideas Board is an interesting way to collect feedback from co-workers on design and UI decisions.

How it works? Mount a large cork board in a busy office location with good people traffic. Anyone can pin a design, a wireframe or anything like that. Then anyone can use sticky notes to provide feedback (make sure that marker and sticky notes are available right there).

Here are some examples: a new web site product page design idea with several critical notes:

A view area redesign sketch with ideas on tags improvements:

Here’s the full view of  our Design Ideas Board:

Why is this board so good? It works as a live information radiator, improving design WIP visibility and fostering team collaboration.

We like infographics. It is a very good way to represent information. We decided to share some interesting info about our company, development process and the product. Enjoy!

Sketching is not so hard. It is really interesting to sketch something with basic tools. Here is an attempt to sketch a Mind Mapping tool for iPad. It is real fun to sketch for a touch device. In fact, that was our first experience with paper animation and video techniques, but I think the end result is good enough for 6 hours of work (taking into consideration that we’ve learned iMovie on the go).

The application is pretty simple. You can create nodes and connect them, delete and move nodes — all with simple gestures.

The video goes at 2x speed. It is more dynamic this way, but maybe  some details are lost…?

Read first part of the review.

Evaluating Design

There are two important aspects of design process: generative and reductive. We generate a set of alternatives, then we restrict this set based on various criteria. It is impossible to evaluate a solution without its alternatives.

The best way to a good idea is to have lots of ideas — Linus Pauling

I can’t critique just one thing — Richard Sewell

That is one more reason why sketching is so powerful. It helps to generate and evaluate various alternatives. I’ve read in one article that Apple creates a dozen alternative designs for any product. Good enough…

One of the most positive form of criticism is a better idea

Acquiring positive attitude to criticism is a hard change. People don’t like to be criticized in general. You can’t get the correct reaction to criticism out of the box, but should apply every possible effort to make it a part of team’s culture.

People on a design team must be as happy to be wrong as right. If their ideas hold up under strong (but fair) criticism, then great, they can proceed with confidence. If their ideas are rejected with good rationale, then they have learned something. A healthy team is made up of people who have the attitude that it is better to learn something new than to be right

Built to Last

Without appropriate design, yesterday’s success is tomorrow’s failure, since today’s great applications are tomorrow’s legacy systems

Some design decisions live for about 20 years if product is successful. For example, Photoshop has been on the market for 20 years, and some parts of its initial architecture still exist. Can you now imagine how important architectural decisions are? On to entities framework in TargetProcess that was designed 4 years ago. How long will it live? Definitely we did not consider a 20 year time frame back then…

We should assume that technology that is going to have a significant impact over the next 10 years is already 10 years old!

My takeaway lesson is that we should pay more attention to new technologies and think ahead at the same time. This may sound impossible, but it is worth trying.

Learning

Learning is a very important thing. No, I will re-phrase it. Learning is the most important thing in your company. Surprisingly, Bill has given an interesting perspective on learner’s experience levels:

I haven’t seen this concept of levels before, and I like it very much. If we take agile, I am in transition between levels 9 and 10 (I think). In UX, I am between levels 5 and 6. This model is a good guide and may help understand and plan personal or even corporate learning process. Is it possible to apply it to the whole company? Maybe.

Story-telling and Play

A good story is worth thousands of pictures

That one is true. For example, Steve Jobs told 3 stories from his life at Stanford Commencement Speech in 2005. And this speech was remarkable indeed. I remember all the 3 stories, despite the fact that I heard them only once.

Without play imagination dies

and one more:

Stories, and more importantly, story-telling and play, are critical part of design

Ever been on a boring brainstorming session? Fun is an essential part of any creative activity. It should be encouraged, not suppressed.

Design

Finally, some outstanding quotes on design:

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But, of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. To design something really well, you have to ‘get it.’ You have to really grok [understand] what it’s all about — Steve Jobs

The last thing that you should do when beginning to design an interactive system is write code

The role of design is to find the best design. The role of usability engineering is to help make that design the best.

I purchased this book at UXLX conference in Lisbon. I did not expect too much of it initially. But after several dozen pages it paid off every cent I’d spent and exceeded my expectations in every possible way. This book is for UX designers, yes, but I’d say every executive should read it. There’re so many gems inside.

I can’t resist sharing my takeaway lessons. The ones that impressed me most.

Executive Vision

Everyone knows that Steve Jobs saved Apple after his comeback. But Bill provides a nice and somewhat unexpected perspective on iMac release lessons learned. I highlighted the points that seemed most important to me:

1. Design saved Apple
2. The design innovation was done with the existing team
3. Executive vision was critical to success
4. Momentum was sustained and rapid (the iMac alone did not save the company, repeated improvements did)
5. There were failures (hockey-puck shaped mouse [see image], Power Mac G4 Cube [see image])
6. The failures were key to success (in the long term, safe is far more dangerous than risk)
7. The design that led to success was largely in the realm of styling, bordering on the superficial
8. There was almost no interaction between industrial design and user interface design.

This story re-emphasizes the importance of leadership. People haven’t changed, it was the same team, but with the great leader they managed to create a brilliant product. Which impediment have they had until Steve came into the spotlight? Lack of executive vision. If there’s no vision and you don’t care too much about design, failure is the most expected result of a new product release.

Actually, I felt the same about a year ago. That’s why I am paying so much attention to UX: reading books, blogs and articles, visiting conference and, of course, championing UX changes in our company. Bill’s book once again instilled me with passion and with confidence that we are going in the right direction.

“It is important to establish a corporate culture that understands and respects the design plan and objectives…”

New Products

“You can’t milk that cow forever” — this quote relates to old products. Company can’t survive without new products, and here is why.

“As product reaches late maturity, development cost for the next release increases at precisely the same time that the size of the addressable market diminishes.”

This is not the case with TargetProcess so far. Our market is still growing, but development cost indeed gets higher. That is something I don’t like and want to change. There are plenty of technical debts we should pay and features we should remove or re-work to be more simple and consistent. We are already doing that. In several years we should release something new, something different than TargetProcess (frankly, we already have plans for some new products).

Sketches

Sketches are very important for design process. They help to explore alternatives and quickly try them. Without sketches it is really hard to find the best solution. I like sketching and do it often, but Bill provides very good reasons and explanations why and how sketches work.

First, it is interesting to define properties of a sketch:

“Sketches are:

• Quick
• Timely
• Inexpensive
• Disposable
• Clear vocabulary (style signals that it is a sketch)
• Distinct gesture (fluidity that gives sketches openness and freedom)
• Minimal detail (“it is usually helpful if the drawing does not show or suggest answers to questions which are not being asked at the time”)
• Suggest and explore rather than confirm
• Ambiguity (much of their value derives from their being able to be interpreted in different ways, if you need to get the most out of sketch, you need to leave big enough holes)”

Here are the main conclusions I’ve made about sketches:

• Ability to quickly generate many ideas. Sketches stimulate imagination and you may invent something initially unexpected. That’s what’s important. I’ve never thought about sketches this way, I always use them as an ideas evaluation technique, but this side effect is brilliant.
• Sketches are useful to express ideas. They do not interfere with changing and improving the ideas, since they are not “final”.

Another important thing is that “Sketches are not prototypes”.

Read second part of the review

Related Links

Sketching User Experience Book at Amazon

Bill Buxton’s web site

Books by Edward Tufte are a piece of art. I’ve been savoring them to myself for a while, and now I decided to share some sketches and criticism inspired by Tufte’s high art visual designs.

Commonly, designers represent visual information by scarce means of 2D realm: screen and paper. Our universe is 3D (if not 5D, 6D or whatever more dimensions), but people got used to squeezing  images into 2D flatland.  Even rock paintings of pre-historic humans have their touch of 2-D abstraction and symbolism.

Our universe is not just 3D. It’s dynamic 3D. Paper is static (paper planes are exceptions). That’s another limitation of 2D.

Limitations are great. They motivate designers to find solutions. The more limitations – the harder it is to find a solution. Good designers love difficult tasks, since they view them as great opportunities to put their brains to use. Bad designers do not want to use their brains – they want to use templates.

The image below is a template solution for a weather map. View from above.  Let alone template thinking, the representation of this template is poor.

The appalling hint of white shade is a helpless attempt to compensate inadequate color selection for numbers.  What do you think of blue numbers on blue background? You hate that, to say the least of it. What’s the message of these pseudo-3D grey circles? Are they some grey moons? Or cavities  in the designer’s brain?

Now let’s take a look at the Euronews channel weather map.  One may think that this map represents the effects of global warming and Australia is completely hidden under water now. Also, what do those bold numbers show? Probably the depth of the ocean in this area. In meters. Or in miles? But the area is still lit by sunshine, which instills some hope.

As a contrast, here’s a weather map from a Japanese daily, beautiful in its simplicity.  This is the same Japan as on the first weather map above, only from the ocean perspective.  This map provides 0°C и 10°C  isotherms.  You see fine clouds on this map. The map shows sun movement.  OMG, it shows stratosphere! And it’s nothing more than just a weather map from a daily newspaper  - but created by a good visual designer.

Of course, Japan is well-suited for such a nice graphical representation. But you gotta have guts to catch and use this ocean perspective, instead of helplessly surrendering to boilerplate view-from-above weather maps imposed by paper sheet or screen limitations.

Overall the recent Agile 2009 Conf. in Chicago was a good event. Unfortunately, the first two days were not quite what I expected. Combination of just “OK” sessions and jet lag left me wondering whether the trip was worth it. However, the following two days were much better, but the very last, Jared Spool’s keynote, left no doubts that Agile 2009 was totally worth coming to! An absolute killer presentation on User Experience with an excellent steak on the side (yes, Americans know good steak) – what else could you ask for?  A lightning bolt, a hit, all of the above – I can hardly express how enlightened and inspired I felt walking out of the ballroom where the speech took place. And that’s when reality hit me, and I suddenly understood how bad we suck with our User Experience… I got depressed for about 2 days, but then I started to act.

I read several books about User Experience. I read countless articles, forum threads, blog posts on the same subject and finally started a process of searching for UX specialist to add to our development team (and we hired him already). I’ve dug through all the information about UX, UI, Design and thought about how we could integrate it into our development process.

In one month I came up with a vision. I created interesting presentation and shared my vision with the team and inspired them. They applauded (thank you, folks!). I believe Agile and UX is a great mix. Definitely it is not easy, but I think it is a right path to follow. We want to create the best agile PM software in the world, and it is just impossible without outstanding user experience.

We want to share all the new experience about the journey. I’ll post more about process changes, mindset changes, education and whole team involvement. Here is our first try, see how we are re-designing ToDo list in TargetProcess:

• Personas
• Scenarios
• Wireframes – part I (part II, part III)
• Prototype and Usability testing results
• Improved prototype
• New ToDo list in TargetProcess

• In Defense of Eye Candy. Nice article. It discusses why aesthetics is important in a design: “when we talk about how emotions influence interactions, it’s closer to the truth to say things that are enjoyable will be easy to use and efficient.” And another fantastic quote “how we ‘think’ cannot be separated from how we ‘feel’“.
• Discovery-driven Growth: The Only Plan Is to Learn as You Go. Quite lengthy, but interesting interview about business development in a current economy. Discovery-driven growth is a way to go.
• Kanban and Time-boxes. Does Kanban compatible with iterations and time-boxes?
• Wanted/Needed: UX Design for Collaboration 2.0. Designing collaboration software has some specifics. Can we create a framework that help with it?

• Distinguishing decorative from meaningful elements in UI design. Ryan from 37signals shows how small decorative elements may influence usability.
• 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs. I am not a big fan of articles like “99 advices to web design”, however this article is really useful. I especially like number 3 “Using contrast to manage focus”, number 8 “Custom input focus” and 9 “Hover controls”. We are going to use hover controls in v.3.0 design.
• Konigi.com is a great resource for UI developers. Many very useful links and examples.
• 2008 – The Year In Pictures. Nice photos. Nice atmosphere. Taste the last year as a good wine…