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UX for Analysts
You do not need to be a designer to write better requirements for user interfaces. These pages translate key ideas from Cooper, Raskin and Golovach into questions and checklists for analysts.
Personas
Cooper's design personas: specific, research-based user archetypes that settle feature debates. How to build them, pick a primary one, and use them in reviews.
interaction designGoals vs. Tasks in Interaction Design
Cooper's distinction between stable user goals and changing tasks, his goal hierarchy, and how analysts use it to write better requirements and review UIs.
interaction designCognitive Friction
Cooper's cognitive friction: why software tires the mind, how interaction and program design differ, and why unspecified behavior gets designed by default.
interaction designImplementation, Mental, and Represented Models
Why interfaces that mirror the code feel hard, and how analysts can design screens and statuses around the user's mental model instead (About Face 3).
interaction designInteraction Excise
Excise is work the tool demands that doesn't move users toward their goal. How to find and cut it in scenarios, prototypes and acceptance criteria.
interaction designBeginners, Experts, and Perpetual Intermediates
Most users are perpetual intermediates, not beginners or experts. How to design and specify for them, with on-ramps for beginners and shortcuts for experts.
usabilityConcepts of Interface Quality
Six competing answers to 'what is a good interface?', compared by Golovach and turned into eight questions you can ask of any screen in a review.
usabilityFactors of Interface Quality
Golovach's four criteria of interface quality (speed, errors, learning, satisfaction) and their factors, as a frame for usability requirements and reviews.
ui controlsAn Inventory of UI Controls
Practical rules for buttons, choices, lists, inputs, menus, windows and icons, from Golovach's inventory, turned into a checklist for prototype reviews.
prototypingThe Interface Design Process
Golovach's interface design loop and seven stages of initial design, mapped onto business analysis work: scenarios, structure, glossary, prototypes and testing.
prioritizationPrinciples of Productive Design Work
Golovach's eleven rules for working on interfaces without wasting the project, including a simple formula for prioritizing UI improvements.
cognitive psychologyCognetics and the Locus of Attention
Raskin's single locus of attention and automatic habits: why fleeting messages get missed and confirmation dialogs fail, and what to require instead.
modesInterface Modes
Raskin's precise definition of a mode, why neither feedback nor experience prevents mode errors, and how to find, remove or label modes in requirements.
enterprise systemsUI Patterns for Industrial Information Systems
Recurring UI problems in data-heavy enterprise systems (large tables, nested data, dependent forms) and what to specify and check for each pattern.
Main sources for this section#
- A. Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. Sams, 1999.
- A. Cooper, R. Reimann, D. Cronin. About Face 3. Wiley, 2007.
- J. Raskin. The Humane Interface. Addison-Wesley, 2000.
- V. Golovach. User Interface Design, and User Interface Design 2: The Art of Washing an Elephant (in Russian).