Design tools

Design tools

If you're into creative domain the common question one has to face is: which tool do you use for design ?. There're many tools in the market which are competing with the market leaders of design software. Every new tool is paving its own contribution in eliminating the bottleneck of the competing product.

View this list of top Simulation & visualisation tools for UI Designers, Information Architects and Usability Specialists:

1. Microsoft Visio
2. Axure RP
3. Adobe Creative Studio
4. Elegance Tech Lucid Spec
5. iRise Studio, iRise Manager, iRise Server, iRise Reader, iRise iDoc
6. Serena Composer
7. Simunication Enterprise Simulator
8. Sofea Profesy
9. Intuitect Professional
10. OmniGroup OmniGraffle
11. Smartdraw

>> Source: simulation-tools

ALT or TITLE ?

ALT or TITLE ?

An interesting way to re-look at the use of ALT and TITLE attributes. Not only proper understanding of these attributes helps a lot in the efficient web standard practice but saves lot of time if followed perfectly as a customary practice, than "going back to add it later" as it's viewed by Ted Goas.

• "It’s important for web designers and developers to know how to write good ALT and TITLE attributes. Practices like these should be employed into each web page element as it’s created. As Roger notes, we should be including accessibility features when initially creating web pages rather than going back to add it later."
• "Alternate text is not meant to be used as a tool tip, or more specifically, to provide additional information about an image. The title attribute, on the other hand, is meant to provide additional information about an element…. Many people seem to confuse these two attributes…"
  

It's feasible to approach drafting accessibility assessment kind of report with the proper usage of ALT and TITLE attributes. Minor confusion between these may yield to faulty AA or AAA report.

> Further Read: Fadtastic blog

Design for End-User Security

Design for End-User Security

In one of the recent project I worked with; much of the emphasis was given to ease of use, user satisfaction achievement while working on the hierarchical user experience modules. The application is idealized to connect remote servers residing as a GUI widget on the user desktop.

One of the crucial concern was: 'addressing security' in information architecture & user experience modules. This was never highlighted as it was regarded as part of application architecture or not in the framework of User interaction design process then. Often information architecture tend to focus more on logical representation of the data & content flow & interaction design tries to achieve ease in accessing desired elements by the end user. Hence user centered methodology is tightly coupled with logical representation & ease of use in element hierarchy.

When we reached usability testing phase, the gray areas were popped out specially when the application was tested with mock user security settings. Giving us a realization that user interface modules need to address very basics of security & users' expectations and system behaviour. This may not be applicable to soft applications which doesn't deal with security or nothing to do with desktop authorization settings, but the aim is to gather front end user data & understand 'consumer' behavior. The user experience prototypes & models were tweaked to represent the feasibility of accessing security related settings.

Meanwhile, I found an interesting principle of interaction design in which 'End-User Security' is a prime concern of user experience module. Though dated, it has some good take away tips whilst designing interfaces for security focused applications:

It is critical to emphasize that security be perceived as easy to use by users, not designers, software developers, or system administrators. Actual behavior is the only definitive metric for whether users perceive the benefits of security to outweigh the costs. Security must be useful enough to warrant the extra learning time and any additional ongoing effort over using a different system with less security, or using the same system insecurely.

>> Principles of interaction design for security

Ethnography primer

Ethnography primer

• Ethnography informs design by revealing a deep understanding of people and how they make sense of their world. Ethnography is a research method based on observing people in their natural environment rather than in a formal research setting. When ethnography is applied to design, it helps designers create more compelling solutions.

Great design always connects with people. Designers inspire, provoke, validate, entertain and provide utility for people. To truly connect, designers need to have compassion and empathy for their audiences. Designers need to understand the relationship between what they produce and the meaning their product has for others. And they need to observe the people they are designing for in their own environments.

AIGA, in collaboration with Cheskin, has produced a simple and straight-forward primer introducing the crucial role that ethnography plays in designing.

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