Effective UI

Preface

When the Internet first came online in 1969, it linked computer systems the size of two-car garages that had only a tiny fraction of the power of a modern smartphone. They were programmed and maintained by researchers and scientists, and performed functions that would be ludicrously rudimentary by today’s standards. The complexity and size of these systems ensured that computers and software were pretty remote from the everyday lives and experiences of people. But as the power and sophistication of computing systems and software have grown, their proximity to our lives has increased to the point where software is integral to the daily home and work life experiences of most people.

The sophistication of software has grown tremendously while at the same time software is reaching a much less technical audience. This creates a nexus of tension around the user interface (UI); for sophisticated products to be fully useful, they must be easy to operate. At its heart, software is like any other tool; its purpose is to make people’s lives and work easier, and to give people access to capabilities previously beyond their reach. This demands, of course, that the software itself not be beyond their reach.

It’s taken a while for the standards of UI design and user experience (UX) quality to catch up with the advances in software capabilities and ubiquity. But the time for better UX has, at long last, finally come. When we began writing this book in early 2009, there was a noticeable increase in the attention to and awareness of the importance of UX in software. At the same time, though, there was a generally poor understanding of how to build UX-focused software products. Many large companies were struggling to build a UX competency from within and finding that UX requires far more than just graphic design and IT. Prestigious digital, interactive, and ad agencies were trying to get a foothold in the field but were failing with remarkable regularity. The promise of better UX and the benefits it confers was, and still is, harder to achieve than many companies expect.

This is why our publisher, O’Reilly Media, asked us to write this book. They noted the disparity between the growing expectations and demands for better UX and the poor success rate of companies trying to meet that demand. And so it’s for the companies and people who recognize the importance of gaining competency in building better UX in software that we have written this book.

This is for product managers who need a risk-reducing roadmap, for technologists and designers who need guidance and advocacy, and for business-people who need to understand and manage UX-focused initiatives.

O’Reilly is perhaps the best known and most respected provider of knowledge resources created by and made for technology innovators. We’ve been presenting at their Web 2.0 conferences for years, and our employees’ book-shelves are filled with O’Reilly books. We’re thrilled to add a book to their prestigious animal series. If you’re wondering what the rainbow lorikeet on the cover has to do with effective UIs, it’s simple:

What does the dog say? Woof, woof! What does the cow say? Moo, moo! What does the rainbow lorikeet say? Ui, ui!

It’s a privilege to be participating in the present fast-growing trend of building better UX in software. EffectiveUI has been riding the UX trend as it has grown from a small surge into a tidal wave. At a time when other companies were focusing either on design or on engineering, we built our company around the marriage of the two.

This is the most basic ingredient for good UX—the cooperation of design and engineering that results in design-minded engineers and technically savvy UX designers. We’ve also regarded UX as a new, highly advanced specialty, very seriously and have endeavored to hire the best, most creative people available in the industry. It’s thanks to these people and an early focus on UX that we’ve been able to help a long list of clients succeed in their product initiatives. They’ve also helped us stay ahead of the curve with the exciting new things that are happening in the mobile, multitouch, and other emerging domains of software.

Everything we know about building software and delivering great UX has come from the contributions of the people working here and the lessons they’ve learned in approaching a lot of hard challenges over the past five years. The subjects covered in this book span the dozens of professional domains within EffectiveUI. The ideas we share in these pages are an aggregation of the thoughts, experiences, and contributions of over a hundred members of our staff. The process of writing this book was very much like a very long journalistic assignment. We conducted countless hours of interviews, had numerous group and one-on-one discussions, and performed a lot of research—all for the purpose of discovering what we as a company, and as a group of individuals, collectively knew.

This book gives a snapshot of the best advice we found in investigating our own approach over the period of about a year in 2009. But we work in a fast-changing, cutting-edge field, so even as we were putting the final touches on this book, many new ideas and concepts were being conceived and applied in our work. Because this book covers a very broad subject, we provide only a high-level overview of some very complex domains. You may want to learn more about these domains, and to find resources on how to develop your own expertise in those fields. So, to provide updates and link you to useful resources, we’ve created a page on our website to complement this book:

http://effectiveui.com/book-resources/

We’ll also be posting updates on Twitter. Please follow us: @uitweet.

Two of us, Jonathan and Robb, also work as managing editors for UX Magazine (http://uxmag.com). The magazine is a good source of current ideas and information about the UX strategy, technology, and design.

Thanks and Acknowledgments

As we’ve said, this book represents the thoughts and contributions of over a hundred people. We’re very grateful to have these people as our friends, coworkers, teachers, and supporters. We’re also deeply grateful to O’Reilly Media for giving us this opportunity and for toiling long and hard to help us pull this off.

Thank You to Our Virtual Coauthor

The role of a project manager is a tough one—you’re responsible for the results of a project, and at the same time you’re entirely dependent on other people doing the majority of the work. Eileen Wilcox may not have written any of the words that went into this book, but without Eileen none of the words in this book would have been written. Eileen also conducted much of the early research and interviews that went into this book, and her thoughtful questions and follow ups ensured that the information captured was useful.

Just like software engineers and UX designers, writers need a balanced measure of stern pressure and reassuring supportiveness. And since this book arose from the ideas of so many people inside our company, the amount of coordination the writing effort required was enormous. Eileen provided that pressure, support, and coordination masterfully.

Eileen’s ideas and contributions are everywhere in this book, so we consider her a virtual coauthor.

Thank You to Our Friends at O’Reilly Media

Thanks first to Steve Weiss for coming up with the idea for this book, and for his confidence in us. Steve’s enthusiasm and patient stewardship are the reasons this book exist. Thanks also to Marlowe Shaeffer for her vote of confidence, patience, and support.

Thank you to our development editor, Jeff Riley. Thank you, Jeff, for suffering to read some atrocious first drafts so our poor readers didn’t have to. Thank you for making us much better writers, especially since we thought we were pretty good to begin with. Thank you also to Genevieve d’Entremont, Rachel Monaghan, and all of the other people who were just beginning to work with us even as this thank-you section was written.

Thank You to Everyone at EffectiveUI

Everyone at EffectiveUI contributed to this book in some way. Some gave us a lot of information that’s found all throughout these pages, and others gave us just one or two ideas that proved foundational. It’s impossible to rank the degree to which people contributed, so we thank everyone in equal measures.

There were a number of people who spent a lot of their time—much of it after-hours and on weekends—helping with the content, graphics, and production of the book:

Chris Aron

Jeremy Balzer

Eddie Breidenbach

Jason Bowers

Greg Casey

Lance Christmann

Anthony Franco

Jeremy Graston

Catherine Horning

Bobby Jamison

Beth Koloski

Joy Sykes

Tony Walt

Since our people are our company, the best way to know the face of EffectiveUI is to know the faces of our staff. For this reason, we’ve included a portrait section at the back of this book to pay homage to our people. It’s done in the style of a yearbook class page as a further tribute to Herff Jones, the yearbook company that let us use their product as an example in this book.

Additional Thank-Yous

The following people outside of EffectiveUI helped us a great deal:

Catherine Anderson

Truman Anderson

Constantinos Demetriadis

Tony Hillerson

Gregg Peterson

Alexandre Schleifer

Thanks to Our Partners

Thank you to our friends at Herff Jones and National Geographic for generously allowing us to use their projects as examples in this book.

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