O’Reilly: Inside RIA

“Quality Function Deployment,” or “QFD,” is a way of modeling business processes for good customer experiences. Sound like a lot of business jargon? Maybe it is, but it’s also very similar to something we in the interactive space are reinventing and rediscovering as “User Experience Design.” QFD was developed in the ’70’s and ’80s and continues to be refined today. In this entry we'll focus on requirements, and how QFD justifies the role of UX professionals in finding ways to wow users.

WOW! Can you believe it?! Adobe MAX Day 1 is complete, and we have seen a ton of new and exciting announcements. It's hard to think we have more to go. Being a die-hard Flash developer, you can guess which...

If you've been following the news in the web and/or RIA industry at all lately you've undoubtedly come across two little letters, U and X. UX of course, is the abbreviation for the big trend in application development right now known as User Experience. You've worked hard to become a great developer. You've learned the best practices to write bulletproof code, you've even mastered a crazy framework. Now it's time to go to the next level, you need to create an exceptional experience that matches your solid code.

We applied two simple criteria to identify the 50 most usable RIAs: Number 1: Does it adhere to the 10 basic usability principles? Number 2:Is it really rich? Developing a product with Ajax, Flex, or Silverlight doesn't inherently make it rich. A usable RIA will embody these six principles: Make it Direct, Keep it Lightweight, Stay in the Page, Provide an Invitation, Use Transitions, React Immediately.

You're probably familiar with the acronym K.I.S.S, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Let's face it, our lives our complicated enough. As designers and developers of software applications we have a unique opportunity to reduce some of those complexities by building applications that help make people's lives easier but also by making those apps as simple and easy to use as possible.

In a world that is overly saturated with technology and the ever so present visual clutter of messages trying to vie for our attention we, as Designers and Technologists must embrace the "Art and Science" of the experience. As we look back over the course of the last several years in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) market we begin to see some patterns emerge. Patterns and languages circling around the idea that true change has, and always will, come from the delicate balance between Art and Science.

I stumbled upon an NPR interview called “A Movie’s Look, From Toilet To Villain’s Lair.” An interview with award winning set designer J. Michael Riva. It was a fascinating look into the life of the Hollywood Set Designer and how they interact and connect with Producers, Directors, and ultimately the audience. The, sometimes, over-the-top profession where telling a story is all about making it believable for the rest of us.

The design, (which includes the look and feel, user experience, and information architecture) of an application can often be the determining factor in the overall success of the application. Given this level of importance we would like to know how...

The UX Revolution continues as we talk about about the future of RIAs and the story that a great user experience can offer. There are many emerging trends in UX in the way we build and communicate these stories, but becoming just as important, is the form in which they are delivered. I asked 10 professionals creating RIAs today to talk about where they see trends in UX headed.

If you're like me, you've been hearing a lot about this amazing thing called User Experience. It's supposed to turn your normal, old, web 1.0 piece-of-garbage application into a shining beacon of hope in a world beleaguered by bad interfaces. If you're like me, you've been watching the explosion of User Experience from somewhere between the forefront and the sidelines, enjoying the arrival of the requisite acronyms (UX, XD, EX, UXD, etc.), and trying to figure out exactly where and what the forefront even is. If you're like me, you've been a little skeptical of this vague and magical term for a while now, and if you're anything at all like me, you've been wanting someone to clear things up.

This is an introductory post into the UX Revolution. In this series I will talk about the changes that RIA development is going through from an experience design perspective. I'll touch on everything from applications like Flash Catalyst to best practices in the XD process. Enjoy!

Bruce Temkin is a Customer Experience analyst with Forrester Research. I was recently forwarded one of Bruce's articles on the importance of user experience and decided to check out his blog. I was really surprised by the wealthy of insight Bruce provides for free here on the blog - he has thoughts about preserving your business through recession, tips for management in customer experience environments, the importance of UX, and how to create innovative UX in any vertical.

Is eye tracking out of reach for web and RIA developers? I think for the most part today cost and lack of knowledge are the two biggest barriers for your average web developer when considering usability testing via eye tracking.