Spreading the Word

Design

Focus on the Workflow
A Courteous Site
Design Attribute Checklist

Process

Project Scenario
The Interaction Design Role

Documentation

Guidelines for Success
Good Documentation
Being Helpful

Site Evaluation

Evaluation Checklist

Documentation: Spreading the Word

It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. Ultimately, the design document is the common reference point for everyone on the team: technical developers, managers, artists, marketers. Like "ease of use", everyone recognizes the value of documentation, but very few actually support it completely.

Documentation

enables good design process

benefits all the members of the team

provides a shared reality

Guidelines for Success

Documents allow you to formulate your concepts effectively. Shared libraries provide a common ground of knowledge sharing among your team. Templates give you consistency and stability. Here are some document guideline examples that I've found useful.

Click on a document to view it.

Business Requirements	Define the "WHAT" - The goals and functional baseline for the site/software you're creating.
Design Specifications	Define the "HOW". Development calls this "tech specs". The Business sometimes calls it Functional Specifications. Screenshots & Workflows.
Best Practices	It's really important to define "The Rules of the Road": All of those assumptions about how things are supposed to work.
Project Team Roles	It's useful to have a shared understanding of who does what on the design team: Expectations / Limits / Responsibilities.
Customer Assistence	Real "user-friendliness" is determined by effective customer self-service, online help and user guides.
The Design Resource Center	A shared library of standards provides valuable infrastructure that supports the design process. If you build it, they will come.
Document Writing Guidelines	Sometimes the production team members could use some help honing their basic written communication skills.

Good Documentation is not an Assumption

A lot of times we assume that marketers, coders and project managers will each provide meaningful documentation of their work and share it with others. And that's great if it happens - but sometimes it doesn't. Remember the story of the seven blind men and the elephant? Each blind man accurately describes the part that he touches ("An elephant is like ... a wall ... a hose ... a tree ... a sheet ... a whip ..."), but none describes it totally. Many development teams work like that. Each member can describe what they experience, but is there a common vision?		Effective Writing Like all the other skills on the design team, It's not just a hobby - It's a job description.

In the Team Working Environment - Shared Reality is a Necessity.

Being Helpful
The best way to serve your customer is to design a site that's intuitively obvious, appropriate in its complexity, and easy on the eye. Beyond that, embedded "online help" features are also important, especially since they're so hard to do well. Nobody ever reads the manual. It's boring. Wordy. Too theoretical. Nobody wants to learn how something works. They want it to be obvious. Immediacy rules. Relevance and appropriateness are a big part of that. Aside from good basic design, there are several simple things we can do to make the "customer experience" better at the level of screen design.

	Context-Sensitive Popups	This "just in time" info is the main source of useful help. These are small information boxes that popup when the mouse hovers over something.

	On-Screen Directions	Call it an Introduction, a Summary, an Overview, whatever: Well-written (concise and clear) on-screen text tells me Where I am, What I can do, and How I can get there.

	Mini-Presentations	Don't just talk about it - "Show Me". Target the 3-to-5 most important tasks and demonstrate them on-screen. The extra effort will be well-rewarded.

	FAQ's	Frequently Asked Questions show that youunderstand the situation ("I anticipate your question. Here's the answer.") If you find you've got a bunch of FAQ's focusing on a particular topic, then you may want to create a mini-presentation.

	Site Map	A visual overview of the site representation speeds understanding and can be an excellent shortcut for those who use it. As ever, a picture is worth a thousand words.

	Standard Online Help	Includes the usual power tools: Table of Contents, Index and Keyword Search. This stuff is packed with information - The challenge is getting people to use it. Screenshots and graphics help a lot.

Hyperlinks are great for making immediate connections, but I often don't know what I'm getting into. Sometimes the biggest interactive design challenge is to give me an idea of what happens next...

Context sensitive info. Available at the moment of need. Lean text. Task-oriented demos. And Pictures.