UIEtips Article: Seven Critical Decisions for Designing Effective Applications, Part I

The landscape for building applications is always changing. In the ’80s, we built them out of “dumb terminals” and DOS screens. In the ’90s, we used GUIs. In this millennium, we get browser-based technologies, like Flash, Flex, Javascript, and Ajax (and now new technologies on the horizon, such as Adobe’s AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight).

Whenever a new technology appears on the scene, it’s natural for designers to experiment, often producing results that turn out to be less than desirable (“Skip Intro”, anyone?). However, blaming the technologies for these frustrating designs is like blaming your DVD player for Jim Carrey movies.

Today, in our UIEtips email newsletter, we published the first part of a two-part series on designing effective web applications. I explore seven critical considerations designers need for designing effective applications. Based on research we’ve conducted on dozens of applications, we’ve assembled an essential set of questions teams need to ask about their design to ensure they are providing the best value to their users.

Read the first part of my article here.

Once you’ve read the article, we want to hear your thoughts about it. What experience have you had with building effective applications? Leave your thoughts below.

This topic is part of what Josh Porter and I’ll be talking about at the upcoming UI12 conference. We still have a little room left for the November event, so you’ll want to register right away to hear all the great experts we’ve assembled. More info at http://www.uiconf.com