UI Design
I was talking with some people yesterday about designing mobile application UIs. They asked me for my opinion on the role of UI designers in the mobile application creation process. This ties in with recent comments on Nokia’s Mobile Design Showcases document.
The mobile application (and phone UI) space is littered with examples of what people thought at the time were great ideas but in practice didn’t live up to expectations. On a project for a large client a few years ago, they insisted on an end-user focus group. I wasn’t that keen and saw it as a waste of time. However, I went along with it and it turned out to be a mobile-changing moment for me.
My experience is that while UI specialists can help, there’s no substitute for feedback from real users. I believe focus groups provide the most valuable usability feedback. The UI designers are the best people to run the focus groups and turn the feedback into new UIs rather than using them to over-design the UI in the first place. My tip is to create the UI quickly to create time to allow several user-reviewed iterations of the UI.
I am always surprised by the kinds of things uncovered by end users that were overlooked by the original designers (and that includes myself).
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