Practical Design for Developers David Verba
Practical Design for Developers David Verba
Another standing room only session. Perhaps the organizers will wise up and have at least on larger room next year for the sessions that are very popular.
We are going over the basics of audience analysis – understand your users:
Context
Motivations
Challenges
Know your stakeholders – anyone that has an interest in the project
Understand your objectives
Maybe it is just me but this seems like webdesign 101 it is also the standard stuff you hear in a 9th grade English class. Know your users. Talk to them. Get the goals from everyone that has a stake the project etc.
What is interesting to me is that he seems to imply that you can figure out your ‘users’ I have been reading Don’t Make Me Think. What is interesting is that Steve Krug the author says that there are no standard users of website. There are users and they frequently use your site in unique ways that the next user will not follow. That is one thing that makes the web a unique medium. Your users are not forced to sit and wait until after the next commercial so they can hear the news story they want. Instead they follow a non linear path of their own choosing.
Here’s a good point from his talk:
Don’t try to be everything to everybody. I think we know that, but it is so very easy to ignore that principle and say but this case is the exception. Before you know it you have a lot of exceptions and a bloated app with lots of useless features.
Other than a few reiterations of common sense web design (and any other design, instructional, etc) this talk is not especially enlightening.
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Justin Ball is a software consultant and entrepreneur with a passion for Ruby. He evolved from a C++ and .Net monkey into a python programmer and finally found Ruby. In the rare moments when he isn't writing code, talking about code or measuring his code productivity in profanity per hour, you can find him on his bike in the mountains or on the roads surrounding Cache Valley. 
