User Experience Specialists
What is User Experience?
A user's experience is the total impression left by interacting with the web-based application's varied attributes: features and functional behavior, visual design, content, information layout, usability, and robustness. The User Experience discipline within the IconProcess transforms the vision or business concept for the application into concrete requirements, visual design, and prototypes. The User Experience workflow provides a flow of activities to define and realize these goals. Explore the User Experience workflow with an overview (bullet points) or all the details.
Discover best practices for building strategic, usable websites and applications by using IconProcess Plug-ins. Each process extension covers a specific aspect of the Web development process (e.g., usability testing, user research, information architecture). Process extensions contain recommendations for:
- Timing and frequency of activities
- Tailoring the activities and templates
- Performing activities successfully
- Staffing roles
Read the FAQs for more information about process extensions.
Who's included in User Experience and how do the IconProcess Plug-ins benefit them?
Who's included? Brand Strategists, Business Strategists, Content Managers, Content Editors and Developers, Creative Directors, End Users, Graphic Designers, Information Architects, Interaction Designers, Requirements Analysts, Requirements Reviewers, Software Architects, Stakeholders, Subject Matter Experts, Usability Evaluators, Usability Specialists, User Interface Prototypers... you get the idea.
IconProcess Plug-ins benefit all user experience roles by explaining the relationships among the activities and competencies required to create e-businesses and other Internet, intranet, or extranet sites. The IconProcess requires appreciating the talents and skills that each person, regardless of discipline, brings to a project. A process will not replace the need for creativity, problem solving, and serious thought. A process is not a substitute for skills and experience. A process will facilitate skilled people's work and help them to produce the desired results more efficiently.
Specifically, the IconProcess Plug-ins will:
- Shift focus to client needs, not internal project management issues
- Provide a clear plan of action
- Define your role in relation to others
- Organize work to avoid redundant efforts
- Recommend what's to be done, when, and how it fits into the larger scheme
- Provide productive brainstorming tools
- Legitimize your work and skills
- Support and increase opportunities for creativity
Process extensions fill in the gaps in your existing process. If you are tired of people not understanding what you do and how it fits into the big picture, this site, IconProcess Plug-ins or IconATG's other services can wake up your team.
Why should I use this approach now?
Home grown methodologies or the Unified Process fit the bill just fine for client/server applications. But the Web has changed everything. Today, developing e-businesses, websites, and traditional software systems is done best by a multi-skilled team whose members contribute different talents and experiences. The skills needed are more varied than ever. Older processes lack the focus on user experience. Plus, you must produce results with speed and agility.
How can I learn user experience best practices?
You may purchase following IconProcess Plug-ins individually:
- User Research
- Information Architecture
- Usability Testing
A User Experience Packages containing multiple extensions is also available. The User Experience Package contains:
- User Research
- Information Architecture
- Content (available exclusively in this package)
- Creative Design (available exclusively in this package)
- Usability Testing
How does User Experience process extension relate to the Unified Process Requirements discipline?
The User Experience process extension broadens the scope of the Unified Process Requirements discipline in the following ways:
- Emphasizing user-centered analysis and design
- Clearly relating the system's requirements and interface design to the business and brand strategies
- Adding information architecture, interaction design, graphic design, and content development activities to supplement traditional requirements analysis
- Adding activities necessary to plan and manage content from a user-centered approach
- Emphasizing the role of usability testing and analysis at multiple stages within the development process
IconATG believes that the business, user experience, software design and development, and project management roles must all work together to successfully complete a project on time. The IconProcess tackles one of the greatest challenges for any corporation today: bringing communication, understanding, and a shared vision to a group of people from different disciplines, as well as documenting the steps to get there.
Read the FAQs for more information about the IconProcess, process extensions, and how to apply these techniques.