Any football fan will tell you: the plays they run in high school would never cut it in the NFL. At the highest levels of the sport, playbooks are tailored to the skills of athletes who run faster, hit harder, kick longer, and throw with precision.
Designing software for expert users is no different. If you call your plays from the same UX playbook that you use for consumer apps, you will get creamed on the field.
Veteran interaction designers Alan Baumgarten and Ben Judy will share examples and show you the plays that can help you score and maybe even win when you face the humbling challenge of designing for highly trained professionals who use software.
Along the way you will discover the essential plays that must be in your Pro UX playbook if you hope to compete at this level. You will also learn a few boneheaded moves--used by most UX professionals--that will knock you to the turf faster than an All-Pro linebacker.
10. Professionals Who Use Software
Dentist
Investor/
Trader
Database
Administrator
Computer
Animator
Administrative
Assistant
Business
Analyst
Chemical
Engineer
Airline Crew
Scheduler
Cashier
Geek
Squad
Teacher
Customer Service
Representative
Architect
Recording
Artist
Domain Expertise
Digital Literacy
12. What we know about professionals
• Many work 40-80 hrs/week
• They spend a majority of their work hours
using one primary software tool
• They are highly trained/experienced
• Some are self-employed, so earnings are
tied directly to productivity
• “Easy” means faster, fewer steps, less
effort, less friction, greater efficiency, and
better results
• The stakes are often high; data has to be
accurate, and decisions have to be right
• They tend to resist change but are open to
it if productivity improves; most have no
say in the matter
29. Based on these indicators, we
want to buy to open FB,
August, 30-35, strangle five
times
Yes…uh
huh…right.
Blah, blah,
blah…strangle
someone,
Blah, blah….
71. ‘For people doing a job,
maybe the software
doesn’t need to be dead
simple. There is delight
in mastering something
complicated.’
Jeremy Johnson
Yesterday
(paraphrased) photo credit: @juliehudspeth
85. UX and Value Engineering
$20 K
Mass Market App
Features: 15
Total budget: $1 mil
Time to market: 9 mo.
Cost per feature: $40K
Days per feature: 12
Professional Software
Features: 400
Total budget: $6 mil
Time to market: 2 yrs.
Cost per feature: $15K
Days per feature: 1.2
87. “Designs intended for stressful
situations have to pay special
attention to matching the needs of
the users, to making appropriate
actions salient and easy to apply.”
91. Where would you
click to see the range of
proton-antiproton energies
during the deceleration
cycle?
CERN testing in-the-wild at the Geneva Starbucks
[play video]
We’re in Texas, so I probably don’t need to explain the rules of football. But if you’re not familiar with the game, he was running the wrong way.
That’s the longest recorded sack in NFL history.
Yes, I’m being selective again. Certainly, Tebow had some successful moments in the NFL and this was not a successful moment.