What I think

A User Interface Developer is not someone who "knows a bit of HTML" - there is quite a bit more involved than a nimble minded code. It can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that requires the analysis and prediction of user behavior, and the testing of the validity of one’s assumptions.

I specialize in human cognition factors, spatial visualization, human-computer interaction principles and information architecture. A solid academic background in cognitive and perceptual psychology helps me to interpret end-user needs better. Social work experience makes me understand the differences between what users say they do and what they actually do. It helps me to create interfaces that meet both business and user needs.

How I work

Depending on the individual requirements of the project, I build interfaces in XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, or Actionscript. I am keen on Flex oriented interfaces.

My work is focused on user-centered design to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible. My design is clean, coherent, intuitive and informative. I aim to produce a UI which is elegant, well balanced and visually appealing. My code is web-accessible, cross browser compatible, semantic, optimized, commented, re-usable and SEO friendly. It validates to W3c guidelines, web standards, usability and accessibility. I specialize in creating and improving usable, effective and convenient interfaces that behave in the way they are expected to behave.

My services are all directly related to my passion for designing and developing interfaces for technological systems and web applications that help people to succeed.

What I do

There are 4 phases in my process of User Interface design, which structure the work in order to meet the needs of any project. My "4D" approach consists of discovery, development, design and delivery. Some of them are more essential upon than others, depending on the scope of the project.

PHASE 1 – DISCOVERY

I start with a preliminary analysis using various tools and models of all levels of thorough user requirements. This phase doesn’t make much sense when we are dealing with simple informational web sites, and I leave this research behind the scenes. It is useful when we are dealing with more complex flows, and in this case I am able to prepare a set of documents by mutual arrangement with customer.

• Vision

  The customer answers a short questionnaire in order to define and specify in some detail the gist of the project, it's main functional goals, business goals, user goals, and the project’s essential success metrics. The outcome of this process is one of the keys to the product’s being adopted by both stakeholders.

• Target audience (Personas)

  A Persona is an artificial person, invented for the purpose of helping a designer understand the people who will be using their product. The purpose of personas (user archetypes) is to add empathetic focus to the design and portray a prospective user, separating You from Your Work. Personas are created to represent a set of characteristics found across many individuals. It helps to avoid the common practice of trying to design for all users. Personas are employed to better understand what users want to accomplish and describe key behaviors and decision making processes, an information browsing approach, or a shopping mode. Different users interact differently because they have different intentions, context, knowledge, skills, needs or experience. Frequently a complex software system can be understood more easily if the user interface is depicted in a way that resembles something commonplace. The result of this process is a detailed description of one or more "average" users with his specific details.

• User cases (Interaction scenario)

  These tasks should demonstrate how users work with the system doing their everyday tasks. A user case is a typical Interaction scenario between a user and a computer system. It's an effective bridge between the needs of requirement analysts, designers, and system developers. It constitutes a complete course of interaction that takes place between an user and the system and describes the actual interaction between external users (or system actors) and a system, through a particular interface. They cannot take the place of prototypes or flow diagrams. But they can help you consider your designs in more depth before you start prototyping. One of the major problems with use cases is that there is no standard way to write them.

• User stories (system functionality)

  A User story is a set of text documents that describe system functionality in detail, to help understand what a user can do in the system. The whole functionality of a future product is divided into simple steps. Each step has it's own priority and response expected from user. The list of functionalities overlaps with scenarios of interaction. They are similar to user cases, except that they are not limited to describing a user interface. User stories talk about what needs to be done, and user cases - how it works. When the time has come for creating user stories, the developer gets together with a customer. The customer is responsible for formulating the user stories. The developer may use a series of questions to get the customer going, such as asking if some particular functionality is desired, but must be careful not to dominate the idea creation process.

PHASE 2 - DEVELOPMENT

• Site map diagrams or Navigational maps
• Interaction chart
• Wireframes

  This phase includes a set of graphic documents which describe page layouts. A prototype with high graphic detail attempts to demonstrate exactly how the product is going to look, while a wireframe has low graphic detail since it primarily deals with site structure and which feature goes where.

PHASE 3 – DESIGN

The best information designs are never noticed. The interface becomes almost invisible and navigation is easy. For maximum functionality and legibility, your page and site design should be built on a consistent pattern of modular units that all share the same basic layout grids, graphic themes, editorial conventions, and hierarchies of organization. The goal is to be consistent and predictable. Users should feel comfortable exploring the site and confident that they can find what they need. The graphic identity of a series of pages in a Web site provides visual cues to the continuity of information.

PHASE 4 - DELIVERY

This phase includes a HTML or Flash Prototype is a set of clickable pages that simulates the real future system (without DB). This is the key phase of the process, when the user interface can be seen, clicked through and discussed. With prototyping and usability testing we can improve the cost efficiency of the development workflow and this allows interface problems to be discovered at an early stage, and thus major overheads on reworks avoided down the line.

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