A look back at the best from this week in the past.
Foundation Series: User Experience Disciplines
UX, pronounced you-ex, is the shorthand for user-experience. It represents the science and art of tailoring the experience that users have with a product – in our case, software. UX is a relatively new term, rapidly overtaking HCI (human-computer interface) and CHI (computer-human interface) as the acronym du jour. In some circles it is known as human-factors engineering, applied to software design. There are several disciplines within this field, we’ll introduce each of them.
Top Ten Tips for Preventing Innovation
At a recent presentation in Austin by Seilevel about the goals and methods of requirements gathering, a member of the audience asked “What can we do with our requirements to assure innovation?†That’s a tough question with an easy answer – nothing.
What if the question had been “What can we do to prevent innovation?†That’s a better question with a lot of answers.
How To Write Use Case Triggers and Preconditions
Use case writing is key to effective requirements management. Each use case represents a single idea or logically grouped behaviors. When you define a use case, there are several mistakes you can make. Preventing those mistakes is the first order of business. The second order of business is making sure that the use cases in the system work together. This requires an understanding of the context in which the use case happens. To fully understand a use case you have to know what is promised to be true before the use case happens, as well as what causes the use case to happen. These are subtly different.
Project Scheduling – 80% Done, 80% Remaining
Johanna warns us that there is “no such thing as percent complete†when it comes to tracking status on a project. Your managers and customers want to know percent complete – and there is a way to report it. Project planning and scheduling involves walking this fine line.
