The Usability Architect

The German Chapter of the Usability Professional Association (UPA) has just published a job role description for usability engineers including a summary of typical areas of work of usability staff along the software development lifecycle.

Although this is a very valuable document, it is still an open issue how usability job roles are reflected in appropriate job titles. Especially for people who find themselves in varying assignment along the supply chain, finding the right naming is very often difficult. I have discussed this in an earlier post already (see http://www.usability-architect.com/2009/06/who-am-i-from-interface-designers-to.html) and continuing a discussion in this topic seems both reasonable and necessary to me.

The article can be found at: http://germanupa.de/german-upa/berufsfeld

Full reference of the article:
Beschreibung der Rollen und Aufgaben von Usability Professionals im benutzerorientierten Entwicklungsprozess Weitergabe nur mit Genehmigung des Arbeitskreis Berufsbild des German Chapter der UPA e.V. Herausgeber: German Chapter der UPA e.V., Arbeitskreis Berufsfeld Autoren: C. Bogner, T. Geis, P. Huber, C. Lutsch, K. Petrovic, K. Polkehn Ansprechpartner: Clemens Lutsch, Microsoft Deutschland GmbH Version 1: April 2009

Dave Robertston and John Johnston from Thoughtworks made are interesting presentation on the relationship between Agile Methods and User Experience.

The presentation and video can be found at
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Agile-UCD-Robertson-Johnston

During the time we have to wait for the new MS Expression Blend toolkit, some exciting demo videos present the capabilities this new user interface engineering tool will provide.

I have found the following videos on YouTube after reading through some news on the web:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsAZjb7FKXA
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ErrS68YMM&feature=related

The UI prototyping support looks more and more amazing. I assume the sketching functionality will start get become even more exciting by using some multi-touch or pen input devices.

I have been asked several times already which UI prototyping tools I know or which ones I could recommend.

Typically, there is no all-in-one tool suitable for all prototyping purposes. But I decided to summarize some tools I already applied here in my blog.

• Justinmind (http://www.justinmind.com): From wireframes to simulations. Acceptable price for single user license
  
• Axure Pro (http://www.axure.com): very advanced tool, great support for developing detailed protoypes, but strong web focus. Additional widget libraries (e.g. http://www.acleandesign.com/2008/11/the-top-10-axure-resources/, or http://www.acleandesign.com/2008/09/axure-design-pattern-library-v2/) help to build quite interactive UI prototypes, which can be employed as UI specification. Belongs to my tools of the daily business.
  
• Mockupscreens (http://mockupscreens.com): very cheap tool for building static UI mockups
• Microsoft Visio: if your company own Visio licenses, this might be a rational choice. However, the UI prototyping support is rather poor and heavily relies on plug ins such as the one from http://www.guuui.com/issues/02_03_02.php
• Adobe Photopshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Flex (http://www.adobe.com): I used tools of the Adobe suite when things have to look pretty (Photoshop) or the prototype needs to have special interactive behavior (Flash, Flex). The latter demand some ActionScript know how.
• Microsoft Expression Blend (http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Overview.aspx?key=blend): the new star on the horizon for usability professionals. With Blend 3, Microsoft will enter the market with specific prototyping features built into a tool that can be used along the whole UI development supply chain. A great playground for usability people and UI designers, who have some C# skills.
  
• iRise Studio (http://www.iRise.com): one of the most sophisticated prototyping tools, the big brother of Axure Pro. Very expensive, but very advanced. For more interactive UIs, Flash movies can be plugged-in.
  

I have also heard (but never used) the following tools:

• RapidRabbit (https://rapidrabb.it/de): very motivated approach, I expect to see more mature versions in the future. We need more tools like this!
• OmniGraffle (MAC only)
• Serena Composer (http://www.serena.com/geo/de/products/composer/)
  

Another very good overview on prototyping tools can be found at
http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2009/03/24/rapid-prototyping-tools/