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Revolutionizing the Software User Interface Design Process

As is the case for many of our projects, Transmissions was approached by a company who had heard about our expertise in user interface design and wanted to leverage it in the design of a web-based application. What makes this project different, is that this client was actually a software consulting firm, and that beyond the final deliverables, we helped them better understand the software development process, and changed the way they run their business.
At our first meeting The project manager who hired us discussed the list of deliverables: Photoshop screen layouts, and Flash animations of the user interface. These deliverables were to be send to the development group who would use them to build the actual application. This is the way things had been handled for years, and neither our client nor the graphic designers who were usually hired to do the work saw anything wrong with the process.

We told them what was wrong:

• The developpers would get Photoshop files, and translate them into html code and css. This process was time consuming, and resulted in broken designs because the programmers lacked the expertise to fully understand the designs they were looking at.
• The designers would spend a lot of time designing simulations of the software using Flash. They were using Flash as a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool, something it is not. In the process they were building RAD features into Flash. They were reinventing the wheel, and an imperfect one at that.

we explained the following to our client:

• Instead of delivering Photoshop files which would get misunderstood by their programmers, we would deliver HTML, and CSS code. Because of our understanding of the software development process they would be able to directly integrate our deliverable into their program. This would reduce the time their team would spend on graphic design, and would insure they would not deviate from the design we delivered.
• Instead of using Flash as a RAD tool, we would actually use a RAD tool. This would significantly cut the cost of building the software simulation, and it would also make the itterative process of user interface design more flexible. The time would actually be spend on designing, and refining the user interactions, not on building a Flash animation. On this project we ultimately used JAVA as the RAD tool.

The client clearly got more than they bargained for. They had hired us to design the user interface of an application. In the process they got a new understanding of how to integrate user interface interface design in the overall software development process, something neither they, nor their usual graphic design suppliers had any idea about.

 

 

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