[IxDA Discuss] Standards development for industry applications (by yesterday :-)

Fri May 18 13:28:54 PDT 2007

Not exactly in answer to your question, but I recently compiled a short list
of style guides which I figured might be useful (below). Style guides
usually end up picking up defacto standards and best practices. So you could
review competitors products, decide what's good or bad, and what is
de-facto, and then use it to make your own. Also bear in mind that mandating
standards for a design concept which is "still evolving" could inhibit
better versions of it being developed.

*Style Guides*

MSDN Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/UxGuide/UXGuide/Home.asp

(then click 'guidelines' in the nav tree on left)

 Visual Studio User Interfaces

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb165108(VS.80).aspx

 Apple Human Interface Guidelines

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000957

 JAVA Look and Feel Design Guidelines

http://java.sun.com/products/jlf/ed1/dg/index.htm

 GNOME Human Interface Guidelines

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/

 IBM Design Guidelines

http://www-03.ibm.com/easy/page/561

 Yale Web Style Guide (basic content but easy to navigate and web oriented)

http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html?/

 Motif and CDE style guide (older)

http://post.doit.wisc.edu/library/techlib/manuals/adoclib/motif/motifsg/toc.htm

-- 
Best Regards,
Jeff
____________________________________________________________________________
Jeff Axup, Ph.D.
Principal Consultant, Mobile Community Design Consulting, San Diego

Research:    Mobile Group Research Methods, Social Networks, Group Usability
E-mail:        axup <at> userdesign.com
Blog:           http://mobilecommunitydesign.com
Moblog:       http://memeaddict.blogspot.com
Academic:   http://www.infenv.itee.uq.edu.au
____________________________________________________________________________

On 5/18/07, Dmitry Nekrasovski <mail.dmitry at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Elizabeth,
>
> I'm currently dealing with the same challenge of developing UI/IxD
> standards for a complex new application soon to be under development
> in a new-to-UX development environment. Some of my lessons learned so
> far:
>
> 1) Leverage existing UI standards for the platform(s) you are
> designing for. The product I'm working on is built on a rich desktop
> client platform, so the user expectations and available interaction
> models are quite different from a web app. I've found it quite helpful
> to use the UI guidelines for this platform as a starting point for my
> standards.
>
> 2) Standards emerge during design. In my experience, I've been able to
> develop basic usage guidelines for low-level UI elements without doing
> a great deal of design, since these are relatively insensitive to the
> overall context of the application. However, I'm finding that screen
> layout and interaction models are much more specific to the particular
> application and tasks I'm designing for.
>
> 3) Standards are useless without communication. I would suggest that,
> as you're developing your standards, you simultaneously plan how you
> will communicate them to both developers and management. Developers
> will need training to know why the standards are important and how to
> use them. Management will need communication to know why the standards
> are important and why they shouldn't override them arbitrarily. :)
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Dmitry
>
> On 5/18/07, Elizabeth Whitworth <elizabethwhitworth at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I need some advice! We are currently developing a set of standards for
> for
> > interface design and user interaction at my company. I have found many
> > examples of style guides for e-commerce applications and public
> web-sites,
> > but very little guidance regarding more complex industry-based
> applications.
> > Has anyone had any experience in creating and applying standards to a
> > diverse set of industry strength applications?
> >
> > My company deals with functionality such as timeslot booking, complex
> data
> > entry/viewing, and transaction-based communication. We have already
> defined
> > some standards for basic visual design and interface elements (headers,
> > menus, tables, forms, etc.), and now management would like a set of
> > standards for screen layout and interaction design that can be applied
> to
> > all new development projects.
> >
> > Any advice on how to approach such an assignment? I would particularly
> > appreciate some insight into how we could provide something basic but
> useful
> > to our developers *right now* (or as soon as we can create it), and then
> > build on the standards as we go. We want to get some basic standards out
> > asap to support a number of projects that will soon be underway.
> Eventually
> > we want to provide a comprehensive set of templates and possible
> interaction
> > components, but this will take time, since we have 6+ product types and
> only
> > 3 of us in the (brand new :-) user experience department.
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> >  - liz
> >
> > ---
> > Elizabeth Whitworth - Usability Analyst
> > TRANSPOREON GmbH & Co. KG
> > www.transporeon.com
> >
> > fon: +49 [0]731 16906 ext.131
> > mail: whitworth at transporeon.com
> >
> >
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > TRANSPOREON GmbH & Co. KG, amtsgericht ulm, HRA 2947
> > komplementär: TRANSPOREON Beteiligungs GmbH, amtsgericht ulm, HRB 4135
> > geschäftsführer: axel busch, peter förster, roland hötzl, marc-oliver
> simon
> > ________________________________________________________________
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