Even though user experience (UX) design must accommodate the needs of the user, which seem on the surface to be idiosyncratic, UX designs are built using user interface patterns, which are highly rule-based. It’s confusing and annoying to live in a world with no rules or inconsistent rules. Dreams are like that; you go through a door but are back in the same room or you run but you stay in the same place. The rules of physics define the behavior of the physical world.

June is usually one of my favorite months.  Summer is starting, the bugs are clearing out and vacations are upon us; it’s a generally nice time of year.  This year however, apparently several of my electronic devices are in collusion to change that.

There are numerous blogs arguing for consistency in a UX design mostly for soft reasons, such as "it's good for company branding," "it’s just good design," and “it’s easier to learn.” Here is the most important reason for UX design consistency, based on how the brain works: Lack of consistency in a UX design leads to added “cognitive load” for the user and breaks the “transparent to task” effect.

Here is a piece of advice for both developers and designers that come from the words of Wilfred Hansen: Know Thy User. Many developers make the critical mistake of thinking they are developing for the user, when in fact they are developing for themselves. Does your target customer share your technical or cultural background? What about their demographics – Are they the same age and gender? Do they share your goals and motivations? If you cannot answer these basic questions, you may very well be creating the wrong product for your customer!

I’m an advocate of UX + Agile but it has led to some “can’t-see-the-work-for-the-methodology” blindness. People are wrapped-up in doggedly following the mechanics of the methodology and lose sight of essential common sense about how best to get the work done that initially inspired the creation of the methodology. This not very thoughtful behavior tends to dumb-down the value of the methodology, diminishing the promised gains in project efficiency… bad for any company.

A physical demonstration of a touch enabled coverflow drag on an ICS kiosk.

At Integrated Computer Solutions [ICS], we are proud of the many projects we develop and although we would like to display all of them, often we are restricted due to confidentiality clauses or because they run on specialized hardware. So recently we decided to create a touchscreen demo to exhibit some of our user experience [UX] and software development expertise. The demo was written in Qt and QML and can run on a variety of hardware.

I hope everyone is enjoying the New Year so far. Our winter wonderland here in New England is underway -- the seasons seem to move quickly and although winter has its finer points… the warmer weather will be welcomed when it arrives.

Update >>
Missed the live webinar? No worries, you can watch the recording online on our site by clicking the image to the left.