Design Handbook Review -- we need your help!

[Daphne Ogle]

Hi again,

After some discussion, we realize this activity is still pretty  
vague.   There is all good content -- the trick is making is useful,  
understandable, discoverable, etc.   So, how can we make this work  
clear and iterative to make sure we are making high priority,  
incremental improvements across the board and not getting sucked into  
the black hole.

Jess, Gary and I had a good chat about the Design Handbook this  
afternoon.  We agreed that the biggest usability issue right now is  
discoverability and information scent.  We want people to be able to  
quickly understand what is relevant to them and then be able to dig in  
further to areas of interest.  From there, we started to think of this  
work in phases.

Phase 1 - Create an executive summary-like page for each design  
activity (i.e. contextual inquiry, personas) we describe in the handbook
Phase 2 - Create an executive summary-like page for categories of  
activities (i.e. user research, interaction design)
Phase 3 & 4 -  Create a map of the information in the handbook  
(perhaps how activities fit into various activities fit into an  
overall development process) that would likely become the landing page  
for the Design Handbook AND deeper editing/rewriting of content (I  
lumped these because we don't have a clear understanding of the right  
order for these phases yet and felt like that would become clearer as  
we move forward)

So, Gary is working on what a template might look like for phase 1 and  
we will likely have that early next week.  Until then, I think  
everyone on the list has plenty of other work on their plates :).

Thanks for your patience!  And of course respond with any questions,  
concerns, etc.

-Daphne

On Mar 17, 2009, at 6:01 PM, Daphne Ogle wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> At the design meeting today we decided to split up sections of the  
> Handbook for review.    A lot of work has been done of late and we'd  
> like to see more but need to make sure we are working on this in the  
> context of other work.  As you all know, working on the wiki can  
> easily become a black hole.
>
> We started volunteering for sections but ran out of time.  Allison  
> and I volunteered to go through the sections and take a stab at  
> assigning.
>
> Some goals/tips to keep in mind as you review:
> -  The audience of the Handbook are designer, developers, (a combo  
> of the two), project managers, etc. and they are not necessarily  
> intimately knowledgeable about Fluid
> -  This pass is focused on the 1.0 release.  We will continue to  
> iterate on the Handbook post 1.0.  This is meant to be a little  
> deeper than a surface review but leave deeper restructuring and  
> heavy rewriting of content to later iterations.  Jiras should be  
> created for these deeper changes needed that you uncover.  Be sure  
> to assign them to the Design Handbook component in jira so we can  
> run a filter on it later.
> -  Email page authors if you have questions about relevancy or  
> location of the page for guidance
> -  Design Handbook users should NOT have to have knowledge of Fluid  
> to understand the handbook
> -  Some particularly heavy sections can be overwhelming.  If you  
> need to, be sure to grab someone else to puzzle through.
> -  Keep in mind the distinction between the Design handbook and the  
> User Experience section (Fluid UX Deliverables)
> -  User the tree view to help see all pages within a section
>
> Potential assignees for the main headings in Handbook (http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Design+Handbook 
> ):
>
> Accessibility Resources - Erin
> User Testing - Erin
> Design & Development Process - Daphne
> Agile planning... - Daphne
> Personas - Daphne
> UX Walkthroughs - Jess/Paul
> Cognitive Walkthrough - Jess/Paul
> Heuristic Evaluation - Jess/Paul
> Comparative & Competitive Analysis - Gary
> UX Resources - Gary
> Contextual Inquiry - Allison
> User Modeling - Allison
> UCD Best Practices - Allison/Daphne
> Design Patterns - Jonathon
>
> James - to do a review of the entirety after we make an initial  
> first pass?
>
> Gary:  We weren't sure if you have any time for this work so we  
> assigned you a couple of the smaller sections.  If you'd like more  
> or less just speak up.  There are for sure a few people that are  
> likely overloaded.
>
> Thanks!  If there are any questions/concerns, let's discuss.
>
> -Daphne & Allison
>
> Daphne Ogle
> Senior Interaction Designer
> University of California, Berkeley
> Educational Technology Services
> daphne at media.berkeley.edu
> cell (510)847-0308
>
>
>
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Daphne Ogle
Senior Interaction Designer
University of California, Berkeley
Educational Technology Services
daphne at media.berkeley.edu
cell (510)847-0308