UX

All aspects of the user's interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used.

Notes

• Purpose: of this document is to come up and carry out core UX principles for the StatusNet platform.
• Status: Draft 0.1

Principles

More like a guide!

• Listen to *all* of your users and their experiences! Because as a collective, they know more than you!
• Make information visible (as opposed to meta data) for the user
• Observe 1+1=3. e.g., maintain whitespace clarity (don't clutter under any circumstance)
• Blur/Stand back. Do you know where things are? What they are for?
• Labels: Use everyday (or widely acknowledged) language. Avoid geek talk when possible.
• Minimise the number of actions required to complete a task
• Maintain good contrast between object colours
• Make it intuitive (reuse design paradigms that people are already familiar with or common on the Web) ~ "Don't make me think"
• Reuse patterns from existing services where appropriate
• Uniformity
• Make sure graphics (e.g., illustrations, iconography) come from the same family or theme.
• Be minimal. Microblogging is supposed to be trivially easy (even if it's not). Err on the side of simple, easy-to-understand interface.
• Is this something you want to use? Every day? hour?
• Revisit whatever is a PITA
• What about emotions/desires? How do you want the user to feel?
• Reuse existing naming conventions. Try not to come up with something fancy out of thin air.