Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Merge pull request #233 from NLeSC/ux
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
Add User Experience (UX) Section
  • Loading branch information
bouweandela authored Dec 2, 2020
2 parents 5334608 + 1d19225 commit 4dac50f
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 3 changed files with 71 additions and 0 deletions.
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions _sidebar.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
* [Releases](/best_practices/releases.md)
* [Documentation](/best_practices/documentation.md)
* [Standards](/best_practices/standards.md)
* [UX - User Experience](/best_practices/user_experience.md)
* [Language Guides](/best_practices/language_guides/languages_overview.md)
* [Bash](/best_practices/language_guides/bash.md)
* [Java](/best_practices/language_guides/java.md)
Expand Down
69 changes: 69 additions & 0 deletions best_practices/user_experience.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@

# User Experience (UX)

User Experience Design (UX) is a broad, holistic science that combines many cognitive and brain sciences disciplines like psychology and sociology, content strategies, and arts and aesthetics by following human-center approaches.

> Human-centred design is an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and applying human factors/ergonomics and usability knowledge and techniques. This approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency, improves human well-being, user satisfaction, accessibility, sustainability, and counteracts possible adverse effects on human health, safety, and performance. [HCDSociety](https://human-centered-design.org/about/)
## Table of content
- UX disciplines
- Design thinking process
- Designing software
- Tools and Resources

### UX disciplines

The principles and indications taught by [interaction-design.org](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature) can be useful in the process of creating research software.

The main UX disciplines are:

1. **User research**: understanding the people who use a product or system through observations.
2. **Information architecture**: identifying and organizing information within a system in a purposeful and meaningful way.
3. **Interaction design**: designing a product or system's interactive behaviors with a specific focus on their use.
4. **Usability evaluation**: measuring the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system.
5. **Accessibility evaluation:** measuring the quality of a product or system to be accessed irrespective of personal abilities and device properties.
6. **Visual design**: designing the visual attributes of a product or system in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The known UX umbrella diagram represents the different disciplines of UX:

<img src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4195550/100587866-681a6700-32f1-11eb-87d2-c40616d45c4f.png" width="800" />

*Author/Copyright holder: J.G. Gonzalez and The Netherlands eScience Center. Copyright: Apache License 2.0*



### Design Thinking
Design thinking is an approach, mindset, or ideology for product development. According to the [IxF(Interaction Design Foundation](https://interaction-design.org), Design thinking achieves all these advantages at the same time:

* It is a user-centered process that starts with user data, creates design artifacts that address real and not imaginary user needs, and then tests those artifacts with real users.
* It leverages the collective expertise and establishes a shared language and buy-in amongst your team.
* It encourages innovation by exploring multiple avenues for the same problem.

<img src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4195550/99543973-13532400-29b4-11eb-9179-f74db459dfbe.png" width="700"/>

*Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0*

You can find more information about Design Thinking on the [IxF page](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking).

### Designing software

Heuristics, or commonly known 'as the rule of thumb,' play a significant role when users interact with software. The Nielsen/Norman group has a top [10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/) to consider when developing software.

#### Designing Lovable software

When delivering software iteratively, one of the common approaches to follow is to define a Minimum Value Product that contains the minimum requirements. Often is forgotten in this approach to deliver software that attracts and engages the users. When developing research software, researchers should present the new and innovative outcomes in a way that feels comfortable and easy to use from the very beginning, eliminating any cognitive burden that the software's interaction may include.

<img src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4195550/99543638-ad669c80-29b3-11eb-92c6-1754fa9c837c.png" width="800" />

*Author/Copyright holder: J.G. Gonzalez and The Netherlands eScience Center. Copyright: Apache License 2.0*

While MVP (Minumun Product Value) focuses on provide users with a way to explore the product and understand its main intent, MLP (Minimun Loveable Product) approach focuses on essential features instead of the bare minimum expected from a class software. Going beyond the bare functionality, the attention is driven towards a great user experience. The outcomes mush contains all elements in the pyramid being **functional, reliable, usable, and pleasurable.**


### Tools and resources

Design tools used for Visual Design, Prototyping, and IxD testing collaborative, real-time, online, and multiplatform.

* [Figma](https://www.figma.com/)
* [Miro](https://miro.com/)
* [Whimsical](https://whimsical.com/)
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions chapter_owners.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ Overall Maintainer: Bouwe Andela
* R: Vincent van Hees
* C and C++: Johan Hidding and Patrick Bos
* Fortran: Gijs van den Oord
* UX: Jesus Garcia
* Intellectual Property: Lourens Veen
* Publishing Scientific Results: Willem van Hage
* Access to e-Infrastructure: Jason Maassen
Expand Down

0 comments on commit 4dac50f

Please sign in to comment.