Wednesday, October 3, 2001
Full-day Seminar, 8:30a.m.-5:30p.m.

We are moving rapidly toward a world of ever more tightly integrated software platforms - wide ranging application suites, product lines broadened by acquisition and consolidation in the software industry, increasing support for modular software and "plug-in" application extenders, and of course the Web with its accompanying explosion in enterprise intranets and far flung extranets.

Effective cross-product design produces a coherent software system in which users can switch easily between multiple applications without suffering the large productivity losses that result from having to radically alter their mental model, change the interaction paradigm, or interpret a new visual language. This seminar will illustrate proven techniques that you can use to design and build effective software systems or web sites with common look and feel, even if they are implemented by several development teams in different locations.

	You Should Attend If
	· you design, develop, or manage cross-product software systems or (in particular) individual applications or web pages within those systems. This seminar is intermediate in level - we assume you're famliar with the problems and are looking for solutions. Note: This seminar does not go into depth about GUI standards. Related Seminars If you are interested in this seminar, on Monday you might enjoy either: Driving Real Innovation with Customer Data, or Advanced Usability Testing Methodology

This seminar combines the perspectives of the UI Architect/Designer (Mullet) and the UI Developer/Manager (Solomon) in a unified approach to convergent cross-product design that produces the best results possible within a given release timeframe in real world product development situations. The insights are as applicable to the web and web-based applications as to traditional software.

The seminar will be evenly divided between lecture and participatory work. Lectures are backed by dozens of real-world examples illustrating the use of systematic design and development practices - we'll review success stories including the original Mac desktop, the evolution of Microsoft Office, the creation of the Macromedia User Interface, and the Synopsys GUI Standards for ECAD design tools. We survey the problems that arise when systematic processes are not followed as well as the high quality outcomes that can be achieved when methods are properly applied

You'll see sample design and planning aids plus several before-and-after screen captures representing varying degrees of success in solving the look and feel convergence problem.

Hands-on exercises give you a chance to put theory into practice - by the end of the day, you'll have your own Personal Convergence Plan for advancing the cause of cross-product UI design within your own organization.


Seminar Outline

Defining Software Systems

• What is a software system?
• What are the costs and benefits?
  
• How are systems created?
  

Exercise 1 - Analyzing an Incoherent System
(details about all exercises are provided below)

Designing Software Systems

• Conceptual Design Systems
• Presentation Design Systems
• Interaction Design Systems

Exercise 2 - Designing a Coherent System

Realizing Software Systems: Organizing for Look & Feel Convergence

• What is Convergent Development?
• What makes Convergence Hard?
• Organizational models to Support Convergence

Exercise 3 - Assessing Convergence in Your Organization

Realizing Software Systems: Achieving Common Look & Feel

• Strategies for Achieving Common Look & Feel
• Tactics for Achieving Common Look & Feel
• Corporate Case Studies

Exercise 4 - Your Personal Convergence Action Plan

Concluding Discussion



Details of Exercises

These four exercises are spaced throughout the day with participants working in small groups. In most cases groups will simply coordinate the activity of their members as each attendee builds a piece of the total solution, constructs a perspective on the world, or defines a plan of action with the benefit of feedback from their partners.

1) Analyzing an Incoherent System
Systems are generally incoherent not because intractable design problems were encountered at every step along the way but because their designers or developers never took (or more likely, were allowed to take) the time to compare notes and coordinate their activities. How many problems can you find in this example for which convergent design strategies could have made a difference?

2) Designing a Coherent System
While it's easy to find flaws in badly designed systems, it's a lot harder to create a good one. For this exercise you'll be designing a new system from scratch. A Universal Remote has been created that can control not only your television, but also your VCR, stereo, and alarm clock. When you point the touchscreen-based controller at one of these devices, its interface changes to match the functions available for that device. Each team member will create a controller design for one of the devices. Designs should be coordinated to produce maximum "display momentum" and optimum sharing of conceptual models and interaction designs.

3) Assessing Common Look & Feel Convergence in Your Organization
Simply knowing what you want to build is rarely enough to guarantee a successful interface, particularly if you won't be doing the implementation work yourself. In most cases you'll need to influence the development team to build it the way you want it. To do that, you'll need a strategy. For this exercise you will lay the groundwork for your strategy by visualizing the decision making process as it functions (or not) in your organization today. You'll create an org chart showing the various stakeholders for a UI decision, then create a flowchart or state diagrams that illustrates the key decisions, the participants in each decision, the order in which they are consulted, and the factors that must be considered.

4) Your Personal Convergence Action Plan
Most of us don't have the luxury of working in a development environment that's optimized for timely, cheerful implementation of exactly what the designer had in mind (or conversely, the timely, cheerful design of something that's reasonable to implement in the time provided!). Taking the results of the previous exercise as your starting point, you'll discuss ways the process could be improved with the other members of your group. You'll document your ideas as changes to your existing process diagram so you can take them back to the office and share them with your management team.

Register online or by calling 1-800-588-9855

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