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The past two iterations of work on the Portal Server Admin Console have been an interesting journey in design work.
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We started by teasing the Portal Server Console out of the Identity Server Admin Console. Endless meetings with white boards filled with diagrams of everything that needed to be presented to the user in the console, and how they should be grouped. At the end of all this we had a spanking new console with a navigation scheme that had a good amount of "scent". What is scent you say? It is a concept that Jared Spool uses, and that I happen to like. The idea is that a well designed website should let users know that they are on the right track. The 7.0 console had the ability to lead you to the places that you wanted to go. It also has the ability to allow you to find your way back there with ease. Denim was my friend those days. |
The next iteration of work was adding the Visual Display Design Tool - A Direct Manipulation Interface that lets the Administrator interact directly with what they are working on - a Portal Page. This advances the UI further along the continuum of task awareness (note: i did not say task based, task centric etc.. I should blog sometime about my reasons for avoiding those terms...). One of the unique tools I used in this round of work was comics. I used them to tell stories of how the UI wuold be used, and to create story boards. I have often felt that conventional storyboards, are really just the boards. But add a talking head to it, fill in the comic blurb with information of the users intent or reaction : and you have a stand alone presentation that conveys what you need to, even if you are not there to walk people thuogh it. People seem to enjoy reading these storyboards. It was a lot of fun to do, and was a lot more effective in ensuring a shared understanding of the work!
This blog copyright 2008 by Maya
