Hot answers tagged requirements
9
My favourite illustration about design processes is the following:
Don't even care about where does it come from, it's the long-forgotten old-style software design (when there wasn't separate UX and technical design, there was software engineering, and engineering processes), but it still holds the key.
As you see, all start roughly at the beginning, but ...
8
The requirements section of wikipedia's page on user interface design is a good start. It refers to ISO 9241, particularly part 10 which has been withdrawn and replaced with ISO 9241-110:2006†
There's the UX principles that mozilla use as keywords to tag bugs in bugzilla which are based on Jakob Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics.
I've recently been ...
7
I'm also a developer by profession (and I have an MSc in Software Engineering from a famously hard uni), but nowadays I do UX. What follows comes from a view of HCI perspective of UX, this is what was taught to me, this is the school I consider myself belonging to.
In general, UX is not far from IT: what developers are taught at software engineering unis as ...
6
I can think of three critical questions to ask upfront.
What are their business goals? What sorts of behaviours are they looking to encourage over the next three to five years? More sign ups? More word-of-mouth circulation? Did they already have any ideas how the site could support this?
What issues have they already identified with the existing solution? ...
4
Terms like "Functional Requirements document" are notoriously ambiguous and often misunderstood, especially when documents are being passed between design and development teams, so it's often best to define the purpose and scope of the document you are producing
Before you begin, to get agreement on the content and format
In the document itself, to avoid ...
4
I think you're misreading that banner. It most likely reads "If your download doesn't start in ### seconds please click this link." (Emphasis mine)
The reasoning is pretty straightforward.
The developers have done their best to make the download automatic. However, they know that with the wide variety of browsers, plugins, and security settings that ...
3
Hiding your T&C behind a dropdown is probably very dangerous, since a user could legitimately claim that they never saw the T&C.Check out what happened to Zappos: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2012/10/how_zappos_user.htm .
3
Mike Cohn published in his blog a good article, arguing to use User Stories for Requirements. Because
User stories emphasize verbal communication [between devs and customer]
They can be used readily in project planning. [...] use cases, on the other hand, are generally too large to be given useful estimates.
User stories encourage the team to ...
3
My frustration as a BA is the lack of clarity between "Requirements" that are testable units and "Design" which, when created as part of the requirements actually BECOME requirements. When the business signs off on a low-fi or a high-fi wireframe, they have made that visual their requirement. Now I'm writing testing scripts to ensure that the wireframe is ...
3
I used to try to achieve the same thing in Java Swing. Just select everything when the textfield receives the focus. However, doing so may actually introduce more issues than leaving the selection away if not carried out properly. If you opt of the selection upon focus gain, at least the following points should be checked:
The focus can enter the ...
3
There are two possible scenarios here.
We assume that by default the user wants to replace the search term. In this case the selection aids him, and in case he wants to refine rather than replace the term, all he needs to to is hit "end" or "home" or any of the arrow keys, and the selection is canceled.
We assume that by default the user wants to refine ...
3
GlenH7 is right; the banner says "If your download doesn't start in ###...", the page attempts to start it immediately by using JavaScript to open the link and gives you the link in case the JavaScript does not work. The link also does work immediately. After all the JavaScript just does document.open(that link).
Now the bigger question is why they gave you ...
2
I'm not sure this can be 'solved' by a Pro and Con list being discussed. There are at least 3 aspects that should be considered:
1. User Experience
Making sure the site is usable for both consumers as well as internal people. Very important and usually the domain of UX people.
2. Technical expertise
Making sure the CMS fits into the most likely existing ...
2
BoxesandArrow published an excerpt of Kim Goodwins book. This article serie is about requirement gathering. I like the detailed questions and checklists for special positions/stakeholders to ask. Might be worth to read for you.
These are the articles
Understanding the Business
The General Stakeholder Interview
The Marketing Stakeholder ...
2
I suggest a Stakeholder Workshop.
In my experience these workshops can uncover conflicts between different stakeholders and help resolve them and also clarify the business aims as, in past projects, I have found that asking alone can result in a very vague set of business requirements. This is the part of User Experience that overlaps with Business ...
2
The requirements for Terms and Conditions as well as for your Privacy Policy are primarily a legal question and not a design question. There are things that you should be aware of design wise, but they are not requirements.
There are a number of good questions already on the UX side of design requirements on this site, so I won't try to duplicate them ...
2
The team I work with has one person handling both the business analysis and design (who just happens to be me). I vary between starting with requirements and starting with rough mockups/wireframes, mostly depending on a couple of factors:
Complexity of the task: if its something simple, I'll probably just jump to a wireframe
In-person or distance review: ...
2
By stakeholder, I assume that you mean the client/product manager because in my opinion, even the dev team is also a stakeholder. Anyhow, it is usually a good idea to keep requirements (the 'what' part) separate with the implementation details (the 'how' part). Sometimes the client/business analysts think that they know the best way how a system should be ...
1
As Brian pointed out hiding your terms and conditions can lead to trouble. I would recommend putting in the footer since that seems to be a standard place for the terms and conditions to be shown while designing sites.
With regards to showing the terms and conditions, I would recommend directly linking the terms and condition link to the T&C page so ...
1
As Ray V said on Sept 6, it all depends on the project. Whomever is working on gathering business requirements and doing user and competitive research will need a certain level of understanding before a vision appears and the magic starts happening.
I'll offer another approach, which I don't particularly prefer, but don't mind at the moment. I'm working ...
1
I've worked on a few projects recently where, for whatever reason, the decision was made to move away from integrating with an existing CMS and instead to design management interfaces and processes as part of the project.
This is great in theory because you have the opportunity to design something that meets the particular needs of the project. However, you ...
1
If the client will be using the CMS to update the site, then UX should certainly have a hand in creating the content management system.
Start with an inventory of all the content types your client will be using. From that you can write up a short list (5 or 10 items) of things that the CMS needs to do. Then do your research -- is there an existing CMS that ...
1
What are the pros and cons for making this the responsibility of the UX team on a project?
Pros:
end users end up with a CMS tailord to their needs
as such the CMS is tailored to the business's needs
Cons:
for whatever reasons, IT execs prefer to purchase SharePoint rather than create or research decent software. Potential arguments
It's usually ...
1
I find that articulating the goals of the UX upfront, agreeing on measurements and goals helps a lot. What is the business case of the UX? How does the business track success? What parts of the experience most critically contribute to this success?
What those are really is a case by case basis.
1
I guess customer UX expectations are much more about politics and rhetorics than about UX itself.
Personally, I prefer a data-driven approach where one backs up the claims either by statistics or (perhaps informal but representative) user tests.
I do like models and I do like cognitive models, but as arguments, it seems people - esp. customers - tend to ...
1
Objectives are the targets. Requirements are the cornerstones to the perceived path to them.
An objective is to win a football match, by shooting at least one more goal than the opponent. A requirement is to catch most of the incoming balls as the goalkeeper.
This is the theory, and it is well expressed by adrianh's answer.
In practice however, ...
1
One way I've seen it defined is roughly.
Objectives: What the business wants to happen.
Requirements: How you plan to make the objectives happen.
(Not everybody defines them exactly like this - but you will generally find the two different categories even if they have different labels)
For example.
I have the objective of "Increase the lifetime value of ...
1
You're doing user experience design. It's not called stakeholder experience design for a reason.
So, your primary goal is to grab all those stakeholders who actually have something to do with the system: those who will actually use it. These are the customers, the administrators, the whatever, called together users.
Your customers ain't your users. Usually ...
1
First, I think this questions belongs more to a site like Programmers.
At my job we put all bugs and suggestions into the same list. Its then up to the product manager and the developer team to evaluate it.
We give it a description including both What and Why, in viewpoint of the user scenario. Technical details go into a notes section.
We encourage ...
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