From Wireframe to Prototype

Once the team was comfortable with the paper wireframes, we developed static click-through prototypes, based on the new page templates, graphics, and style sheets. These passed through another review cycle. Working with Engineering, we then backed the approved prototype pages with Java servlets, and the scenario was ready for actual testing.

We worked on two fronts: reworking existing scenarios and defining and developing new ones. But the new scenario development was soon to overshadow the rework effort.

By early 2001 we determined that the interaction design effort had grown too large for one person... I was working on as many as four scenarios at the same time. The Director of Engineering asked me to staff the effort, and I soon hired two capable UI designers and began to train them in the interaction design process.

Usability Testing

While we had corrected some usability problems with the wireframe and prototype reviews, more study was required. We wrote a usability test plan, and handed it out to 12 'volunteers' who fit the range of our personas. After tabulating the responses, we were able to correct some 2 dozen usability bugs. These fell into areas such as:

• Nomenclature, verbiage
• Confusing or misleading help text
• Mislabeled button actions
• Rule-based errors
• Mode-based errors
• Unclear cause and effect

While we were able to make changes to the UI due to this study, we were never able to gain agreement or budget on any further usability testing. Usability testing became informal and ad hoc, using sales people and engineers as subjects. We did get useful results from these tests, but I did not consider it systematic.

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