Category: User Experience

Should User Interface (UI) Be a Part of “Requirements”? »

Just a quick post to address a question that seems to come up quite frequently.
Should “User Interface” (UI)  be a part of requirements? Do UI specs constitute requirements?
Here is my quick answer to this question…

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Personas are Great - For Wasting Time! »

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. Recently, I saw a couple of blog posts on this topic (here and here) from bloggers I respect a lot. This spurred me to finally get around to writing this post.
This post is about using “personas” as a part of software requirements process. It’s not […]

Why I Switched From Tweetdeck to Seesmic - And the Lessons for Product Managers »

An hour ago, I did something without much conscious thought at all. I uninstalled the Twitter client I used to like (Tweetdeck), and installed a new one (Seesmic). And there I went, merrily tweeting.
Then, I caught myself and started thinking why I did that. The more I thought, the more I realized that there are […]

Product Management - SaaS vs Traditional Software »

Mark Kromer at TechProdo blog recently wrote a nice blog post titled SaaS Product Management: Is there a difference?
In his post Mark poses the interesting question (applicable to a lot of product managers):
I was wondering what differences I would find in my role as a product manager if the products that I was managing moved […]

User-Friendly Error Messages - A Good Example »

One of my pet peeves with most software is the cryptic, unfriendly error messages thrown up by so many of them.
At Accompa, we try to make error messages in our own software as friendly and useful as possible. I think we still have a long way to go, but we work hard at it.
I just […]

Persona Grata - How to Use Personas to Manage Your Requirements Better »

Do you and your product management team use “Personas” while defining and managing your requirements? If not, personas may be a valuable addition to your arsenal of tools to help you manage your requirements more effectively.
What is a “Persona”?
A Persona is an abstracted representation of a typical user of your product.

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Usability vs Features - Product Management’s Role »

There was an excellent post recently at the Product Management Tips blog by Gopal Shenoy that discusses how the usability of a product is severely affected when you add a lot of features.
Gopal compares his stand-alone GPS unit vs the built-in GPS unit in his new Toyota Camry car, and poses a question:

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