Extractions from “Mental hospitals in the hands of patients”

I recently read Alan Cooper’s Mental Hospital in Patients ’Hands. From it I was able to draw a number of ideas on the topic "how to improve the development." Below is a series of recommendations from the book that I am adopting.

Milfgard inspired me with this post . I will try to read all the books interesting for me from this list.

1. Person method

I heard about him before in the presentations of Dmitry Satin and other respected comrades, but I never took it as a guide to action. However, Alan Cooper says it must be done.



So, the point is to move away from the concept of "user" and go to the real-unreal people. Those. we invent characters from the real target audience of our product, but, at the same time, they should not be real people. For example, for a hotel site it would be like this:

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Marina, 25 years old. Office manager of a small company of 30 people. She works during the day in the bright Moscow office and she likes everything. Responsibilities: maintain a good atmosphere in the office, ensure that everything works, prepare business trips and arrange documents for this: book hotel rooms and book tickets. Most decisions are made independently, giving only the final score for the signature. Good husband and three year old daughter.

For such a person it is already much easier to design than for a spherical user in a vacuum, and when the question arises whether the printing function is needed, we will answer that yes, we need it: Marina will print out the information on the reservation and go through the people leaving for business trip. Or save to PDF and send to employees by mail.

2. Remember goals

Every person who uses our product has some goals. It:

1. Personal (do not feel stupid, do not make mistakes, perform an adequate amount of work, have fun);
2. practical (avoid meetings, meet customer requirements, keep order history, call customers back);
3. corporate (increase profits, defeat competitors, recruit staff, open two more stores);
4. false (ease of use, saving memory, improving appearance, accelerating data entry).

These goals are given in order of priority for people. First of all personal, and then everything else. If personal goals conflict with corporate ones, personal ones will win in the long run.



It is important to distinguish goals from tasks. To accomplish one goal we can accomplish many small tasks, however, one should never forget about the ultimate goal.

3. Create scripts

It is good to concentrate on people's work scenarios. This is the thing that allows us to put ourselves in the place of Marina from the previous example. It sounds like this: “They tell me the dates of the trip, the employees I need to send, and the place where I need to send. I search for hotels in this city through the Internet, find out prices, available rooms and, if everything suits me, I book. ”



And scenarios are of three types:

1. Everyday (They are the most useful and important. The actions described in them are performed most often);
2. Mandatory (They can be used rarely, but the possibility of using them must necessarily be. For example, urgent booking with prepayment in cash from a legal entity or cancellation of reservation);
3. Exceptional situations (They are developed last of all and can be hidden in the depths of the interface. Example: Marina's keyboard is broken, but she needs to book a room immediately).

Programmers usually focus on exceptional situations, but in the case of scenarios, you need to focus on everyday, frequently repeated actions.

4. Product for average audience members

Programmers tend to assume that people have opened our site / program and know what to do here. But the more functions we do with it, the higher the threshold of entry. There will be a well-defined bias towards the prepared audience.

On the other hand, sales managers and sales managers, on the contrary, underestimate the abilities of users. They think they need to chew, show and make everything as simple as possible. Roll towards unprepared audience.



Correct will count on the average. Preliminary, of course, determining who these middling are.

5. The main thing - the main thing

It is important to keep in mind frequently used functions and make them as accessible as possible. Rarely used functionality can be hidden. Microsoft tried to implement such an approach in their MS Word, starting from the 2007 version, but with damage for a rare functionality that cannot be found now.

6. Agree on a common dictionary

Often the same concepts by different participants in the process can be interpreted differently. The client can mean one thing, and the developer is completely different. For example: "On my site should be able to buy customized research." If you ask the client about the possibility of payment, he will answer that the price for customized research is not determined in advance and, therefore, you cannot pay for it on the site. It is better if the application goes to the mail. Thus, we have just abandoned the functionality of the purchase / payment with all the consequences, simply specifying the term "buy."

7. Interaction Design and Detailed Documentation

One of the most important pieces is the interaction design. For the success of the project, it is the interaction designers who are responsible for preparing scripts, thinking about persons, etc., should be responsible. With programmers, the approach “Designing UI → Design → Programming → Testing” is no longer responsible for the overall success of the product.



It is important that everything that designers have designed is carefully documented. Then you can always re-read and understand whether we are moving in the right direction. The documentation must use the names of the characters, developed by the method of persons.



PS: We ourselves do not really apply any of these principles completely (but really want to) and it will be interesting if those who read this book share their experience in implementing these principles in the comments.