During this conference I had the rare opportunity observe user testing first hand. As a designer, my experience with testing has typically meant, passively accepting that all those beautiful widgets I’ve spent weeks developing need to be tossed out or reinvented. There is a tendency for us, designers to see user testing as an opportunity for ridicule. More often than not we send out our best work and receive a litany of small complaints which seem designed to humiliate. Designers don’t see our user base struggling with the UI we design.

In art school when you get “constructive” criticism it’s delivered by of students who know they’ll have to face your criticism in turn. However, there is no compunction to temper criticism during testing. When you get it wrong it stings all the more because if it’s an honest test, your getting unbiased criticism.

So when I was offered the chance to view the testing first hand, I was hesitant to go, but curiosity won out.

The tests I attended were conducted over three days based on a script developed with a number of target questions. At the end of the test there was the opportunity for some free-form questions. Tests ran about an hour for each subject. I was allowed to observe and ask a few questions at the end of the test.

I would describe this whole process as humbling. It’s hard to watch a user struggle to find a link they can’t see. All those little details you thought you’d get around to later are waiting there and glaringly obvious during the test. Watching these users really gave me a sense of the importance of the details. Underlining links, keeping page region clearly delineated etc.

Designers like artists (and many of us are artist), tend to have a good deal of ego wrapped up in our designs. Objective criticism keeps us honest when the test are well constructed and fair.

When you get it right, you know you really nailed it, and that’s a great feeling.

Many of these elements can be found in Flex Flash Builder, but that won’t do you much good if you are developing in the flash IDE.

I’m using these components in a few projects I’m working on at ACS. By using Astra I’m getting the not insignificant benefit of standing on the shoulders of some very smart and accomplished programmers. Yahoo Astra components have numerous features which accommodate most common situtations and the components can of course be extended to fit your sites specific needs.

You can find Yahoo Astra at: http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/astra-flash/

There seems to be a lot going on with flash this past week. Adobe has posted Flash Builder 4 on labs along with Flash Catalyst aka Thermo. This is seems like a good time to check out labs.adobe.com

• ACS Network: http://www.acs.org/network
• Solana Business Forum: http://www.solanabusinessforum.com
• Sacred Spaces Inc: http://www.sacredspacesinc.com
• The Virtual Smithsonian: http://2k.si.edu
• US Sedan: http://www.ussedan.com

A special thanks goes to BJ Ball for helping me with the CSS.

Joanna Lit from my team did a beautiful job on the design and provided proved a very
quick learner to boot as she assumed responsibility for about half of the AS3 coding.

In addition to art direction, I took a personal hand in developing the code for this site.

ACS Strategic Plan 2009 (Mobile Website) Launched

The mobile version of the Strategic Plan website also launched on Jan 15 2009. The design is mine, with BJ Ball providing the code based on my layouts (CSS/HTML).

The site can be viewed at: http://strategy.acs.org/mobile

Check it out on your WAP, Blackberry or iPhone.