Designing the obvious: a common sense approach to Web and mobile application design

Acknowledgments

Author Biography

Chapter 1. Defining the Obvious

What Is 'the Obvious'?

Qualities of a great application

How Do You Design the Obvious?

Turn qualities into goals

The Framework for Obvious Design

Know what to build

Know what makes it great

Know the best way to implement it

Chapter 2. Lead with Why, Follow with What

Know Your Motivation

What follows Why

Make Authentic Decisions

Audit the user experience

Define the vision

Plan the new design

Implement it

Measure everything

Having vision

Chapter 3. Ignore the User, Know the Situation

Designing for the User

Designing for the Activity

Solve for the Situation

Understand How Users Think They Do Things

Understand How Users Actually Do Things

Find Out the Truth

Contextual inquiry

Remote user research

Surveys

Write Use Cases

Task-flow diagrams

My advice

Chapter 4. Build Only What Is Absolutely Necessary

More features, More frustration

So what's a geek to do?

Think Different

The dashboard and New Invoice screen

The finished invoice

The result

Think Mobile

Hey, it's your life

Not present at time of photo

Drop Nice-to-Have Features

The Unnecessary Test

The 60-Second Deadline

Aim low

Interface Surgery

Reevaluate nice-to-have features later

Let them speak

Chapter 5. Support the User's Mental Model

Understanding mental models

Design for Mental Models

Making metaphors that work

Interface Surgery: Converting an implementation model design into a mental model design

Eliminate Implementation Models

Create wireframes to nail things down

Prototype the Design

Test It Out

Chapter 6. Turn Beginners into Intermediates, Immediately

Use Up-to-Speed Aids

Provide a welcome screen

Fill the blank slate with something useful

Give instructive hints

Interface Surgery: Applying instructive design

Choose Good Defaults

Integrate preferences

Design for Information

Card sorting

Stop Getting Up to Speed and Speed Things Up

Reuse the welcome screen as a notification system

Use one-click interfaces

Use design patterns to make things familiar

Provide Help Documents, Because Help Is for Experts

Chapter 7. Be Persuasive

Draw a Finish Line

Ownership

Solve a Significant Problem

Make It Explainable

Know Your Psychology

Reciprocity

Commitment and consistency

Social proof

Authority

Liking

Scarcity

Ethical persuasion

Chapter 8. Handle Errors Wisely

Prevent and Catch Errors with Poka-yoke Devices

Poka-yoke on the web

Prevention devices

Detection devices

Turn errors into opportunities

Feeling smart

Ditch Anything Modal

Redesigning rude behavior

Replace it with modeless assistants

Write Error Messages That Help Instead of Hurt

Interface Surgery

Create Forgiving Software

Good software promotes good practices

Chapter 9. Design for Uniformity, Consistency, and Meaning

Design for Uniformity

Be Consistent Across Applications

Understanding design patterns

Intelligent inconsistency

Leverage Irregularity to Create Meaning and Importance

Interface Surgery: Surfacing the bananas in a process

Chapter 10. Reduce and Refine

Cluttered task flows

The path to simplicity

Clean Up the Mess

Reducing the pixel-to-data ratio

Minimizing copy

Designing white space

Cleaning up task flows

Practice Kaizen

The 5S approach

Eliminate Waste

Cleaning up your process

Put Just-in-Time Design and Review to Work

Chapter 11. Don't Innovate When You Can Elevate

Innovation

The problem with innovative thinking

Elevation

Elevate the User Experience

Elevation is about being more polite

Elevation means giving your software a better personality

Elevation means understanding good design

Seek Out and Learn from Great Examples

Inspiration

Elevate the standards

Take Out All the Good Lines

Get in the Game

Index