Building Better Web Applications Part 1

This is the first part of my two part blog post on building better web applications.

For many a business today a web presence is absolutely crucial in finding other avenues to increase revenue through e-commerce or just simply to increase goodwill. For many businesses their website or web app is the hub of their business activities. Ten years ago a company website was a relatively simpler affair as arguably most browsing was done on desktops. Nowadays smartphones, tablets, and other devices with similar form factors have crashed the party and taken their fair share of the browsing pie. Morgan Stanley analysts  reckon that their share of the pie will be bigger than desktop browsing as early as 2015. This stratification of browsing across devices and form factors makes good user interface design  much more crucial in order for businesses to stand out from the crowd. There are three things that user interface designers and developers need to keep in mind to meet all these particular needs:

1. Focus on user tasks and not features.
2. Don’t try to solve everything.
3. Ask the right questions early on.

Focus on User Tasks, Not Features With the Help of Wireframe Software

One of the pitfalls when creating websites and web apps is for developers and user interface designers to give too much weight to a dream feature list. The problem with emphasizing functionality and technology is that the users can get overlooked unexpectedly. In the end a user interface design can be created that incorporates all the wished-for features but is lacking in terms of user experience. In order to avoid this it becomes important for developers and user interface designers to adopt a user centered design approach. Involving users early on in the development process and conducting usability tests using supporting tools like wireframes or interactive GUI prototypes is bound to produce insights that can be overlooked when just focusing on features. There are a number of wireframe software available to user interface designers  with the best of them allowing for the creation of clickable wireframes which can also include interaction design. Certain online wireframe tools even go further than clickable wireframes by allowing user interface designers to cheaply conduct remote usability testing.