Paul Sizemore » UI

Last Minute iPhone UI Design: The Icon

Paul Sizemore — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:34:20 +0000

At Smoothstone we were in the final stages before releasing a soft phone for the iPhone that would bring our unified communication platform to the iPhone, and a dial tone. Among some of the last minute iPhone UI work was the need for an app icon. In true startup mode, all our internal resources were working on other high need projects, and there wasn’t enough time to go outside the company. It was time to brush off my design skills, and create a few icons for executive approval.

These icon set was based on the new Smoothstone logo, the power of the cloud, and a rapid study of other cloud solutions.

They ended up with:

HEALThESchools Prototypes and Wireframes

Paul Sizemore — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:13:29 +0000

While at Humana I worked extensively for The Humana Foundation’s HEALThESchools initiative, more information at http://www.humanafoundation.org/community_benefits/healthe_school.asp

I built some early user interface designs for the product, and eventually coordinated the HEALThESchools branded pedometers that were used in the program. The pedometers used the HumanaGear Connect process that I designed to register and activate the pedometers. Once activated, and used by the students, the pedometer data would be uploaded and flowed into HEALThESchools website.

Below, you can see the early wireframe progression, and eventually ended with the Ruby application at https://healtheschools.org/

The program is having amazing results in the two pilot schools, and is part of an overall strategy that has dramatically increased test scores.

Low fidelity Axure prototype built on the 960gs (pick background).

Higher fidelity Axure prototype built to illustrate the use of food and activity icons.

Improving Call Center Efficiency

Paul Sizemore — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:25:03 +0000

Many times in start up the opportunity cost is too great to do prototype design. At Kinnser, a health care start up, that was the case. The product was coming out of early stage startup, and starting to be scaled up. The bugs in the system were really starting to stress the company. One of the customer service enhancements I designed and implemented was the live debug information for the call center. The debug box was limited to display for the company IP block, and those working remote. As the call center requested access to new information, developers could quickly insert scripts to output the data. One of the most frequented cutomer confusion points was the roles, many features in the application were dependent on the user role.

It’s Easy as Pie, or 1,2,3, Your Pick

Paul Sizemore — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:17:05 +0000

Many times the details and nuances are what makes a product. With Kinnser’s Physician Access we debated for days if ‘Done’ was a step; in other words, should it be 1,2,’Done’ OR 1,2,3,’Done.’ The later won out. Either way, the registration process was well design, thought out, and tested.

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The UX of Walk with Walgreens Pedometer

Paul Sizemore — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 02:24:57 +0000

The consumer experience of the Walk with Walgreens Pedometer is detailed in this report that was prepared, and supplied to Humana Executives.

Report supplied to: Humana Executives

Goal of report: To give a overview understanding of the Walk with Walgreen’s program in order to make better decisions about the Humana Gear Activity Monitoring program.

Walk with Walgreens

Customer Experience Overview
Prepared by: Paul Sizemore
June 2011

In the summer of 2011 Walgreens initiated a campaign to engage consumers in walking while rewarding them for those steps using store discounts. This document is a sampling of some of the consumer experience points.

A Walgreens branded pedometer was made available for consumers at the stores. When I went to get a pedometer, I went to three stores. The first only offered me the option to purchase one, the second directed me to the Pharmacy, where they were out, the third had two pedometers in the Pharmacy. Distribution was done through the pharmacy.

A manufacture of the pedometer was identified, seen above. Cost of pedometer is sub $3.50 per piece in limited quantity.

Online registration for the program is easy.

The registration process allows the user to associate many different social media outlets.

Alerts are given to the user as they complete and log activities. The alerts are done in a Web 2.0 format.

The Profile page allows users to have one place to go to see the major events associated with her account.

As the user completes activities, she ‘unlocks’ discounts.

An overview of the awarded rewards are available.

The program has a strong social component, and uses both Facebook and other social media tools.

The user can share activities by creating user generated content.

The site uses embedded video to create a rich experience while leveraging user generated content.

The program does not allow a validated activity, but relies on manual entry of step data.

Weekly emails are sent out in plain text. They are often short, and are an underutilized marketing channel.

The user can create routes with Google Maps, and even attach photos to the route.

Axure EXT JS Tabs Widget Library

Paul Sizemore — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:55:00 +0000

EXTJS-Tab.rplib

On a cold and raining evening in Louisville, I finished this

EXTJS Axure Tabs Widget Library and it ‘s ready for Download.

At least I’m toasty at home with two pairs of socks on. This Axure widget library is of the EXT JS tabs, just three sets of tabs right now. I might expand them as I need them, and add other libraries (will post on my blog).

This set is great for prototyping for buy-in, then handing the specs off to a development team. The developer can see exactly what the client has bought into, and through the EXT JS framework, it can happen.

EXT JS is a great User Interface framework for SaaS, and I’ve needed a good way to prototype software for users.

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B2B Home page User Interface Notes

Paul Sizemore — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:31:08 +0000

The home page is often the most visited page on the site, and also the ‘face’ of the company. It is important for this page to mirror the goals and mission of the company along with presenting a strong sense of a dynamic and growth orientated company.

It’s important that the main content area change at least once a week. This sets the user and search engine’s expectations that they need to check back that often to find the new content. The more relevant and meaningful it is, the higher impact that content will be.

Flash animation on the home page can be a dangerous thing, at least as a Hero Image or main banner. Many times the same conversion goals can be accomplished in a more SEO consistent way. For example, a carrousel of images switched via javascript can be implemented, and that is very SEO friendly. Flash, not so much. Also, animation, unless done well, really challenges users.

Another important factor is the labels on the page, or headlines. These must be what is expected. They need to be the same general visual tone as the rest of the text. If they are too different, the user will not immediately see them as a text element, but as a graphic.

Also, what is the one thing that you want users to do when they come to your site? If it’s a lead generation site, make sure that’s evident. If you are trying to nurture the lead, make that click path evident and easy. Use strong messaging.

Getting the home page right is hard. The one thing you can do is to test. Test to see what works and what doesn’t.

Axure iPhone UI elements widget / library download

Paul Sizemore — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:10:00 +0000

iPhone-Axure-Widgets.zip

All my Axure Posts

I’ve created a Axure iPhone widget library and you can download it below. The bulk of the work on this library was done one night while I was up late from the pure pain and agony caused by eating a Taco Tico taco – it was just one taco, and I wanted bragging rights. Taco Tico is a Louisville fast food Mexican joint, equivalent to the White Castle circa 1980. The important thing I learned that night, don’t eat things you think are dangerous. It sounds easier than it is. I never have problems eating things like an electric knife or a porcupine, but, sometimes it gets a little hard. I knew the taco was a risk, but I still ate it. I’m a risk taker. Maybe a good fall-back is if I think it’s risky, only eat part of it. Either way, I hope I never get sick like that again.

Anyway, I’ve been prototyping iPhone applications, and I really want to be able to do it in Axure; this will let me turn over the prototype stakeholders in a web browser. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any existing iPhone UI widgets that did do a good job of covering the common iPhone UI elements. Bingo, add Taco Tico, Axure, an iPhone and the result, a iPhone UI element library.

First, I want to point to teehan+lax, the creators of the ‘iPhone_GUI_3_0.psd’ that I used for a large part of this widget. I also used Yahoo! UI elements and then created a few of them myself.

The aim is to create a library of common iPhone User Interface patterns for me to use, and sharing is the right thing to do – unless it’s a Taco Tico taco.

You can reach me, Paul, at Paul.Sizemore /at/ Gmail.com, but I would stay away from Taco Tico.

Axure iPhone Widget Libraries for Development

Paul Sizemore — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:21:00 +0000

Axure has come a long way to reach 5 and half, or 5.5. Right now, the most important thing in my Axure universe, the thing I’m searching for, and looking to the horizon for, is more widgets. Widgets are ‘libraries’ that can be loaded into Axure. The best, and most thorough is the port of the Yahoo Design Stencil Kit, at Axure’s site.

This band wagon is just getting going, what I’m really looking forward to is more Axure iPhone Widget Libraries and the onslaught of inevitable JQuery widgets, although I can see the Yahoo libraries making their way into a lot of my prototypes in the future. Some of the more fun widgets are the iPhone and the Form Elements.

Another great set is at ConeTrees; they have a widget for touchscreen gestures, http://www.conetrees.com/content/downloads/

Moving on, there’s a few widgets at GitHub including Audio, Photo, Video and WordPress.

It does seem a bit odd, though, to be prototyping iPhone apps on a Windows OS, running in Bootcamp.

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