Paul Sizemore » User Interface

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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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 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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