User Interface Design

Designing and implementing highly effective User Interfaces is a combination of art and science. Stone Cobra employs talented UI designers and usability engineers to let you get the most from your software. Poor UI designs lead to decreased adoption rates, decreased productivity, training issues, software misuse, and decreased employee satisfaction. The clean design of a User Interface can be the single most important aspect of a successful project.

To achieve superior UI designs, here are some of the aspects that Stone Cobra designers take into account:

• Who is the audience and what is their skill level? Are they a power user, occasional user, or mixed?
• What tasks does the user perform most often? What information is most important to the user?
• Are there complex tasks that can combined into UI tools or widgets to better serve the user?
• What set of keystrokes and path through the application will most increase the user’s productivity?
• What is the most intuitive method of performing actions and navigating the application to reduce or eliminate training?
• Does the application return error messages, utilize on screen help, or other messages that may interlace with the existing information?
• What languages will the UI support? Will it be localized or fully internationalized?
• What are the customer’s corporate design standards to keep consistent branding and image? Do these corporate standards conflict with usability guidelines for reducing eyestrain and providing accessibility requirements?
• Are there geographic deployments of the application that will result in bandwidth restrictions?
• What browsers (if a web-based application) need to be supported?
• What aspects of the application are dynamic by nature and therefore need a flexible UI infrastructure to allow for changes without a UI engineer?

Stone Cobra recommends utilizing expert User Interface designers for all development and integration projects. The Stone Cobra UI designers are skilled in traditional GUI, Web client and Web 2.0 design and development. Stone Cobra UI designers can provide you with wireframes, mockups and prototypes of the UI for review. However, most often we work in a rapid development environment where we provide a working prototype of the UI early in the project so you can see the proposed application interface. This allows for dependent tasks such as developing promotional or training materials to occur earlier in the project timeline, saving overall cost and reducing implementation timelines.