Day 40 - Some Basic Design Guidelines

Day 40 and I am still in the midst of getting misvCRM ready for the end of the month release. As I took it through its paces i.e. making sure that it does what it is supposed to do I keep discovering little things that are in themselves possibly trivial but in the bigger scheme of things affect the overall quality of the product. Some of these little things are under the hood so to speak and therefore not really obvious to the user. Some examples are making sure that the different buttons in the list page behave accordingly i.e. when there are no records displayed only the Add button must be enabled etc.; making sure that the tab order follows a logical order. I’ve come across software where the tab order is random at best which turns me off a bit.

The other major change that I did during these past days is to develop additional modules relating to making misvCRM multi-user. I did not want to do this during the first 30 days and still did not want to do it until after the first release but I had a long think and finally decided to do it now. What made me decide is the amount of work needed in both the code and database tables in order to make it multi user. If I did this change after misvCRM is released I will end up working with two different versions since I obviously do not want to break the code for the released version. At least now, everything is in place and both single-user and multi-user capabilities are in a single codebase and all I have to do is to indicate in the licence key which capability needs to be active.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is I came across a document from Microsoft entitled UX Guide - User Experience Guidelines which you can download from here. This document specifically refers to designing user interfaces for the Vista operating system but the concepts can be applied to other operating systems as well. It is a treasure trove of tips and hints and I’m glad that I came across it. There is a section called How To Design a Great User Experience. There are eighteen points (18) which describe ways and means how to make an application great. Some are obvious and the others are not. Some of the points are as follows:

1. Nail the basics. It means that one should not lose site why you want people to use your software. Focus on the core functionality and leave the bells and whistles for later. I know it is always tempting to add one more little “nice” feature here and there which sometimes the users will not really use at all.
2. Make the experience like a friendly conversation. I find this point a new way at looking at the user interface. Basically, all it is suggesting is that the UI must be easy and pleasant to use requiring the least amount of work from the user. The UI must guide the user to the usage of your program rather than being a hindrance.
3. Keep it simple. One thing I really like about this point is when it mentions “don’t have three ways to do something when one will do”. I suppose this makes more sense from the user’s point of view. It possibly minimizes the possibility of getting confused or something like that.

I suggest that you download the document and have a read through. The message that I get is that make the application or program user centric where all the elements of the application are geared towards making sure that the user uses the application to solve a problem which is the main reason why he or she has your software in the first place. That’s all for now, hopefully next time I can share something more related to misvCRM.