In this case, the ammo you need can be found by presenting a fair and
balanced rating system. The battle between marketing and engineering
is not a new one. Both sides have valid points. There's no point in
selling software that doesn't work and there's no point in writing
great software that nobody ever uses. A balance must be maintained.
The trick is to sit down with your design and with the requested
marketing features and throw it all on a fair scale. Aesthetics do
have a place on the scale, provided they don't overbalance the
functionality.
Here is a link to a good guide for rating a user interface:
http://mime1.marc.gatech.edu/MM_Tools/UIRF.html
The elements will weight slightly differently, depending on your
market. For example, in the gaming industry, flash and dazzle is much
more important than in embedded systems. Product life is another
factor. If you are designing a product intended to have a life of only
a few months, aesthetics start to carry much more weight than if your
product is intended to last for ten years, at which point ease-of-use
becomes much more important. Flash sells lots of product fast, but not
for long. Ease-of-use sells product more slowly, but leads to steady
growth.
When using the rating tool, it is important to get ratings from a
reasonably large and varied group. If you only ask the people in your
own department, your results are less valid, and, therefore, less
effective as ammunition.
Present a clear and fair analysis of precisely why and how the product
(and sales of the product) would suffer by using Design B rather than
Design A, and you will find your case much more solid than a speech
about design principles. Use the rating form and get some input from
some people who are considered to be part of your target market, as
well as from engineers and salespeople. This is something that you and
your marketing people can work on together, thereby making this a team
effort, rather than a war. Users have a way of surprising you.
Everyone stands to learn something valuable from this sort of
exercise.
From the way you ask your question, I'm betting that you are a
developer who is being asked to sacrifice "functional" features in
favor of "flash". From my experience, sitting down with the people
making the demands and forcing them to define *why* they want a
particular feature is a good route. Often, they have had a request
from Customer. They decide on a solution and present the solution to
you as a requirement. Once you know what the real problem is, you can
often offer an alternative that satisfies everyone. For example:
1. Customer goes to Marketing and says "I don't like the interface. It
doesn't look modern enough."
2. Marketing comes to Development and says "We have a requirement that
the interface look more like Windows XP, with the fading menus and the
talking puppy. We need some sort of animated talking character or we
can't sell this thing!"
If Development makes Marketing tell them what the problem really is
(interface does not feel modern enough), Development may be able to do
something much less impactful, like apply a metallic theme to existing
screen elements.
Here are some other links that may give you some support in the points
you want to make:
The Elements of Interface Design
http://www.edtech.vt.edu/edtech/id/interface/
A discussion on good GUI Design principles
http://axp16.iie.org.mx/Monitor/v01n03/ar_ihc2.htm |
