Blueprint Usability

GUI Usability Training

For developers designing desktop software who want to make their interfaces simple to use, “GUI usability training” is a 2-day immersion seminar that gives delegates hands-on experience with several usability tools and techniques. Unlike shorter introductory courses, this in-depth seminar covers the complete design and development lifecycle.

There are many books and courses dedicated to usability, but few of these provide the ‘big picture’. The aim of this course is to help you design better products and software by showing how the various usability tools and techniques fit into real-world design and development processes.

This course is based on the ISO 9241-210 standard for human-centered design. Over the two-day course, delegates engage in practical design activities that help them discover the usability secrets behind product and software development. The activities cover the full design lifecycle, including business requirements, customer needs, software interface design, prototyping and usability testing.

This seminar is led by Dr. David Travis who has over 20 years experience in the field of user-centered design.

I found this excellent course most thought provoking and inspiring. I'm already thinking of ways to work user-centered design into our current processes and methodology.

Course Delegate

Duration

This is a two-day seminar.

Need to convince your boss? Download and edit this approval letter. (MS Word format, 256 kb).

What you will learn

  • How to describe a user-centered design framework that supports end-to-end usability involvement.
  • Share information about customers and their tasks in an engaging and usable way.
  • Discover ways to develop cheap, throwaway prototypes to get quick and frequent feedback from your users.
  • How to specify usability metrics to make sure your product is neither under- nor over-engineered.
  • Apply discount usability techniques, such as Nielsen's heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthroughs.
  • Learn about different methods for usability testing and when to apply them.

Detailed lesson plan for this GUI usability training seminar (pdf format, 236 kb).

Here's what people say about this course:

  • "Every company that develops software would benefit from this course. It truly focuses the mind on the importance of usability".
  • "I feel confident about the new techniques I’ve learnt. We were given an excellent overview - now I can’t wait to get going, putting it into practice!"
  • "I liked being able to try out the techniques and methods. I feel I learnt a lot more by taking part in these exercises than just reading through notes."
  • "Lots of good examples of good/bad usability from real life, both GUI-based and others."
  • "This course gave me the confidence and training to assess the quality of my work."
  • "Good balance of theory, participation and humour."

This seminar is aimed at:

  • Software developers who want to learn techniques for designing better interfaces.
  • Business analysts who want quick and effective tools for communicating requirements.
  • Interface designers who want to learn methods for testing and evaluating their designs.
  • Project managers who want a full lifecycle process for introducing usability into their project.
  • Marketing managers who want to find out about the business and brand benefits of a usability focus.
  • Program directors who want to understand the principles of human-centered design.

Questions about the course?

Call us on 312-238-9490 or e-mail your question to info@blueprintusability.com