1/2-day Workshop: Saturday, May 5 from 9:00 to 12:30

Intuitive images: creating and evaluating usable graphics with Patrick Hofmann

In our end-user manuals, web pages, portable digital devices, and interface designs, our pictures always seem to play a subordinate role to our words. We find them too hard to illustrate; we encounter too many resolution and incompatibility issues, and we can never seem to make them attractive enough, meaningful enough, and usable enough.

In this tutorial, we will get very graphic with these challenges. We will spend a fun-filled session sharing common problems, evaluating your existing design challenges, visualizing different types of information, and working on some innovative hands-on exercises.

In the end, the tutorial's goal is to help both information developers and usability professionals evaluate and boost the visual appeal and usability of the information that they produce, and to empower them with simple tips and tricks to become visually and graphically savvy.

In the past, this presentation has attracted more managers and information specialists than illustrators and graphic designers, because it reveals that the former group is clearly vital to the development of usable visual information, and offers solutions that benefit both 'textual' designers and 'visual' designers alike.

Participants - please bring a pencil with an eraser!!

Workshop Outline:

Part 1: Surveying the problems with pictures: Let's share and address our specific problems with the visuals, pictures, images, and graphics files that we place in our information. Let's identify what problems are common, what has led to them, and how can we solve them. Furthermore, let's highlight the elements of design theory that can address such problems, by improving contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.

Part 2: Templating your pictures: Just like building style sheets and standards for our textual information, we should build standard sizes and standard attributes for our visuals. Whether our images include screenshots, flowcharts, maps, illustrations, or conceptual diagrams, we can create templates that standardise and professionalise our images to make them consistent throughout our information. In this section, we will discuss several scenarios and types of pictures, and perform a templating exercise that addresses the attributes of graphic design that affect usability: including typography, layout, and line weights.

Part 3: Showing what you mean: Even with the most effectively applied picture templates, our pictures are not effective if we don't convey the real message of the picture. We will discuss: - What is the picture trying to say? - How can we visualise it to better address the needs of our audience? - What strategies can we use to best apply "a focus of attention" in our picture? Just like the words in our information, we must craft ways of amplifying the meaning in our pictures while keeping the message brief and succinct. In this section, we will go through a series of visual improvement exercises, to identify usability problems with different visuals and how we can solve them.

Part 4: Improving the usability of screenshots: How can we take the principles learned earlier and apply them to our screenshots? As the most frequently used visual in our documents, what strategies can we use to improve the scan-ability and read-ability of our screenshots, and make them as easy to understand as possible? What tools can we use to generate and modify them? In this section, we will work through several different scenarios in a screenshot usability exercise, which we will evaluate together.

Part 5: Improving the usability of flowcharts: Often considered more daunting than screenshots, flowcharts can often contain too much elements, too many messages, and too many reading directions. In this section, we will discuss: - What can we do to improve our flowcharts or diagrammatic maps? - How do best create "a focus of attention"? - How do we best de-construct a flowchart before re-constructing it? - How can we make it as uni-directional and symmetrical as possible? What tools can we use to create them most effectively?

Directions
The Embassy Suites Hotel is located two miles south of Los Angeles International Airport.

From the 405 Fwy, take the Imperial Hwy exit. Go west toward the ocean past Sepulveda Blvd. Turn left on California Street and immediately left again on East Imperial Avenue. The Embassy Suites Hotel is on the right.

Parking is free.

Schedule
8:30: Check-in
9:00: Workshop begins
12:30: Workshop concludes

Bagels, fruit and coffee will be served

Cost

STC members:		$50
Non-members:		$75

Make a telephone reservation: leave your name and phone number at 310-535-6558.

Email treasurer@lastc.org; make sure to include your name and number of reservations.

Please make your reservation by Thursday, May 3, at 9 pm.

For other information, contact Betsy Suttle, Programs VP, at programs@lastc.org