Dylan Greene dot com

I'm currently in Sunnyvale, California.  I'll be returning to the DC area in the morning.  I'm doing the sort of work that I enjoy the most: designing software.  

When designing I like to focus on our users and what their goals are.   

Finding the goals is easy: watch your users work and ask Why? 

• Why did you go to that screen? 
• Why did you click there? 
• Why did you open that file? 

Eventually you will narrow down some fundamental goals. 

For example, before I post this blog entry, I will:

1. Run a spell checker on the text
2. Check the links to make sure they are valid
3. Make sure the formatting is okay 

That's three different tasks, with three different purposes. 

Most software would then have these three features:

1. Spell Checker
2. Link Checker
3. Preview (to check the formatting)

However, if you asked me "Why I did each of those things", you'd hear the same answer three times: "I want an error-free blog post" (or, the ever-popular: "I don't want to look like an idiot," which isn't a goal on its own, but is important to keep in mind.) 

To solve my goal, those three features could be optimized down to a single click that did all three. 

Once your users' goals are discovered, it becomes much easier for you to design the user experience of your products.  And don't think this is just for software - this works for everything from advertising design to selecting locations for a popular coffee shop.