Designing Effective Speech Interfaces

Implementation and Evaluation

With the completion of phase four and the design document, you have completed the interface design. You are ready to communicate the design to the programming team. During phase five, you formally evaluate the application and make your final iterations. Refer to Table 11.5 for a list of the tasks involved in this phase. The final deliverables are the evaluation documents, the revised design document, and the application.

Table 11.5 Phase Five: Implementation and Evaluation

Why a “Handoff” Doesn't Work

“Handing off” an interface to a programming team and then not being involved in its implementation is almost a guarantee of usability failure. You will need to stay involved as the interface is implemented. Here are some reasons:

Even if you do a good job with the design document, the programming team will have questions about the interface. You want to be available to them quickly so that they do not “guess” at the answer.

Technical and project issues come up during coding that may require changes to the interface. You want to be available to influence those decisions from a usability point of view.

Evaluate the Application

Evaluate the windows using one or more evaluation techniques, such as a standards review, heuristic evaluation, or walkthrough, discussed previously in this chapter.

Iterate the Design

Make changes to the application based on the ...