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Srini

Posted via email from Everyday Product Management

Windows Live Writer – Update

I just downloaded and installed the Beta version of Windows Live Writer 1.0. The interface had improved a lot and it look a lot cleaner. The installation was quick and i was able to configure my blog in wordpress effortlessly.

Due to increased work pressure and family commitments i was not able to continue my contribution to this blog. But moving forward i am hoping that i will be able to write at least 2 posts per week on some thing interesting.

UI Design – Representing Mandatory Fields ?

Currently, I am into revamping the UI of a retail product. The current version of the product is a based on client-sever architecture and has some watt inconsistent look and feel. Hence, I am into defining UI guidelines to bring about the much required consistency and to make it easy to learn (ie users must be able to self-learn the functionality without much help and without referring to on-line help)

One of the things on which we (I mean the team) are struck is how to visually represent mandatory field. Visual representation of mandatory fields is important because, if the user fails to define values for a mandatory field he will end up seeing pop-up error messages. This becomes even more cumbersome when the user leave more than one mandatory fields, in such a case multiple pop-up may have to be displayed.

Before we jump into the options let us look at how they are represented in products like SAP and Great Plains:

In SAP, the mandatory field is represented by a small tick mark inside the field. The good thing about SAP is the the tick mark disappears when a value is entered.

Whereas in Great Plains, the same is represented  as given in the image below ie the field labels are marked in ‘Red’ color and in italics:

Options such as making the field label ‘Bold‘ or  underlining the field label or using an asterisk at the end of label are some of choice we looked at. We even thought of giving a different color for the field (such as the outline or background). However, we are yet to arrive at a decision. My only concern about playing with the font properties of the field label spoil the look and feel. Having a tick mark similar to SAP is out of question as I am not sure if the same can be achieved using the technology used for developing the product

Any one encountered such a situation and any suggestions on what is a good way to represent mandatory fields’?

Windows Live Writer

It has been a long time since i made any posting to this blog. However, i just started using ‘Windows Live Writer’, which is a blogging tool. To begin with it looks neat and clean, easy to use, the whole setup process went thorugh without any problems.

Yet to use some of its feature and hence will post more about this at a later point of time.

Turn around Story of Yahoo!

This article from Business Week gives a good overview of problems faced by Yahoo in 2001.

Inside Yahoo! ..

(The untold story of how arrogance, infighting, and management missteps derailed one of the hottest companies on the Web)

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_21/b3733001.htm

 

Yahoo! Act Two

Two years later Business Week came out with the following article about what made Yahoo to bounce back

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_22/b3835001_mz001.htm

 

Good to read.

ChangeThis :: ChangeThis

Very good Blog and contain lot of reading materials. Look out for ‘Art of the Start’ by Guy Kawasaki. The presentation of these material are too good and makes it easy to read. But not sure why some will go to such an extend and give something for FREE… Do you smell some nice business plan behind this initiative? Then do let me know about it and how the owner of this site is going to sustain in future.

Intuit Business Plans – Early Days

This is an extract from the book ‘Inside Intuit’, the company which had a vision to cater to the SMB space in 80s itself and now a major competitor for Microsoft Business Solution group in the 1-9 user category off the shelf business software.

Lean Programming

“There are many wastes associated with excess documentation: the squandering of time spent creating and reviewing reports, and the unnecessary work involved in change requests and associated evaluations, priority setting and system changes. But the biggest waste of all is that of building the wrong system if the documentation doesn’t correctly and completely capture the user’s requirements“

The above truly reflect the current situation of many organizations. In the name of documentation for future reference,most companies indulge in creating volumes and volumes (or rather mega bytes and mega bytes) of documents, which affects the development process. Just because we have an easy to use tool called ‘MS Word’, should analysts and designers spent too much time in such documentation. Instead I really feel that we should set priorities on what adds value and what does not adds value to the ultimate customer.

Please read through the entire article to understand how some of the goods things followed by the Japanese in manufacturing can be applied to software development.

Some how I had always felt that there is not much difference between manufacturing processes and software development processes. Does this mean we can apply MRP to software development? Why not? I know a way to do it (will publish it at a later point of time)

Project Planning, Evolutionary Delivery & Quality Improvement

A good site with lots of files related to Project Management, Requirement and Priority Management

Usable GUI Design: A Quick Guide

Usable GUI Design: A Quick Guide

Goes back to my earlier interest area on Usability Engineering.