Stray comments from How few clicks Mac trashcan problem (Trashcan to eject) Good / fast / cheap - pick one "QA is not an option" - David Luke of USWeb/CKS Distinct Team Members (at USWeb/CKS) Business Developer Account Manager Project Manager Technical Lead ] Programmer ]-- May be peers of the project manager or Creative Art Director ] report to the project manager Creative Designer Copywriter UI Designer Usability Engineer Media Production ] HTML Production ]-- marry the GUI with the technology Quality Assurance Skills of a Project Manager Knows the technology (learn it!) Confident Know the client's business/industry Career-minded Diplomatic Charismatic Honest & open Reasonable (don't "double book" - the schedule must be open) Logical/factual Teacher -- educate client Communications Review site Frequently update the schedule Weekly status meeting and report Meeting minutes -- review decisions made, not blow by blow (slows things down overmuch) Email -- create aliases / use subject lines appropriately Acrobat (PDF is a great mechanism to share documents/notes) Daily contact with client Track issues/ risks / actions Fit criteria -- how do we know if we met the needs? Weighing requirements: 4 must have 3 nice to have 2 frill 1 ignore Brent C. J. Britton MIT M.A. Lawyer Do not: Confuse the public as to the source of goods The big rule: Know thy customer Know yourself Know the deal Tip: Find a lawyer that has written code. "There's no better career for a burnt out programmer than a contract lawyer" "Who owns what at the end of the day?" "The linking framing slippery slope of doom" "Parody has solid grounding" - you have a constitutional right to make fun of people "Fair use harbor" "If you copy, you infringe" "We reward creative works" brittonlaw.com -- HTML is the most widely distributed document type on the planet. - Tim Bray / Observation WHERE DO STANDARDS COME FROM ISO - Switzerland 2-3, 7-8 years -- slow -- dictatorial IETF - Credit IMAP POP DNS - Anyone can go and talk W3C - Works faster, pay to play or invited expert -- All are to some degree dictatorial -- Jakob Nielsen digital divide: get everyone online NOT - haves versus havenots IS - cans cannots no meaningful error recovery on the web complexity "you are doomed" proposal glamorous website $12,000 - "your site is too slow" autoresponder experience matters magnetic type in field reliance on analysts and fads data data data guess guess guess "overly cunning marketing" satisfied customers are more important that anything number of people who visit x number conversion rate% get people to visit get people to use "Never ever ask users what they want!" 45% LOSS OF HUMAN MASTERY OVER TOOLS The only way to recapture users is through iterative design "All websites are bad" Amazon.com as of a year ago was good. 5 people, get results, there's usually so much to change you can stop TOP 3 TIPS FOR TESTING [TASK ORIENTED!] Representative users Representative tasks You shut up