GUI Usability
For developers designing desktop software who want to make their interfaces simple to use, “GUI Usability” is a 2-day immersion seminar that gives delegates hands-on experience with several usability tools and techniques. Unlike shorter introductory courses, this in-depth seminar covers the complete design and development lifecycle.
There are dozens of books dedicated to usability, but few of these provide the ‘big picture’. The aim of this course is to help delegates design better products and software by showing how the various usability tools and techniques fit into real-world design and development processes.
Over the two-day course, delegates engage in a practical design activity that helps them discover the usability secrets behind product and software development. The activity (“Mailmerge+”) is to design a new GUI for Microsoft Word’s “Mail Merge” feature. The activity covers the full design lifecycle, including business requirements, customer needs, product and software design, prototyping and usability testing. This seminar is led by Dr. David Travis who has over 20 years experience in the field of user centred design.
"I found this excellent course most thought provoking and inspiring. I'm already thinking of ways to work UCD into our current processes and methodology."
– Sally Morales, BUPA.
Duration
This is a two-day seminar.
You will learn how to
- Describe a user centred design framework that supports end-to-end usability involvement.
- Share information about customers and their tasks in an engaging and usable way.
- Develop cheap, throwaway prototypes to get quick and frequent feedback from your users.
- Specify usability metrics to make sure your product is neither under- nor over-engineered.
- Apply discount usability techniques, such as Nielsen's heuristic evaluation.
- Learn about different methods for usability testing and when to apply them.
Detailed lesson plan for this seminar (pdf format, 168 kb).
This seminar is aimed at
- Software developers who want to learn techniques for designing better interfaces.
- Business analysts who want quick and effective tools for communicating requirements.
- Interface designers who want to learn methods for testing and evaluating their designs.
- Project managers who want a full lifecycle process for introducing usability into their project.
- Marketing managers who want to find out about the business and brand benefits of a usability focus.
- Website designers who want to understand the principles of human-centred design.
Price and availability
In-house seminar
We bring this course to you and run it for a fixed fee no matter where you are. Prices from £240/delegate + VAT (assuming 12 delegates).
To book an in-house seminar, phone us on 020 7917 9535, e-mail us at or use the fax back form in our brochure.
Vote for a public course
If you want us to run this seminar as a public course, just click on the button below. Once we get 8 like-minded individuals we'll organise a public course and let you know.
Alternatively, try our public web usability training course, which covers a lot of the same material.
What delegates say about this seminar
- "Every company that develops software would benefit from this course. It truly focuses the mind on the importance of usability". —Michele Thorns, Sage UK Ltd.
- "I feel confident about the new techniques I’ve learnt. We were given an excellent overview — now I can’t wait to get going, putting it into practice!"
- "I liked being able to try out the techniques and methods. I feel I learnt a lot more by taking part in these exercises than just reading through notes."
- "Lots of good examples of good/bad usability from real life, both web-based and others."
- "This course gave me the confidence and training to assess the quality of my work."
- "Good balance of theory, participation and humour."
Customisation
We can customise this seminar by taking a specific new development within your company and relating the GUI design lifecycle to it. The seminar then provides a 2-day "usability hot-house" for the new development.
Money back guarantee
On completion of a public seminar, if you don't think that the training will help you do your job better, we will refund your registration fee in full.
More information
Detailed lesson plan for this particular seminar (pdf format, 168 kb).
2008 Course Brochure, describing all our usability training seminars (pdf format, 796 Kb).
Back to the usability training seminars index page.