User experience is one of those fundamental dependencies on which all applications should be built.  Whether you are developing local-running apps for desktops, or for the web at large, on mobile devices, televisions, etc., it is very important to steer your programs in such a way that they interact well with humans.  The topic of user experience is an expansive one and there are a plethora of books delving into the philosophy and implementation of UX.  While we’re not able to go into great depth here, there are a few little tricks to remember when designing for the user experience, namely–be intuitive, be unobtrusive, be helpful.

1. Be intuitive – is a bit of a nebulous statement, but I like the definition, “direct perception of truth, fact….independent of any reasoning process”¹.  This is another way of saying, “it just makes sense”, and if you want to connect to your visitors, that is what your web pages should do, make sense.  They should have an easy-to-understand structure that also navigates easily between the different pages within the site.  The ultimate purpose of the site should seem obvious to users and the information presented should effectively support that purpose.  There are many ways to achieve an intuitive user experience, and it is definitely more of an art than a science.
2. Be unobtrusive – being unobtrusive naturally flows from being intuitive.  There is nothing more annoying than a site that annihilates the senses with a bunch of videos, flash-based advertisements, and tons of links (usually to more advertisements).  There is nothing inherently wrong with your site supporting videos and advertising links, but there is a reason why Google’s adWords and other ad link vendors have intentionally ad links to look like anything but ad links.  Here is where it is important to ask yourself whether a video or other interactive element is improving the user experience of your site or hampering it.
3. Be helpful – even with all the bells and whistles that web developers can insert into a site, the text is still the most important element of most sites.  In fact, the interactive content should be supporting the informative text.  When the two work together effectively, the user will feel like they were assisted in some way–whether it’s to find your business, get information on a topic, or buy a product they were looking for. When a visitor views your site as helpful or useful, then chances are that when they leave (which is later than sooner, we hope), they will come back time and again.

Designing for the user experience is itself an intuitive process, one that is difficult to put into words. There are so many ways to develop a site that leads to a great user experience, and loads of philosophy on the subject to help guide you. Ultimately, a great way to test UX is to let several different people experience the development site and listen closely to their feedback.  Their responses will let you know if you need to make some changes or not.

1 – courtesy of dictionary.com

All web applications basically start with two types of data, an HTML format that makes it presentable in a web browser, and a CSS file that tells the HTML how it should look.  With these two structures, you have everything you need for a web page–but it will probably be a pretty boring one.  What really makes a page come to life and deliver the functionality that everyone has come to expect from a web page, is Javascript.  Powering user interactions via JavaScript has limitless possibilities, but can be a very lengthy process that leads to some pretty arcane-looking code.  That was before jQuery was unleashed in January of 2006.

jQuery - write less, do more

The jQuery Project was born from the desire to package up large pieces of JavaScript code with a specific purpose and modularize them to make them easier to work with.  Through this technique of abstraction, it has become much easier for web developers to provide the type of interactivity that modern web users have come to expect.  jQuery helps reduce site production time and also catalyzes more creative use of animation, effects, and behind-the-scenes browser validation features.

jQuery itself has been abstracted by a variety of teams who have created functional libraries to suit their own development needs.  Two of these, jQuery UI and jQuery TOOLS, are large-scale libraries dedicated to user interaction and animations.  There are tons of other more-focused projects, such as David DeSandro’s jQuery Masonry that organizes photos of various sizes into a grid-like layout.  Another very cool project is flowplayer, which is a customizable video player that utilizes the jQuery TOOLS library.  With jQuery, web applications become more robust and developers are given a better opportunity to push the boundaries of interactive page effects.

The movement toward dynamic web designs that change to fit a variety of rendering devices is happening incredibly fast.  Libraries, such as Bootstrap from Twitter, are being packaged with this in mind.  Bootstrap incorporates the computable elements of CSS3 with HTML5 and jQuery to establish a web template that developers will find is easy to work with and customize.  Libraries such as Bootstrap help reduce the overhead of building a responsive design framework, so that designers can concentrate on bringing the dynamic elements to life that make CSS3 and HTML5 so special.

At the core of responsive design is a flexible, fluid grid system.  A fluid grid system is built on the concept of dividing a page or application into n-number of cells and then allowing those cells to render differently with various screen sizes or orientations.  The engine of a fluid grid system is a percentage-based CSS stylesheet for the grid cells.  There are several stylesheets available that are driven with a fluid grid in mind, and each has it’s own flavor.  You can peruse a wide variety of these on Splashnology’s “Responsive Web Design Toolbox: 50 Handy Tools and Services“.

Having a mobile extension is becoming such a vital piece of a company’s web presence, that it only makes sense to blend desktop and mobile applications into a single entity.  Getting involved with Responsive Design and becoming familiar with it’s nuances is the first step toward building a device-independent web presence.

Websites are built and used for a variety of purposes.  Content Management Systems function to accommodate this variety, which makes building and maintaining a website more uniform.  That being said, some Content Management Systems are better suited for certain types of sites.  A site that contains flower packages for a florist is going to have different functionality than a news site with several reporters submitting articles for publication.  Both sites can be built through the same CMS just fine, but the latter requires a more sophisticated interaction between the server and the site’s users.

Now, the editors for this XYZ news site could just have reporters submit their articles in an email or through some other internal document exchange, like a printed copy on the editor’s desk.  Wouldn’t it be better if that internal document exchange occurred directly through the website, like an intranet that can be accessed through the internet!?

Enter Plone, a CMS more than ten years in the making that can function as a fully internalized intranet with various departments in the company operating at different user levels.  Plone can also be used as a platform for a website that is accessible to anyone with an internet connection (click here to see some example sites built on Plone), or as a combination of the two like our XYZ news site.  What differentiates Plone from other Content Management Systems is it’s ability to manage user privileges, handle user files, and execute workflows.

Most any CMS provides user privilege settings, but Plone gives the site administrator the ability to create several different access settings.  This becomes very important if you are deploying Plone as an intranet, as different departments will require unique account settings.  You don’t want the research department to see accounting documents, nor do you want to clog up the accounting department’s dashboard with research memos.  Plone also makes it easy for users to setup folders for file storage, much like one would do on their PC’s hard drive.  These folders and files can then be shared amongst a user group–or with several groups if the administrator allows it.  Finally, Plone has a very sophisticated built-in workflow management system, which allows projects to work through the chain of command.  The research department can submit it’s initial report to management, who can then review the submitted, unpublished report, and even submit that to other executive committees.  This whole process can be managed every step of the way by the Plone site administrator.

Plone is definitely a CMS platform worth looking into if your company needs a highly-functional intranet or website that is very secure (did we mention that the FBI uses Plone).  For more in-depth information about the functionality of Plone, take a lot at the official Plone 4 User Manual.