Diseñe para personas

Recuerde que el propósito de cualquier aplicación de software es permitir a un grupo de personas llevar a cabo un conjunto de tareas específicas. De tal forma que lo primero que establecer al diseñar una aplicación es:

  1. quiénes son sus usuarios
  2. lo que quiere permitirles hacer

For example, you may be designing an application that will enable engineers (software, electrical, or mechanical) to create diagrams. You may be designing an application that will enable system administrators to configure and monitor a web server. You may be designing an application that will help elementary school students to learn math.

The important thing is that you know your audience, and you understand both their goals and the tasks necessary to achieve those goals. There are a large number of professional interaction designers who write books and teach courses on design methods that can help with this process, many of which are extremely useful— see the Bibliografía for a selection. Most of these methods, however, boil down to specific ways of understanding your users, understanding the tasks you want to help them accomplish, and finding ways to support those tasks in your application.