Role: User-Interface Designer
This role coordinates the design of the user interface. This includes gathering usability requirements and prototyping candidate user-interface designs to meet those requirements.
Role Sets: Developers
Relationships

Design the User InterfacePrototype the User-InterfaceNavigation MapUser-Interface PrototypeUser-Interface_Designer
Modifies
Process Usage
Main Description

The user-interface designer role is not responsible for implementing the user interface. Instead, this role focuses on the design and the "visual shaping" of the user interface, by:

  • capturing requirements on the user interface, including usability requirements
  • building user-interface prototypes
  • involving other stakeholders of the user interface, such as users, in usability reviews and use testing sessions
  • reviewing and providing the appropriate feedback on the final implementation of the user interface, as created by other developers; that is, designers and implementers.
Staffing
Skills

The User-Interface Designer may come from a creative and visual arts background instead of a business, engineering or computer science background. The User-Interface Designer focuses on the usability of the system.

Assignment Approaches

Especially in larger projects, a separate group of people is often formed in which everyone plays the user-interface designer role. This group focuses primarily on the user interface and the usability aspects of the system. This is important because of the following:

  • the skills required by a user-interface designer often need to be improved and optimized for the current project and application type, with potentially unique usability requirements, and this requires both time and focus
  • the risk of "mixed allegiances" must be delimited; that is, the user-interface designer needs to be influenced more by usability considerations than implementation considerations
More Information
Concepts

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