Object-Oriented UX

Mobile first, content first, and objects first

“To me, mobile first simply means forced prioritization. It means think about layout later. Start with a single column “design” (also known as a list), and force yourself to prioritize content and functionality with sequential ranking.

Sometimes, this means having real-deal copy first—particularly when you’re working on a site with a critical mass of evergreen or instructional copy that can be organized, prioritized, analyzed, and updated before design work begins.

But if you are working on a site that is 99 percent instantiated objects (news articles, products, campaigns, donations), there’s no way to build a complete copy deck up front—or ever. Instead of prioritizing actual copy, I have to think in objects.

That’s OOUX: putting object design before procedural action design, and thinking about a system through the lens of the real-world objects in a user’s mental model (products, tutorials, locations), not digital-world actions (search, filter, compare, check out). We determine the actions after first defining the objects, as opposed to the traditional actions-first process that jumps straight into flows, interactions, and features.”

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Navigation

“Persistent navigation might be hidden, hamburgered out of sight when a user is on a small screen. But even on 17-inch monitor, the most beautiful pinned-to-the-top navigation might still get ignored. When a user visits a site for the first time, they often gravitate to the big shiny objects, using the navigation or search bar only as a backup plan. As Val Jencks neatly summed up, “We go to content on the page first. The top navigation is the fire escape.”

If a user is reading a recipe, where might they want to go next? We should anticipate how they might want to explore based on the recipe they are reading, and not leave it up to them to peck through a hierarchical menu or come up with a search term. And we certainly should not leave them with a few “related recipes” and consider our work done. They might want to see all the recipes that the chef has posted. Or maybe they want to see more recipes that use swiss chard, pivoting by ingredient?”

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The Object Mapping Process is detailed in the article. Enjoy!

http://alistapart.com/article/object-oriented-ux