GUIDe process model
In customer projects, we use our GUIDe process model (Goals – User Interface Design – Implementation), with which a software product is matched effectively to the real-life situations that the users encounter daily.
An essential tool in the GUIDe model is the series of realistic ‘screenshots’ of the system, which visualize the requirements specification into a form that can be tested before implementation. The required features and the data as well as the optimal boundaries for the system are all visible in the series of screens that are the result of GUI design. Because we design the user interface right at the beginning of the project before any implementation takes place, we can test the GUI design and its suitability to the intended use so early that all the required changes can be made just to the paper prototypes of the user interface.
In addition to ensuring the usefulness and usability of the system by optimizing its user interface to the use situations, our simulation-based design method (GDD) is a tool for eliminating vagueness at the specification stage and reducing the number of change requests coming from the customer afterwards. A user interface specification, created at the beginning of the project using our GDD design method and depicted from the user’s point of view, is a comprehensible communication tool between the customer, the supplier and the end-users. Once the user interface specification is finished, everybody is clear on what kind of a system the customer is ordering.
The top of the navigation bar on the left sums up the key phases of the GUIDe model: definition of the use cases that are based on realistic use situations, simulation-based design of the user interface and testing. These phases at the beginning of a software project produce a user interface specification, depicted from the user’s point of view. It visualizes the requirements specification, makes it more unambiguous and sets requirements for designing the implementation.