Object Oriented UX in 5 Minutes

Object Oriented User Experience (OOUX) is a philosophy for designing complex software applications or websites. Oftentimes, designers feel overwhelmed by the size and scope facing them and don't know where to begin. They get tied up in task flows while ignoring the big picture; the structure. OOUX is here to help.

OOUX is a movement started by Sophia V. Prater of www.rewiredux.com and www.ooux.com. She coaches and trains designers and product teams to focus on modeling the objects in the users' mental models, and package those objects neatly in intuitive UI designs. At the core of Sophia's ORCA process are four key questions that are necessary to dig a solid foundation. They are:

O - What are the Objects

R - What are the Relationships among the objects

C - What Calls to action can the user take on each object

A - What Attributes compose each object

Without answers to these questions, your product runs the risk of being unintuitive and inconsistent.

As an example, let's design a music marketplace using OOUX...

1. What are the Objects?

Objects aren't components. We're not talking about buttons and nav bars. We're talking things that exist in the real world. What is the user coming here for? Your list might look something like this:

• Songs

• Artists

• Albums

• Playlists

• Podcasts

• Episodes

• User Profiles

You don't need to get too granular. You just need the big ones.

2. What are the Relationships among the objects?

Can you easily explain how each object relations to every other object? Relationships often describe a parent/child relationship, a one-to-many relationship, or a cause and effect relationship.

A Song...

• is on one album

• has one artist

• can exist on many playlists

An Artist...

• has one or more albums

• has one or more songs

• can have many playlists

An Album...

• has one or more songs

• has one artist

Playlist

• can have many songs from many albums

3. What Calls to Action can the user take on each object?

What can the user do to each object? These often appear on the interface as buttons, but can also be initiated by other interactions. Common CTAs include: Add, Edit, Delete, Share, Send, Buy, Like, etc. Searching, sorting, and filtering on not considered CTAs because because the data itself isn't changing; merely being presented differently.

I can ________ a Song

• PLAY

• DOWNLOAD

• SAVE TO LIBRARY

• ADD TO PLAYLIST

• SHARE

I can ______ an Artist

• FOLLOW

• REPORT

• SHARE

I can ______ an Album

• PLAY

• DOWNLOAD

• SHARE

I can ______ a Playlist

• PLAY

• DOWNLOAD

• SHARE

4. What attributes compose each object?

Which data points are intrinsic to each objects character and identity? When I say "Song," what do I really mean in terms of the information shown on screen? Attributes can be either core content (think: name, color, description) or metadata (think: date, time, total number of x). Often, objects compose other objects. In this case, note those as nested objects.

A Song consists of ______.

• Song name

• Duration

• # of Plays

• Audio file

• Music video

• 1 Album

• 1 Artist

An Artist consists of ______.

• Name

• Band Photo

• Verified status

• Biography

• # of Monthly listeners

• Many Songs

• 1 Artist

Conclusion: Sketching with Object Models

Now that we have the building blocks of each object, we can begin sketching and creating wireframes of the different instances in which they'll appear in our app. The illustration below shows how albums might present as tiles, or as a detail page. In both cases, the data that comprises them calls back to the same object model.

An Album

• PLAY

• DOWNLOAD

• SHARE

• Album Name

• Album artwork

• Year released

• Duration

• # of Songs

• 1 or more Songs

• 1 Artist

For more info and resources about OOUX, go to www.rewiredux.com and www.ooux.com.