Notes
Rhyme and Reason
One of the mistakes I made early on was assuming that technical understandings can extensively limit how I design something. That is, saying “oh, it’s harder to do that way, so I’m fine with how it looks and don’t want to bother changing the look”, in cases where I could’ve made some possible changes with just a little extra work.Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some cases where it would take an *incredible* amount of work to get something even started. I’m referring to the technical mindset of function over form - as long as it works, programmers/geeks tend to not be concerned with the application or site’s appearance and how users relate to it.
Sometimes, there is also the assumption, when end users (“average Joe” is often mentioned) have problems using it, that oh, the user just didn’t read the docs. That is, when a well-experienced non-technical user doesn’t understand something that an engineer didn’t spend any effort to do usability testing on, it’s somehow ALL THE USER’S FAULT.
This is a faulty assumption. In some cases, the developer/engineer doesn’t know - they have good intentions and probably put a lot of blood, sweat, and hard work into it. But when you’ve designed it and know how it works from top to bottom, sure, it’s easy as pie to use.
It’s hard to design a good interface. Some feel the solution is BIG BUTTONS. That doesn’t do it. Instead, simplicity and hierarchy are the key. Not just visual hierarchy, since making some buttons bigger than others won’t do it. Instead, hiding less-used features, and organizing features based on their purpose, importance, and value. In some cases, even things like planning and studies can reveal what features are needed or not. Companies like Microsoft often feel that they need to jam every possible feature into their UI, while companies like Apple do it right - hiding features, or doing the bare minimum set of features, but doing them very well and adding the extra attention to detail.
Software development shouldn’t be dictated by things like “lets add as many features as we can!”, adding extra features that aren’t used by most people, or trying to put it all in the UI. Instead, focus on making sure that you have only what your users need, and that every button is in the proper place, and everything works well.
And, for the love of cannoli, do extensive user-testing on it first.
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