User Interface Design for Software Developers - Update
For anyone in the Boston area I will be speaking tomorrow at MIT on user interface design for software developers.
The meeting will be held in a classroom in MIT's Stata Center, Bldg. 32 Room 144, onThursday, October 19th. Catered food from Anna’s Taqueria will be provided. Yumm.
Networking at 6:30 and the talk at 7:00pm. Please RSVP
Many interface designs aren't created by designers but rather by developers.
So why do so many developers create hard to use software?
One of the reasons is that developers approach problems in a very different way.
A developer will typically take a problem and deconstruct it down to the functional components that can solve the problem. This may sometimes be a list of features, functions, objects or components. The interface tends to be data and object driven. The interface is a mechanism to test out the functional aspects of the application.
Users on the other hand don't think of the application construct or the inner workings. Users rarely construct a mental model of the application. Instead they simply know what they want in terms of a task and they try to identify appropriate features to complete that task.
Developers build software by solving problems using "Object Oriented Thinking"
Users solve problems using "Task or Goal Oriented Thinking."