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Am 03.08.2015 um 02:50 schrieb Jim Henderson:
> On Sat, 01 Aug 2015 18:21:26 +0200, clipka wrote:
>
>> Support := help with operating the software in conditions not
>> anticipated during the design.
>
> In software these days, design tends to follow implementation - which is
> backwards.
No, actually that's where the software industry started. The truth is
that things have gotten a tad better since then.
(Except in the domain of Open Source Software, where development is
still driven by the developers rather than the users.)
> That's what leads to a lot of broken UIs. No design before
> implementation - the design comes with the implementation, and it follows
> the implementation rather than having a UX plan before the implementation
> starts.
This thread started about Microsoft, didn't it?
You're certainly looking in the wrong direction there. Just look at
Office 2010, and the loads of UI analysis and research went into it. Or
Microsoft's primary programming language and environment, Visual Studio
and C#, which in my book is as close as anyone has ever gotten to a
programmer's dream.
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On Mon, 03 Aug 2015 09:10:00 +0200, clipka wrote:
> Am 03.08.2015 um 02:50 schrieb Jim Henderson:
>> On Sat, 01 Aug 2015 18:21:26 +0200, clipka wrote:
>>
>>> Support := help with operating the software in conditions not
>>> anticipated during the design.
>>
>> In software these days, design tends to follow implementation - which
>> is backwards.
>
> No, actually that's where the software industry started. The truth is
> that things have gotten a tad better since then.
Yes, that is where it started, but it's still a poor way to build
products.
> (Except in the domain of Open Source Software, where development is
> still driven by the developers rather than the users.)
Very much so.
>> That's what leads to a lot of broken UIs. No design before
>> implementation - the design comes with the implementation, and it
>> follows the implementation rather than having a UX plan before the
>> implementation starts.
>
> This thread started about Microsoft, didn't it?
>
> You're certainly looking in the wrong direction there. Just look at
> Office 2010, and the loads of UI analysis and research went into it. Or
> Microsoft's primary programming language and environment, Visual Studio
> and C#, which in my book is as close as anyone has ever gotten to a
> programmer's dream.
I'm talking about interaction design, not design done by developers.
An interesting read - The Inmates are Running the Asylum, by Alan Cooper
- describes the problem more fully.
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
Le 03/08/2015 09:10, clipka a écrit :
> Office 2010, and the loads of UI analysis and research went into
> it.
When you are used to WinWord since 1995, Office 2010 is a PITA for
usual edition: the style short-cut/rolling selector does not list all
the available style, you have to expand it full size (as a size panel)
and it's not the same list. And the menus are all
"redesigned/reorder"... Reorganising windows of 2 documents is
difficult to have them side by side (and it engages "sync-scroll",
always, which is good for different versions but suck for document
that are not identical but you want to read side by side (such as High
level & low level design))... 3 windows side by side ? forget it, no
more possible (or give me the way to do it: yes, stacked you can have,
but not left/center/right, using the mouse would be cheating )
And installation sticks to activate auto-correction and other
misbehaviour. (I know how to get «, I do not want Word to replace my
input of " with « because it's more fancy... especially when it's
code). And auto-capitalisation of first letter at start of sentence is
bad also for code.
The docx format is painful also: being a zipped xml, but without
internal management of versions, it is hardly compatible with any DCMS
(well, unless each version/commit become a blob by itself, with the
associated problems of disk space and bandwidth).
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2
iJwEAQEIAAYFAlW/js0ACgkQhKAm8mTpkW0ICAP/ew0UtZKcuxUBzUwZrilmbuhA
fgpbMWQWbJKAcU+pMpzvj2vRvQOpu5dMdPX3zyOnmtiaN/fMsU08uY749qW0N3dz
7eMPqdr4n0ePbBo+OYVLMawX9MAMsDhjaOqxwKkfpzayrFO+5/GubhtVtEv6ubBa
hSYlT4zw2i95hA3cl04=
=emCB
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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Am 03.08.2015 um 17:51 schrieb Jim Henderson:
>>> That's what leads to a lot of broken UIs. No design before
>>> implementation - the design comes with the implementation, and it
>>> follows the implementation rather than having a UX plan before the
>>> implementation starts.
>>
>> This thread started about Microsoft, didn't it?
>>
>> You're certainly looking in the wrong direction there. Just look at
>> Office 2010, and the loads of UI analysis and research went into it. Or
>> Microsoft's primary programming language and environment, Visual Studio
>> and C#, which in my book is as close as anyone has ever gotten to a
>> programmer's dream.
>
> I'm talking about interaction design, not design done by developers.
And that's what I'm talking about as well, especially with regards to
Office 2010. (With VS and C# it's a bit blurry, as its users /are/
developers after all; still, the users are not the developers of the
piece of software we're discussing. So when I call it a programmer's
dream, in this sense it's a user's dream, not a developer's dream.)
Unless I'm utterly misunderstanding what you mean by "interaction design".
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On 8/3/2015 6:46 PM, clipka wrote:
> Unless I'm utterly misunderstanding what you mean by "interaction design".
He is in double huff on a diagonal. So it is not surprising. ;-)
--
Regards
Stephen
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Am 03.08.2015 um 17:54 schrieb Le_Forgeron:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Le 03/08/2015 09:10, clipka a écrit :
>> Office 2010, and the loads of UI analysis and research went into
>> it.
>
> When you are used to WinWord since 1995, Office 2010 is a PITA for
> usual edition:
... and that tradition of poorly (if at all) designed UI is exactly what
the developers of Office 2010 wanted to do away with.
I don't like working with Office 2010 myself, for exactly the same
reason; still, you can't argue with two fact: (1) Microsoft put a hell
lot of effort into analyzing user expectation and interaction during the
design of the Office 2010 interface; and (2) for people /not/ accustomed
to the - let's be honest - horrible user interface of prior versions of
MS Office, the Office 2010 user interface is probably quite a good one.
> The docx format is painful also: being a zipped xml, but without
> internal management of versions, it is hardly compatible with any DCMS
> (well, unless each version/commit become a blob by itself, with the
> associated problems of disk space and bandwidth).
As if the prior binary file formats were any better for version
management...
Also, it would be much easier in terms of version management if DCMS had
learned to deal with zipped files already. It's a pretty standard way of
keeping files (or sets thereof) small, so why the Bloops haven't DCMS
learned to unpack them long ago?
In my book, that's poor design of DCMS rather than the Office file
format. As a matter of fact, if it wasn't for the zipping I guess the
DOCX file format would make for a pretty easy format to version manage.
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On Mon, 03 Aug 2015 19:46:08 +0200, clipka wrote:
> Am 03.08.2015 um 17:51 schrieb Jim Henderson:
>
>>>> That's what leads to a lot of broken UIs. No design before
>>>> implementation - the design comes with the implementation, and it
>>>> follows the implementation rather than having a UX plan before the
>>>> implementation starts.
>>>
>>> This thread started about Microsoft, didn't it?
>>>
>>> You're certainly looking in the wrong direction there. Just look at
>>> Office 2010, and the loads of UI analysis and research went into it.
>>> Or Microsoft's primary programming language and environment, Visual
>>> Studio and C#, which in my book is as close as anyone has ever gotten
>>> to a programmer's dream.
>>
>> I'm talking about interaction design, not design done by developers.
>
> And that's what I'm talking about as well, especially with regards to
> Office 2010. (With VS and C# it's a bit blurry, as its users /are/
> developers after all; still, the users are not the developers of the
> piece of software we're discussing. So when I call it a programmer's
> dream, in this sense it's a user's dream, not a developer's dream.)
>
> Unless I'm utterly misunderstanding what you mean by "interaction
> design".
Interaction design = design that implements features that facilitate
useful user interaction, rather than features that are focused on "we
implemented this feature, and here's an interface to use it".
For example, if you have an application that protects web resources, the
interface needs to facilitate protecting web resources - it should not
focus on configuring individual objects that are used to protect those
resources, and leave it to the user to figure out how they are related to
each other.
Tie idea is that there needs to be some elegance and simplicity in the
design. *Most* software "design" is done during development, rather than
preceding it, and so the form follows the interface rather than designing
how the interface workflow should work, and then using that as
scaffolding for the underlying code that takes care of the details.
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On 03/08/2015 08:10 AM, clipka wrote:
> Or
> Microsoft's primary programming language and environment, Visual Studio
> and C#, which in my book is as close as anyone has ever gotten to a
> programmer's dream.
Um... hello there. :-}
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On 8/3/2015 7:46 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Interaction design = design that implements features that facilitate
> useful user interaction, rather than features that are focused on "we
> implemented this feature, and here's an interface to use it".
>
> For example, if you have an application that protects web resources, the
> interface needs to facilitate protecting web resources - it should not
> focus on configuring individual objects that are used to protect those
> resources, and leave it to the user to figure out how they are related to
> each other.
>
> Tie idea is that there needs to be some elegance and simplicity in the
> design.*Most* software "design" is done during development, rather than
> preceding it, and so the form follows the interface rather than designing
> how the interface workflow should work, and then using that as
> scaffolding for the underlying code that takes care of the details.
I think I disagree with that concept.
For me, education is King or Queen. (I am an equal opportunity know it all.)
When you start simplifying complex software to the extent you think the
man on the Clapham omnibus can operate it without any training. You are
doing no one any favours. I learnt a word recently. It is nerfed. And
that is the Micro$oft way.
Form should follow function, not the other way around.
IMO
--
Regards
Stephen
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Am 03.08.2015 um 21:47 schrieb Stephen:
> I think I disagree with that concept.
> For me, education is King or Queen. (I am an equal opportunity know it
> all.)
> When you start simplifying complex software to the extent you think the
> man on the Clapham omnibus can operate it without any training. You are
> doing no one any favours. I learnt a word recently. It is nerfed. And
> that is the Micro$oft way.
> Form should follow function, not the other way around.
> IMO
Good old Bauhaus tradition.
On the other hand, the Bauhaus designers meant something different when
referring to "form" and "function". To them, "function" included
ergonomic requirements (such as, you should be able to hold an electric
razor in one hand conveniently, and the power cord should be placed in
such a way that you won't strangle yourself with it), while "form" was
strictly limited to aesthetic aspects.
I think one branch of software development that's doing a pretty good
job in terms of User Experience is the gaming industry. Look at what
they do when it comes to graphics configuration: They usually provide
you with a simple 1-dimensional "quality" setting to balance the
graphics quality vs. speed, hiding the technical details of what each
setting actually means in technical terms. At the same time they do
provide an additional interface for people who think they know better,
allowing them to tweak all the little details. (And often there's even a
third tier of technical tweakables, for which there is no user interface
except a config file.)
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