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I think his "longbeards" actually do quite well on iOS where it says "Do X just SO" and you get a pretty decent design if you just follow the 1-2-3s
But the real problem is that most shops can't measure usability in a fine-grained way. And yet everyone does have some idea that it's really important. Consequently they are bamboozled by anyone who purports to have such expertise.
For the most part, so-called usability experts are really just graphic design snobs. They have a certain aesthetic they like, which is arguably "cleaner" and has more white space. So the page might be better organized but that's nowhere near what true usability is.
Real usability work is about trying to understand how the user is thinking. What their mental model is. What their goals are. In what context they are trying to achieve a task. Not just how their eye is scanning for information.
Anyway my point is, when it comes to real usability work, programmers are just as (un)qualified as graphic designers, marketers, or any other kind of "product" person. Arguably the designer is supposed to have a larger toolbox when it comes to possible graphic treatments, but the programmer also has a toolbox of quantitative methods, experimentation, and a deep understanding of how the system could work.
There is really no mystery about UI. Yes, it requires skill and a deep knowledge of how humans process information, and even a touch of design genius. But the real problem is that most shops can't measure usability in a fine-grained way. And yet everyone does have some idea that it's really important. Consequently they are bamboozled by anyone who purports to have such expertise. For the most part, so-called usabilit…
UX designer = "mental space"
I end up with things like "arrive at site", "create objectX", "view & edit objectY" as the next level nodes and keep going down levels from there. Since a mind map is a tree structure, it really helps to visually map out decisions a user will make. Following a branch is the user making a decision of what to spend their limited attention on. If you are improperly the distributing number of decisions a user must juggle at a particular node or repeating a lot of functionality in different areas, you will instantly visually see it.
Then when you start translating to code, if it's M-V-C architecture like most webapps, the first order nodes are the names of your controller functions.
What methodologies do other people use?
The part about linguistic experience was especially good. I have thought for some time now that all configuration files, command-line options etc. should have simple and clearly defined syntax. Some already do. My dislike of weird, inconsistent and complex syntax (and semantics) is so severe that I've semi-intentionally not learnt shell-scripting, Perl or Ruby.
Sadly, there are very few systems that I feel I get a good linguistic experience(TM)(R) out of. I have come to think that GUIs as we know them are based on fundamentally flawed ideas - pointing and grunting - instead of using a language, the feature that separates humans from other animals.
I really wish good textual UIs (there aren't many that I know, but I'm using one for writing this comment: GNU/Emacs) became the norm, instead of the randomness of the contemporary GUIs or the bass-arckwardness of shell-like languages. I think UIs should aim to become Turing-complete, completely self-documenting and reflective. The distinction between a function, a program and an user interface is in my opinion mostly arbitrary and harmful, creating an unnecessary wall of misunderstandings between the author of a program and its users.
I hear a lot of "programmers don't do good Ui" as well as "marketers dictate bad UI" in my travels. I used to try to work out some sort of theory about which statement is true, and why. But then I experienced a revelation, Sturgeon's Revelation: 90% of everything is crap. Therefore, if handed ten UIs designed by programmers, nine will be crap. If handed ten UIs designed by marketers, nine will be crap. Perhaps there…
That's a really good point - but I think a really big issue is that a lot of programmers (and I don't know why) seem to think that a good User Interface (API, Visual, Docs, etc) is just not needed. That; and the attitudes range from "who cares" to downright hostile "if you can't understand it, you're stupid". I say this as a programmer (who spends a lot of time on the "user" facing components), not as a business pers…
May I attempt to find common ground between our points of view by suggesting that 90% of programmers have this attitude? And that by the same token, 90% of business people are busy demanding flash web site intros and banners that SCREAM without doing the A/B testing or other quantified analysis to know whether they are generating higher conversions?
But your last statement is absolutely spot on: making what we do better is what matters most. Upmod gladly given.