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Why Software Developers Suck at UX

cakewalklabs.com

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Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#2

Post by gjvc »

Ergonomic and usability considerations are rarely valued because they do not have a cell on a spreadsheet. What is measured tends to improve. What does not tends to worsen.

Programmers have been driven to obsess about features to the exclusion of other criteria (security being a category with many examples) will not have had the freedom to experiment and come up with easier, more consideration workflows and interactions. This also means that they are not practiced at it. It follows that so-called (in the article) unicorn programmers are rare, perhaps because the environments in which they can get better are rare.

"Don't hate the player, hate the game."

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#3

Post by diob »

gjvc wrote: post #2

Ergonomic and usability considerations are rarely valued because they do not have a cell on a spreadsheet. What is measured tends to improve. What does not tends to worsen. Programmers have been driven to obsess about features to the exclusion of other criteria (security being a category with many examples) will not have had the freedom to experiment and come up with easier, more consideration workflows and interacti…

This is interesting because I think the problem is about what is measured, not what isn't.

Have you happened to read the Tyranny of Metrics?

It talks about how we measure what is easy to measure, then use that. And once others know what we're measuring, they game the system. So the moment something becomes a metric, it ceases to be a good metric.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#4

Post by the_solenoid »

1) it's a whole other discipline 2) software is often made in a little enclave without outside input until the very end on how a user would interact, at which point it becomes a shoe-horned mess.

Overly broad, but pretty much my experience on projects that aren't mine

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#6

Post by anticristi »

Venting out a bit of past frustration, I would rename the title to "why people suck at explaining desired UX to software developer".

A kitchen designer won't be able to guess how you want your kitchen. It's my task as a customer to explain if I want a double sink, how big the induction stove etc. Why do people then expect software developers to magically guess intended UX?

Seriously, I asked people to draw me on paper a few pages of a webapp. It was pointless. I ended up making a bad UX, on purpose, just to get the conversation started.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#7

Post by bichiliad »

This article is close, but misses the mark. Talking about how UX researchers must grow up having more empathy sounds like an assumption that's pretty hard to back up, considering I can point to plenty of software engineers that got into the profession because they want to build a better world for others.

I have a double degree in something that's effectively user experience. The one thing I heard in school over and over again is that when evaluating the usability of software, "you are not your user." In other words, you can never assume that your own experience with software is the same as the average user's experience. This is doubly true for software that you've written yourself, since you have an intimate understanding of the mental model that other people have to somehow acquire on their own.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#9

Post by Groxx »

Experts in something are rarely able to see it from an outsider's perspective. It's pretty much a universal for humanity. People who can absolutely do exist, in quite large numbers, but they're not the norm.

Maybe software gets targeted for this more often because a one-person (or very small company) project can reach a lot of users? Physical products need more money / manufacturing / staff to reach, say, 100k+ users, at which point they've got more than a tiny handful of people contributing to it. Or maybe it's just a fairly adjacent news bubble so we notice it more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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