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Products For People Who Make Products For People

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Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#31

Post by TWAndrews »

danielnicollet wrote: post #15

I have been a "product person" for 15 years and I believe that product people like Michael describes are bad product people. A good product manager knows the UI and the guts behind it. I am not an engineer by training but I wouldn't be a good product manager in this field if I didn't know how to build a web server either. For the "Jeep Cherokee made from iron ore": I give up. ;-)

Agreed. The best product people are those who can understand the back end--even if they couldn't code it themselves, they have a respect and basic understanding for what's going on.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#32

Post by bkrausz »

neilk wrote: post #12

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…

Fortunately I think this is changing: tools are coming out that make running quantitative UX studies easier. Services like Optimizely, GazeHawk (disclaimer: that was a shameless plug for my company), UserTesting.com, etc are becoming more commonplace, bringing the barrier to entry for a UX consultant who is actually useful down.

In the future I imagine there being plenty of UX consultants who, rather than having a strong education in the psychology of websites, instead is experienced with the tools necessary to evaluate a design and make recommendations. Then there will be graphic designers, marketers, etc who are actually qualified to work with usability.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#33

Post by mnemonicsloth »

Colophon:

The Long Beards, (Latin Langobardi, later "Lombards") were a tribe of Germanic "barbarians" who settled in Northern Italy in the late 500s AD. They were primarily responsible for thwarting the Byzantine Emperor Justinian's campaign to reconquer Italy and re-establish the Western Empire.

http://historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/images/alboin.jpg

Today Lombardy is the most populous of Italy's 20 regions and Milan, the capital, is Italy's leading financial center.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#34

Post by rimantas »

zedshaw wrote: post #27
rimantas wrote: post #7

Looks like Zed got some different Cooper's book than I did. Or misread it completely. "Inmates are running the asylum“ was one of the most useful books I ever read, it completely changed my attitude. It's not "don't let programmers to do interfaces", it is "build interfaces for intended users and intended usage". If Zed thinks that Cooper's book is idiotic then he is just unable to get what it's all about (like many…

I don't know what book you read but the title alone, "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum" is offensive since it implies I'm the inmate. But take this quote just from the product description at Amazon: "The Inmates are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, le…

Don't judge the book by the cover and description on Amazon. How about subtitle of the book: "Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity".

  It was lacking in almost any real substance and was
  effectively a thinly disguised rant about coders.
Looks like you were not able to understand the essence of the book (hint: it was not about programmers). And also looks like Cooper was right in his description of a typical programmer that he calls Homo Logicus.

It is sad and weird that many programmers don't like the book or, like you, see it as an attack on them. It's far from the truth. The book gives very accurate description how our (programmers') way of thinking differs from that of "ordinary" people. If you are a programmer writing software for other programmers it may be ok not to care how Joe User thinks, but if you are making product for general audience you better pay attention what Cooper says. I see a lot of his ideas in many successful products: Google Search, GMail, Apple products.

Just recall all the comments after Apple introduced iPad; look at the report that iPad now is the highest-scoring product that a leading consumer satisfaction index has ever tracked; and then go read chapter 7 "Homo Logicus". After that it should be clear how such a lame and purposeless device in the eyes of geeks can be so wildly successful product among consumers.

For me the takeaway from the book was not that "programmers are to blame" but "design for your user, not for you".

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#35

Post by wallflower »

jnoller wrote: post #9
raganwald wrote: post #6

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…

As a software developer who has at times thought that as long as the user interface is functional by the engineering definition that it is good enough, I've found it enlightening and interesting to go to local CHI (Computer Human Interaction) meetings where UX professionals present to one another. Programmers are a commodity but programmers who can understand and create user-friendly interfaces are less of one.

http://www.sigchi.org/connect/local-sigs

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#36

Post by rimantas »

steveklabnik wrote: post #25
jaimzob wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being down voted but I got exactly the same impression. I'm usually a big Zed fan, and Mongrel2 looks great, but I think he's totally misread Cooper's book here.

> Not sure why you're being down voted Two reasons: > then he is just unable to get what it's all about (like many other nerds Extremely flamebaity, abusive 'nerds,' and No True Scotsman-ish. > I hope he sticks to building awesome web servers nobody needs. Insulting.

Hey, I called Mongrel2 awesome, how is that insulting? ;) The first mongrel (I used and liked it), it solved the very real problem at the time. Mongrel2 may be 10x as awesome but now there is no unsolved problem for it to be as successful. Ok, I admit, it may be insulting, but calling that book idiotic is even more so.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#37

Post by GFischer »

"let's say you can pull this off and you have permission to really make the UI sexy. Alright, where's your designer? In every mega-corp and government agency I've worked for there has never been a staff designer of any kind."

Amen to that. I'm working on a project to boost a new product line for my megacorp that competes against the established leader. So I asked to really boost the UI. And it was approved, provided of course, I made it myself :( . All my pleas for a designer were unheard or shrugged off.

With some help from the Internet, I've come up with a design that doesn't suck, but it's still a far cry from what a designer would have done in a tenth of the time (in effect, they hired me as a crappy designer and spent far too much of my time aka their money, but they don't see it that way)

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#38

Post by jaimzob »

zedshaw wrote: post #27
rimantas wrote: post #7

Looks like Zed got some different Cooper's book than I did. Or misread it completely. "Inmates are running the asylum“ was one of the most useful books I ever read, it completely changed my attitude. It's not "don't let programmers to do interfaces", it is "build interfaces for intended users and intended usage". If Zed thinks that Cooper's book is idiotic then he is just unable to get what it's all about (like many…

I don't know what book you read but the title alone, "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum" is offensive since it implies I'm the inmate. But take this quote just from the product description at Amazon: "The Inmates are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, le…

Then it sounds like you've known some asshole executives and consultants that have completely misread this book.

Cooper's point was that, sans any other guidance, programmers naturally tend to create interfaces that reflect the structure of the code (since that is what they are immersed in) rather than the structure of their user's goals. And the reason they don't have any other guidance is that people running technology companies didn't have any kind of design phase other than sending salesmen out to get pointless checklists of features.

If anything, the book is a criticism of the way tech companies are (or at least used to be) run rather than a criticism of diligent programmers doing their best with incomplete information. In fact Cooper says this several times during the book. Unfortunately, it seems easier for a lot of business guys to use the book to transfer blame to programmers rather than implement what it actually says.

Really bad Amazon summary too.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#39

Post by ant5 »

bkrausz wrote: post #32
neilk wrote: post #12

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…

Fortunately I think this is changing: tools are coming out that make running quantitative UX studies easier. Services like Optimizely, GazeHawk (disclaimer: that was a shameless plug for my company), UserTesting.com, etc are becoming more commonplace, bringing the barrier to entry for a UX consultant who is actually useful down. In the future I imagine there being plenty of UX consultants who, rather than having a st…

The problem here is that good UX isn't borne of qualitative analysis -- you have to build something worth analyzing to begin with.

Once you do start analyzing, what do you do with the results? You can try to make small tweaks -- it can be worthwhile if what you have is already good. If what you have is bad however, no amount of rigorous analysis is going to solve the artistic problem of coming up with a cohesive vision of something better.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#40

Post by StavrosK »

neilk wrote: post #12

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…

You know, I thought I had UI design mostly figured out, using a few simple rules:

* Minimise the total number of clicks needed to access the sum of the program's functionality.

* Make frequently-used functionality easier to reach than rarely-used functionality.

* Don't have more elements in the UI than is easy to parse quickly.

* No surprises.

However, after reading this article, I get the feeling that it's a more arcane art, which not many people know. What are some simple rules about good UI design, in your opinion?

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