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GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

patricia.no

31–40 of 155 posts

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#31
> So imagine a pipeline that takes in encrypted text and the first “filter” decrypts the text, the second takes the decrypted text and strips away the beginning and the end, the third takes its input and sends it in an email. From a programmers perspective, we might think of these inputs and outputs as the “same” because they are text, however, in meaning, they are very different.

I've only got this far and thought it was interesting. Firstly because I think it's partly wrong; a programmer definitely doesn't think of encrypted data binary blobs as the same as text, but secondly because I do wonder if a subclass of a string type that is "has leading and trailing whitespace removed" might be quite an interesting way to model your data. The object could do the strips on construct.

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#32

This part is genius: > I have made GUIs many, many times and my best case scenario goes something like: > 1. A design has been made, everyone loves it. Detailed drawings have been made. > 2. The devs are told to Make It > 3. The devs Make It, exactly to spec > 4. Everyone looks at it and everyone hates it > 5. So many meetings. So much stress. This Is Terrible! What To Do? > 6. A new design is made. So much better! D…

The issue is that step 2 is wrong. Step 1 is to make a design, step 2 is to test it. Make a paper prototype and have your customer simulate working with it. If you feel fancy make a pretty prototype in Figma. If you have a good designer and cooperative costumer you can even combine step 1 and 2 with a whiteboard prototype. Ask the customer what a common task is. Draw the interface the whiteboard and ask the consumer…

Not just step 2, step one is to gain a clear understanding of user needs, different use cases, possible flows...

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#33
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refer to it as "designed by programmers". It's so prevalent that the Silicon Valley TV show used this as one of it's story lines. When I worked for a consultancy in early internet days I also often repeated "the customer doesn't know what they want until they see what they don't want". People weren't used to web GUIs and there weren't the common patterns we see today, so it wasn't until they had a half working vers…

Conversely, I've seen way too many designed-by-designers GUIs and UX flows that can be best characterized as a glittery, polished turd. They sure look nice in Figma but often only have one well-specified happy path from which the end user will surely deviate. Managers will easily greenlight broken designs because they can only see the visuals, not the complete picture. If you find a talented designer, they are valued…

A lot of UIs are made to get a promotion. Others are made by numerical optimization of the funnel, which is even worse. The best UIs come from incorporating lots of actual user feedback, and then it almost doesn't matter if they're built by programmers or designers.

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#34
The article is poorly written. No clear message, topics jumped weirdly, and the overall style is like written by teenager/intern trying to be as impressing as some professional.

But here's the thing with "GUIs/UIs/UXs whatever":

The best UI/UX is created by a domain professional, who knows why and how it serves as the best designed tool for that domain - a tool made by a professional for himself and/or for other professionals in the same domain.

This is why Bloomberg terminal UI/UX is like it is for finance professionals, as are DAWs for music professionals, as are CAD tools for EE/architects etc. They act as the right tool for the right job.

Coders, (figma) designers, and other "implementers" (including management and "product owners"!) has to understand the business domain in order to fully manifest their craftsmanship talent. It is very hard to start and/or iterate UI/UX design if the implementers are not personally using the tool in some professional domain, and therefore know what is right and cool design and what is not.

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#35

This part is genius: > I have made GUIs many, many times and my best case scenario goes something like: > 1. A design has been made, everyone loves it. Detailed drawings have been made. > 2. The devs are told to Make It > 3. The devs Make It, exactly to spec > 4. Everyone looks at it and everyone hates it > 5. So many meetings. So much stress. This Is Terrible! What To Do? > 6. A new design is made. So much better! D…

UX is hard. What usually happens is that you have:

- developers who are bad at UX writing the software and improvising with all the use cases that were not adequately specified in the design document

- end users who are bad at UX giving their input, but can tell when something feels right for their use case

- managers/spec writers who are bad at UX and are trying to translate the wishes of end users to the developers

The result is a worthless spec, garbage in, garbage out.

Sometimes, when the stars align, in your team you get someone who is actually good at UX. I am told this happens, because in my career I have never seen such a unicorn. And even in that case, the end user with no understanding of UX, the one that actually pays for the project, might really, really want that periwinkle blue button, so in pretty much all cases GUIs get through countless rewrites and tweaks.

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#36
post #25

A tight iteration loop is the only solution I've seen for building high quality UI/UX. Embrace that it's going to be terrible the first few times and plan for this. We could save on cost per iteration by avoiding the layout and styling pass until the very end. These interfaces are about communicating information. Plain text and basic form submissions work just as well as anything else when you're still trying to desi…

This has been my experience as well.

Something about the human brain just makes it very bad at observing a mocked-up screen layout and understanding how well it works in practice. Apply that to an entire application with multiple functions and the problem increases exponentially.

Experience helps speed things up. But rapid iteration with a fast feedback loop is the best practice. Design is not doing the start of the loop, it’s doing the entire loop. Repeatedly.

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#37
post #34

The article is poorly written. No clear message, topics jumped weirdly, and the overall style is like written by teenager/intern trying to be as impressing as some professional. But here's the thing with "GUIs/UIs/UXs whatever": The best UI/UX is created by a domain professional, who knows why and how it serves as the best designed tool for that domain - a tool made by a professional for himself and/or for other prof…

100%. Designers in love with white space should not design UIs for engineers (or anyone who lives their professional life in Excel). Lots of margin, padding, drop shadows, ‘round-lg’ etc might look pretty, but when you can only fit two numbers on a page it doesn’t help.

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#38
post #27
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like building a house and programming are the only kinds of engineering where the customer can change the project halfway through and not get laughed out the room

It’s not only customer requirements that it works well for. Ever started prepping a site for a concrete foundation and run into rock as your levelling?

Yeah - next door didn’t enjoy the arrival of the rock breaker!

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#39
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refer to it as "designed by programmers". It's so prevalent that the Silicon Valley TV show used this as one of it's story lines. When I worked for a consultancy in early internet days I also often repeated "the customer doesn't know what they want until they see what they don't want". People weren't used to web GUIs and there weren't the common patterns we see today, so it wasn't until they had a half working vers…

Conversely, I've seen way too many designed-by-designers GUIs and UX flows that can be best characterized as a glittery, polished turd. They sure look nice in Figma but often only have one well-specified happy path from which the end user will surely deviate. Managers will easily greenlight broken designs because they can only see the visuals, not the complete picture. If you find a talented designer, they are valued…

That's because "UX" designers need to build according to actual usability engineering guidelines, not just built what "looks good". The 1995-2005 feels like it was the golden decade of this sort of thing.

Re: GUIs are built at least 2.5 times

#40
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Plan to throw one away. You will anyhow."- Fred Brooks, _Mythical Man Month_ A software engineering book written decades before I was born- my college assigned us the 25th Anniversary Edition- and yet I re-read it every few years and find some new way to apply its lessons to my current problems.

"If you plan to throw away one, you will throw away two" -- Craig Zerouni, via Programming Pearls: Bumper Sticker Computer Science https://moss.cs.iit.edu/cs100/Bentley_BumperSticker.pdf

Is that better or worse? (Let's shelve for a minute if worse is better.)
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