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You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

mrlacey.com

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Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#491

Post by derefr »

kqr wrote: post #357
bfdm wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, that feels like a huge waste of your own time to game a broken system. And I'm guessing it is, but that it's a defensive move because the darker timeline is miserable. Sucks it has to be this way so often.

What's broken are humans. For some psychological reason, a thing that looks unfinished gets much higher quality feedback than something that looks polished. There's no way around that flaw in people, so making prototypes look unfinished is something we have to do anyway!

It's an example of the Doorway Effect: brains are wired to work in modes related to context cues. Change the context, and you'll change the memories and trains-of-thought easily accessed.

Polished things have a context of "use", not "evaluate", because we use so many polished things every day, but very rarely have any need to evaluate them (mostly only when we're buying them, or when a repair person asks us to describe what's wrong with them.) Whereas unpolished things are mostly "for" evaluating; it's rare that people use unpolished things (outside of, say, disaster-relief infrastructure.)

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#492

Post by Zaak »

eru wrote: post #401
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that'll happen, and if you omit it entirely you can get comments going "I'm not seeing this field!". Would it be better to show no progress at all until it's completely done? I know agile methodologies tell you to demo regularly, but I'm more and more under the impression that they are to provide progress feedback / reports to management.

I remember someone suggesting using deliberately crude and hand-drawn looking UI elements in the demo. That communicates to non-technical users that it's just a prototype. Something like https://wiredjs.com/ might work, if you are building a web-ui.

Fabulous idea. I will definitely use this for future early-stage demos.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#493

Post by Tyr42 »

eru wrote: post #401
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that'll happen, and if you omit it entirely you can get comments going "I'm not seeing this field!". Would it be better to show no progress at all until it's completely done? I know agile methodologies tell you to demo regularly, but I'm more and more under the impression that they are to provide progress feedback / reports to management.

I remember someone suggesting using deliberately crude and hand-drawn looking UI elements in the demo. That communicates to non-technical users that it's just a prototype. Something like https://wiredjs.com/ might work, if you are building a web-ui.

I did this, but by not fine tuning the CSS until the end. Just use black and white, leave off the border radius, and make it look "unfinished".

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#495

Post by Tyr42 »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #447
ankit219 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all the developers I work with never started working on a bug until i gave them the right steps to replicate it - even if the bug is reported by a user. A very stupid example i can think of is this: the developer designed a login form on web and mobile with the password field as expected, but forgot to uncapitalize the first letter of entry in password. Like if your password is abcdef, on mobile keyboard (unle…

I like to use two principles: * smoke means fire * a contained smokey fire is sufficient to hide the start of a wildfire This means: * keep your errors at 0. If it "can't be kept at 0" you're either too far gone or thinking about the issue incorrectly. * user complaints are errors. Just because they aren't clear doesn't make them any less so. There is a perception that users go out of their way to make unfounded comp…

I think that, but then our feedback report include things like "How do I change my outlook password?".

I don't work at Microsoft.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#496

Post by corin_ »

raducu wrote: post #469
corin_ wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their praise is obviously great for knowing how you're doing, but it doesn't confirm the reason for your good insights. Plenty of people manage to be good at what they do without doing 100% the best way possible, so maybe you'd be even better if you changed your approach! Of course I know nothing about you so I'm not trying to give advice, just replying about the "confirmed" being a potential cognitive bias.

I also think I could improve a lot in this regard, asking sooner is my problem and I'm working on solving it, but it is a slow and long process.

Awesome, none of us are perfect and improving isn't always simple :)

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#497

Post by goostavos »

caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

I made this mistake the first time I ventured out onto my own and did some contract work. The thinking was that it'd be a nice way to give them something concrete to play with as we vetted the ideas / flows.

But, as you describe, from a perceptions stand point, it was the worst thing I could have possibly done. It went from a very happy client, to a very unhappy and confused client when progress "stopped." I actually started recording development work as a way to make them understand all the invisible stuff which goes on behind the scenes.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#498

Post by zentiggr »

arethuza wrote: post #386
caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

"They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work" The truth is that in a lot of cases nobody has ever bothered to explain it to them. What I tend to find in a lot of situations is that managers often prefer younger and/or less experienced developers because they can be bullied - but the reality is that this also means that people are then unlikely to tell their manager…

I don't think there's much overlap between "managers who select developers who can be controlled" and "managers who are receptive to new ideas".

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#499

Post by zentiggr »

coronadisaster wrote: post #270
caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

> just because you can see something, that doesn't mean it's secure I have yet to see secure software... does that even exist?

Sure - it's the one that's firewalls all the way down.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#500

Post by xorcist »

rawoke083600 wrote: post #349
caymanjim wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a company that understands and embraces agile software practices, this works well. You demo small things that are done, and prototypes are understood as just mockups designed to drive future work. Alas not everyone in power gets it. In more egregious cases, I've been in adversarial environments where teams were pitted against each other to appear "more done." Obviously a recipe for failure. I'm fortunate enough to…

Urg agile, scrum, some-other-magic-words I've come to realised this, "true" agile is more like being funny and smart(not that I am either). If you have to tell people you are smart or funny, you probably are not. Ever noticed how smart people(the really clever ones) are just absurdly smart without walking around telling everyone "hey I'm smart", usually the nicer they are the more intelligent they are(yea you get exc…

Spot on. I believe there is a word for this.

If a country explicitly calls itself "demoractic" in the name, it's likely not.

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