UI Design

re: UI Design

Larry Osterman — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 04:20:00 GMT

AMEN BROTHER!

I've spent the past year working in a UI group (don't worry, I'm not writing the UI, I'm doing infrastructure work), and I've gotten a good taste of just how much work UI programming is.

Especially GOOD UI.

2004/04/03 19:01

2lmc spool — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 20:04:00 GMT

<a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/04/02/106929.aspx' >UI design</a>

re: UI Design

Steve Hall — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 19:40:00 GMT

I agree with all of the comments in the referred articles, as well as yours! I'm positive you've rooted out ONE cause of newer programmers not being good at UI design: total lack of computer science programs putting any sort of emphasis on that part of the programming effort. Contrare, most professors usually dish out enough attitude AGAINST being a "UI burger flipper" that most CS graduates in the past 15 years firmly believe that UI design is NOT part of programming, and they actively try to avoid out when interviewing for their first job. Too much emphasis has been placed on equating coding to programming.

Almost EVERY single junior programmer that's worked under me for the past 15 years has had this deficiency. But I think it's much worse than you diagnosed. What's been missing in CS curriculum is not just UI design course-work, but that of ANY analysis and design course-work!n (I.e., specifically, a "traditional system analysis/design" course or two...)

Most CS programs have structured themselves around bottom-up design of entire applications, instead of proper top-down design. Most professors teach the algorithms side of coding fairly well, but fail miserably when trying to make that same application user-friendly (and deployable) by having a good UI. Quite often (according to my juniors...) they just tell their classes: "And then if you really want to, you COULD throw together a little GUI to go on top of it...if you want!" Essentially, trivilializing the UI design effort. (A lot of recent CS majors tell me that their professors give "extra credit" for turning a homework assignment with a GUI, and some actually will dock your grade for "putting form before function", f they spend a little extra time and "slap together a little GUI", even though their code was functionality correct.)

But, it's much worse than that! They also make it possible for CS majors to go from bottom-up-designed command-line driven little "algorithm exercises" to full-fledge app writing by skipping to full-fledged RAD tools like IDEs and application frameworks (like the Java class library or .NET BCL) WITHOUT taking ANY system analysis and design courses!

Recently I found out (from several students), most California colleges have moved their single analysis and design course from being a 200-level course to a 300-level course, treating this course like an after-thought. Worse, more CS programs no longer list any systems analysis/design course as a CS degree requirement!

(Sadly) I DO get a bit of entertainment value out of watching junior whips struggling to "think out of the box", namely the IDE or app. framework, when they run into some bit of functionality for which the IDE doesn't provide a wizard or the class library doesn't provide a convenient (high-level of abstraction) set of properties/methods/events......and, heaven forbid, they have to go spelunking down into lower-level APIs like Win32.

The over-use of crutches in CS programs (and allowing the dismantling of those boring analysis/design courses) has stifled a lot of the creativeness and craftiness in CS majors lately: causing a lot of the general public to think that "software development" = "coding", which has brought us the off-shoring of what is thought to be a low-level job skill (coding). Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, notably caused by the deficient CS curriculums!)

I have not met a SINGLE CS major in the past 15 years (out of over a hundred that have worked with or under me) that understood top-down design..including how to write a "functional requirements" spec (if the users were too lame to provide one), an "external spec" (aka UI/presentation layer spec), or an "internal spec" (aka functional/business logic spec) BEFORE writing a single line of code! Most seem totally incapable of writing ANY form of spec! When I do encounter someone that can write some sort of spec, it's usually a mish-mash of functional requirements, external and internal specs that never approaches reality and is rarely ever used or updated.

There's something to be said about the old-school of spec. writing that the COBOL/FORTRAN world practiced during the 60's, 70's, and 80's...whereby the application was fully designed top-down with spec's before being coded.

Of course, I know this probably labels me as an old fuddy-dud, but I guess this comes from growing up during the "space race" and adhering to the philosophy of Gene Kranz: "Failure is NOT an option!" Living for over 20 years in Silicon Valley, I've watched hundreds of projects (and companies!) fail when they trying short-cutting good up-front top-down design.

Fortunately, at least Microsoft is paying heed to this need, with the advent of the Practices and Patterns website and books...encouraging coders to become programmers and programmers to become software developers. (A distinction that's gotten lost over the years...)

CUPS and Usability

Michael Tsai's Weblog — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 23:43:00 GMT

Eric Raymond: I’ve just gone through the experience of trying to configure CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. It has proved a textbook lesson in why nontechnical people run screaming from Unix. Eric Raymond: Good UI design, and doing the right thing by Aunt Tillie, ought to be a matter of gut-level pride of craftsmanship.…None of this is rocket science. John Gruber: What Raymond is proposing, in fact, is no change at all. This idea, that the hard work of development is in building the underlying foundation, and that the easy part is writing a “GUI wrapper”, has been...

UI development is damn hard.

HMK's Spurious Thoughts — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 22:13:00 GMT

Check out Eric M. Burke's post GUI Programming is Hard. In a related post, Rick Schaut talks about UI design. Both posts hit the nail right on the head and are considered a must-read. Yes, I'm talking to you, dear...

UI Design is hard...

Aimless .Net Development — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 17:42:00 GMT

re: UI Design

David — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 12:21:00 GMT

You've adequately explained why UI is hard to IMPLEMENT but you haven't adequately explained why UI is the bastard child of technology. I'm not just speaking about the poor software UI but of user interfaces of hardware devices as well.

Take mp3 players as an example (though you could choose cell phones, DVD players, VCRs, and the list goes on and on and on). Apple's iPod is an exemplary example of a good UI. It isn't perfect but it is quite good. Why is it that every so-called iPod killer released since 2001 has a largely braindead UI?

Obviously companies recoginize they can't just copy the iPod's interface but surely they could study the iPod to determine what makes it good - and what it's weaknesses are. Surely that study would result in the creation of a good UI that wouldn't get the company sued by Apple. But so far it hasn't happened.

Why? Sure, we weren't taught how to write UI in college. I took lots of classes to make me a better software designer - but that was all about algorithms and data structures and class design. It wasn't about making the program easy to use. OTOH, as a longtime computer user I know what erks me (combo boxes and poorly organized tabbed dialog boxes for example) and what I like. I could develop a decent, if not stellar UI, right out of college.

Frankly, I think one of the big reasons UI suck is because marketing can't spin it. Hey, we can easily advertise 20 new features. "Now with automatic spell checking!!!" But will "new and improved interface" really sell? And given that reality, the suits want me to spend my time adding new features - not polishing the interface.

re: UI Design

dsf — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 08:41:00 GMT

dfs

re: UI Design

Bruce Lieberman — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 21:03:00 GMT

User interfaces still suck because they still aren't valued :(

This appears to _SLOWLY_ be changing.

(although shockingly, tons of people still don't understand the difference between a designer and a programmer)

Finally, there are now degree programs available in Interaction Design
(thank you Berkeley & Stanford)

ROI is still tossed around, and some if it can be quantified, some of it can't... the intangibles are often as important (if not MORE) and valuable as the tangibles that you can attach metrics to.

I heartily recommend reading Alan Coopers book on Interaction Design - 'About Face 2.0', as well as 'the Inmates Are Running the Asylum' (should be required reading for everyone in the biz).

Time spent UP FRONT learning what the functional parameters are, what the underlying structural parameters are, as well as understanding the applications function in the (human) organization... pays off in successful products, happy customers and drastically lower support costs.

Yes, UI design is hard... when done properly.
But the payoff is completely worth it.

re: UI Design

bart — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 23:54:00 GMT

About the control in a dialog box to preview a full document : I do it all the time with Trolltech's Qt in combination with their RAD tool. It's actually incredibly easy.