Day 33: I Have A Dream....

Dot .Net Dilemmas

The approach that I want to take in designing my software is to simply come at it with the end-user clearly at the forefront of my thoughts at all times. The users needs must be in my mind with every design decision that I make. My whole philosophy on software design is that it should be clean and simple, especially at the UI level. Applications that do ‘too much’ may look great and wow people at the start but it can lead to a complexity that can get old very quickly. This complexity can ultimately lead to unmaintainable software. Unmaintainable software is something that I can not have in my design as I plan to have continuous updates and releases to add value for my clients. In my experience users of any software application repeat the same tasks over and over and these basic tasks should be clean, crisp easy to use and above all solid and reliable. You can add the bells and whistles at a later date when your application is rock solid and you have delivered to your clients exactly what it is that they use and need. In a sentence, ‘Everything we do needs to make our product less annoying.’

Seth Godin said...

I hope that my software will be used on a daily basis and for this to become a reality; I have to have it become an essential and intuitive application for the user. My hope is that it is a piece of software that they could (no doubt) survive without but nonetheless software which makes their live so much simpler that, they wouldn’t want to. To paraphrase the marketing guru Seth Godin , ‘what we are selling is ‘Hope’. If people invest in using our software it will give them hope of a better business. The magical thing about selling hope is that it makes everything else work better, every day get better, every project work better.’

Read the actual article here What Marketers Actually Sell.

Putting Myself In Your Shoes... Phew!!!!

The way that I plan to achieve my simple design is:

To think hard about the people who will use my software and put myself in their shoes when I am designing the front-end. I need to stop thinking like a developer and start thinking about it like a user. I will think about each task and try to make the completion of that task a simple and enjoyable experience for the user, be it a 22 year old computer graduate or a 65 year old grandparent.

Years ago while I was taking a driving lesson my instructor told me that you should always drive like you have your mother in the front seat (unless your mother is Sarah Connor from Terminator) . Personally I think that designing a public facing user interface should be handled in much the same way. Think about what issues your mother or grandmother would have if they had to use your application and solve it from their point of view.

Worried that simply user interfaces won’t show off your talents or hook potential users? Well, tell that to Twitter who basically have one text field and an update button. Anyhow, when was the last time you heard of someone not using say, a website because it was two easy to use?