Professional UI/UX designers do exist. We are ergonomists, and human factors people, with actual basis in science—and some of us used to work on open source projects. We don't anymore for other reasons other than we don't exist.
I'd mod this as +1 insightful.
The force of "scratch an itch" that drives open source development is the
principle of "hell hath no fury like a geek who's been mildly inconvenienced."
I heard most communes died in the US because nobody wanted to do the dishes.
More on topic: a well desinged UI takes a lot of work - for one person - so "if you don't like it, do something better" takes a bit of effort. Why? (In terms of Physics) because the API to a human is much more non-linear - and quite a impedence mismatch - than to another computer...
To quote Donald Norman in the Psychology of Everyday Things, "Many existing programs for user applications are too abstract, requiring actions that make sense for the demands of the computer and to the computer professional but are not cohesive, sensible, necessary, or understandable to the everyday user. To make the system easier to use and to understand requires a large amount of extra work."
We are working on, and still much work is to be done, on the open source model for user interface design.
We'd appreciate your thoughts at the usabilitybazaar Yahoo group...
I define, in my own head, the "New Economy" in this way: In the 90's many executives and investors newly realized you can make much more personal profit (and more quickly) by choosing a path that will certainly lead to a company's short-term failure, than by choosing a path that may lead to a company's longer term success.
Nielson's over-emphasis on regularity in interfaces makes him unpopular with designers. It's hard to make an interface both compelling and easy, but not impossible. Nielson, like many other "usability experts," is taking the easy and more elementary road. His popularity comes from putting in print what people think intuitively (face validity) - similarly to Maslow's popularity in pop psychology. Maslow came up with a "theory" (need hierarchy) that people in general could understand and "apply to thier lives" which was hugely popular, but completely non-science.
Sure, Nielson is right that you have to keep things in their place, don't change their location, make information easy to find due to it's organization, but that's Usability 101.
I'd reccommend The Psychology of Everyday Things by Norman, and the Tufte Books. These sources, unlike Nielson, leave designers with their creativity intact.
The designers I work with don't like/listen to Nielson - they think he relies to heavily on standardizing the user experience. That don't sit well with the creative types looking for a more appropriate way to do it given the objectives at hand.
And pair the real graphic designer, who knows the difference between good a bad looks, with a usability specialist. Just as good desingers are not good copy writers and visa-versa, so designers and copy writers usaually work in pairs. Designers have learned a lot about design, and a little about usability. So with the designer + usability specialist + copy writer, it'll give the engineering team a lot to do. A good designer can whittle 25 possible approaches down to four that look good, and the usability specialist can help whittle those possibilities down to two that look good and work well for the target user. Then toss in the marketing and brand managment... (Brand managment is the type of stuff people do so that the FSU web site has a FSU "look and feel" and the U of F web site has a U of F "look and feel" - they're the guys who keep track of what the "look and feel" is).
I don't want to sound high-handed, but a good designer knows what looks good, a good copywriter knows what readable and effective text is, and a usability specialist knows good usability. There ain't enough time in the day for someone to be good at all. There are exceptions, but there aren't enough of these superheros to go around.
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Professional UI/UX designers do exist. We are ergonomists, and human factors people, with actual basis in science—and some of us used to work on open source projects. We don't anymore for other reasons other than we don't exist.
I'd mod this as +1 insightful. The force of "scratch an itch" that drives open source development is the principle of "hell hath no fury like a geek who's been mildly inconvenienced."
+1 for a reference to Edward Tufte regarding visual interpretation.
If you have any other questions about Chemistrye, I'll be happy to answer them for ye!
There; I fixed it for ye.
UI_Developer <> UI_Desiger: different skill sets.
It's the bomb when you can find 'em rolled into one, but there aren't enough gurus to go around.
The general case: Jack of all trades, master of none.
Instance: a good graphic designer is most likely a terrible copywriter.
P.S. When did 3 unicorns meet the criterion to be a planet full of unicorns???
I heard most communes died in the US because
nobody wanted to do the dishes.
More on topic: a well desinged UI takes a lot
of work - for one person - so "if you don't like it, do something better" takes a bit of effort. Why? (In terms of Physics) because the API to a human is much more non-linear - and quite a impedence mismatch - than to another computer...
To quote Donald Norman in the Psychology of Everyday Things, "Many existing programs for user applications are too abstract, requiring actions that make sense for the demands of the computer and to the computer professional but are not cohesive, sensible, necessary, or understandable to the everyday user. To make the system easier to use and to understand requires a large amount of extra work."
We are working on, and still much work is to be done, on the open source model for user interface design.
We'd appreciate your thoughts at the usabilitybazaar Yahoo group...
Did you mean "return 1;?"
I define, in my own head, the "New Economy" in this way: In the 90's many executives and investors newly realized you can make much more personal profit (and more quickly) by choosing a path that will certainly lead to a company's short-term failure, than by choosing a path that may lead to a company's longer term success.
Nikon D1 adds GPS information to the EXIF header. See a review. "RS232C port for connection to GPS units, GPS location is recorded in image header"
Nielson's over-emphasis on regularity in
interfaces makes him unpopular with designers.
It's hard to make an interface both
compelling and easy, but not impossible.
Nielson, like many other "usability experts," is taking the easy and more elementary road. His popularity comes from putting in print what people think intuitively (face validity) - similarly to Maslow's popularity in pop psychology. Maslow came up with a "theory" (need hierarchy) that people in general could understand and "apply to thier lives" which was hugely popular, but completely non-science.
Sure, Nielson is right that you have to keep things in their place, don't change their location, make information easy to find due to
it's organization, but that's Usability 101.
I'd reccommend The Psychology of Everyday Things by Norman, and the Tufte Books.
These sources, unlike Nielson, leave designers with their creativity intact.
The designers I work with don't like/listen to Nielson - they think he relies to heavily on standardizing the user experience. That don't sit well with the creative types looking for a more appropriate way to do it given the objectives at hand.
And pair the real graphic designer, who
knows the difference between good a bad looks, with a usability specialist. Just as good desingers are not good copy writers and visa-versa, so designers and copy writers usaually work in pairs. Designers have learned a lot about design, and a little about usability. So with the designer + usability specialist + copy writer, it'll give the engineering team a lot to do. A good designer can whittle 25 possible approaches down to four that look good, and the usability specialist can help whittle those possibilities down to two that look good and work well for the target user. Then toss in the marketing and brand managment... (Brand managment is the type of stuff people do so that the FSU web site has a FSU "look and feel" and the U of F web site has a U of F "look and feel" - they're the guys who keep track of what the "look and feel" is).
I don't want to sound high-handed, but a good designer knows what looks good, a good copywriter knows what readable and effective text is, and a usability specialist knows good usability. There ain't enough time in the day for someone to be good at all. There are exceptions, but there aren't enough of these superheros to go around.