Comments on: Need to breed new species: User Experience Professionals http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/2007/08/01/need-to-breed-new-species-user-experience-professionals A blog about our experience with Adobe Flex Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:52:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: sithsigma http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/2007/08/01/need-to-breed-new-species-user-experience-professionals/comment-page-1#comment-29640 sithsigma Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:33:08 +0000 http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/?p=233#comment-29640 It's interesting to see how the s/w industry is evolving. - 80's -> make technology available to the masses - 90's -> use technology by the masses - 00's -> make technology USABLE by the masses Users have gotten screwed up till now. UIs were typically how the developer saw the data in the the database. I never pitch RIAs as being faster to develop, s/w development usability for the developer has matured... now it's time to make s/w usable for the user. It’s interesting to see how the s/w industry is evolving.
- 80’s -> make technology available to the masses
- 90’s -> use technology by the masses
- 00’s -> make technology USABLE by the masses

Users have gotten screwed up till now. UIs were typically how the developer saw the data in the the database. I never pitch RIAs as being faster to develop, s/w development usability for the developer has matured… now it’s time to make s/w usable for the user.

]]> By: Anatole Tartakovsky http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/2007/08/01/need-to-breed-new-species-user-experience-professionals/comment-page-1#comment-29626 Anatole Tartakovsky Sat, 11 Aug 2007 03:50:12 +0000 http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/?p=233#comment-29626 IT always had 2 sides - front office and back office. Other difference is that IT applications (sales/business force automation, etc.) has often criterias different from falling in love on first site - productivity, flexibilty and robustness as typical criterias. The "UI design first" approach, especially done by 3rd party company specializing in media is great - but can be a burden as well. I personally believe that the only way to design IT software is by "eat your own dog food" approach - that is by making devlopers to go through design, development, testing and support stages in the project lifecycle. They MUST to be involved in multiple aspects - not just coding or particular technolgy. Here is my observation of the current state of people forced into separate UI experience group ( Flex developers ) - they go stale. By that I mean that there is no virtually differnce in productivity, code quality or design quality of the person doing Flex for a month or a year. The coding done from predefined artwork limits creativity - while separation from the back-end coding limits functionality. The solution I got working to bridge designers and UI develers is to build up common language using code generators and dynamic nature of the scripting. You really can get designers involved in the programming - by turnng business part of the application - lookups, business components, etc. into the "styles" - making indistinguishable from CSS. You can eliminate 70% of the client and server code if FLEX developer and not the Struts specialist will define communication framework. By making sure that each person has 2 or more "skills" you can make your environment productive and fun - people will able to share common interests in work again Sincerely Anatole IT always had 2 sides – front office and back office. Other difference is that IT applications (sales/business force automation, etc.) has often criterias different from falling in love on first site – productivity, flexibilty and robustness as typical criterias. The “UI design first” approach, especially done by 3rd party company specializing in media is great – but can be a burden as well.

I personally believe that the only way to design IT software is by “eat your own dog food” approach – that is by making devlopers to go through design, development, testing and support stages in the project lifecycle. They MUST to be involved in multiple aspects – not just coding or particular technolgy.

Here is my observation of the current state of people forced into separate UI experience group ( Flex developers ) – they go stale. By that I mean that there is no virtually differnce in productivity, code quality or design quality of the person doing Flex for a month or a year. The coding done from predefined artwork limits creativity – while separation from the back-end coding limits functionality.

The solution I got working to bridge designers and UI develers is to build up common language using code generators and dynamic nature of the scripting. You really can get designers involved in the programming – by turnng business part of the application – lookups, business components, etc. into the “styles” – making indistinguishable from CSS. You can eliminate 70% of the client and server code if FLEX developer and not the Struts specialist will define communication framework. By making sure that each person has 2 or more “skills” you can make your environment productive and fun – people will able to share common interests in work again

Sincerely
Anatole

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