Products For People Who Make Products For People
There is really no mystery about UI. Yes, it requires skill and a deep knowledge of how humans process information, and even a touch of design genius.<p>But the real problem is that most shops can't measure usability in a fine-grained way. And yet everyone does have some idea that it's really important. Consequently they are bamboozled by anyone who purports to have such expertise.<p>For the most part, so-called usability experts are really just graphic design snobs. They have a certain aesthetic they like, which is arguably "cleaner" and has more white space. So the page might be better organized but that's nowhere near what true usability is.<p>Real usability work is about trying to understand how the user is <i>thinking</i>. What their mental model is. What their goals are. In what context they are trying to achieve a task. Not just how their eye is scanning for information.<p>Anyway my point is, when it comes to real usability work, programmers are just as (un)qualified as graphic designers, marketers, or any other kind of "product" person. Arguably the designer is supposed to have a larger toolbox when it comes to possible graphic treatments, but the programmer also has a toolbox of quantitative methods, experimentation, and a deep understanding of how the system <i>could</i> work.