A really good article on software usability

Anne Wilson cannewilson at tiscali.co.uk
Fri Jan 5 19:14:49 UTC 2007


On Friday 05 January 2007 18:32, Scott van Looy wrote:
> Today William Case did spake thusly:
> > Anne, if I may take the liberty of whole heartedly agreeing with you
> >
> > Les's proposal sounds like a MicroSoft proposal.
>
> In an ideal world, you'd create an application dummy. Get prospective
> users to use it in various scenarios (UAT). Watch them. Take that feedback
> on board, develop a sensible set of defaults, then develop a way (user
> prefs or something) to override all those defaults. Then do another UAT
> cycle, clean up any issues discovered, and that's it. Voila, best of
> both worlds.
>
> This is how software *should* be developed. Programmers all too frequently
> forget that they are servicing the user, not telling them what to do.
>
Absolutely true.  But let's not forget that if you were the first tester and I 
was the second they would probably see entirely different actions and 
reactions.  Human differences can't be ignored, and to expect any programmer 
to know what is perfect for every user is beyond all sense and reason.

Anne
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