What should a developer know about interface design, usability and user psychology to create great software? [duplicate]

Answer 1

I use to think asthetics were useless until I tried to sell my house. Sturdy foundation, 3 brms, 2 baths, 2 car garage, fenced yard, blah, blah blah - until I got rid of the stink from my 3 dogs nobody would touch it.

The more visually pleasing the app/site is, the more chance it will get used. Now a user will give it a try and determine if it does anything they want. Finally, how usable is it? This is a point when you will probably get more feedback.

Just like the house: get rid of the clutter, clean everything, start with a general color pallette and let the user add the crazy colors if the want them.

Answer 2

I have worked at a pharmaceutical company for the past two years and I think that the design of the interface is nearly as important as the functionality. Watching users struggle with old complicated legacy code is the primary reason for re-designing it. Functionality is seldom the primary reason for redeveloping code or replacing it.

• Usability studies
• Watching people use your code
• Extreme programming (Delivering preview code intermittently throughout design process)

Are all essential to delivering code that not only meets the users needs but makes them happy and productive. At the end of the day, programs will only be used if they make you happy and productive.

Answer 3

Problem: user interfaces often don't have a 1-to-1 correspondence to the domain model:

• There are communication problems because programmers talk about the hidden domain model while users talk about the GUI.
• There are maintenance problems because users are constrained by the task-based user interface. They regularly need to ask for "a new screen to do this" even if the domain model may already support it.

Solution: the naked objects architectural design pattern. To take this to the extreme you might even generate the GUI automatically from the domain model.