Recommended Reading
Getting Real by 37signals.com pretty much describes my thoughts on software development, almost to a T. The ideas presented go against the grain of traditional software development, but creates an simple way to develop a product from inception to production and beyond without a lot of fuss. I’ve been using this approach for years in my professional career, sometimes to the chagrin of my colleagues. However, looking at the results, I find happier and more loyal clients. Can’t argue with that.
Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug is a fantastic book on website usability. I design websites on the side, and the guidelines set out here help tremendously.
Dude, “Don’t make me think” was written for amateurs. It says the same message repeated- keep it easy to use! If you have 20 years of experience and this helped you, then you have no idea how to code and should step away slowly from the PC before you do something weird like increment a null pointer or try to debug a bugless program.
How do you make the leap from easy to use interfaces to null pointers? The book is not a lesson in programming. It’s about designing a site that an average person can use without getting frustrated.
I WISH developers who worked on the online banking site my wife uses had read this. Talk about a hack in navigations. She got so frustrated with such poor design that I had to figure it out and teach her how to use it. It should have been a lot more obvious.
Don’t equate programming with UI design. The two are not even on the same plane.