Do not be the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man of software development
Just a quick nod to a great post over on Coding Horror about the importance of interaction design… I just couldn’t stop laughing about this quote from Alan Cooper.
The Ultimate Unit Test Failure:
But when it comes time to marshal the solution to the problems, we find ourselves slamming into this kind of Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man of software development.
[Via: Coding Horror]
Are you the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man of your dev team? Make sure to check out the recommended title too: Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think.
You can find out more about Steve Krug on his website – sensible.com [natch].
Here’s a quote from the book:
It’s always interesting to watch Web designers and developers observe their first usability test. The first time they see a user click on something completely inappropriate, they’re surprised. (For instance, when the user ignores a nice big fat “Software” button in the navigation bar, saying something like, “Well, I’m looking for software, so I guess I’d click here on ‘Cheap Stuff’ because cheap is always good.”) The user may even find what he’s looking for eventually, but by then the people watching don’t know whether to be happy or not.
The second time it happens, they’re yelling “Just click on ‘Software’!” The third time, you can see them thinking: “Why are we even bothering?”
