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If I may offer a contrarian viewpoint, I very much disliked Norman's book. I'm no UX professional, but I was looking for a pragmatic guide to understanding desi

If I may offer a contrarian viewpoint, I very much disliked Norman's book. I'm no UX professional, but I was looking for a pragmatic guide to understanding design and instead I was put off by his condescending tone and typecasting of engineers as somehow being innately unable to understand users. That was especially true of the earlier chapters of the book that were apparently first published in the original early '90s edition. The newly added chapters in the newer edition are more level-headed in that regard. Seeing how strongly this book was recommended in certain quarters left me uncomfortable and seemed to somewhat explain the general mentality pervading certain narratives that somehow it's best not to have engineers be involved in UX design but rather leave that to "professional" UX designers. If you haven't guessed already, my background is engineering. So you read from that what you want, but I've crossed paths with a very large number of engineers who dismissed or diminished their own ability to form judgement on UX because of a general sense that the "consensus" was that engineers aren't good at that, and have seen several cases where the decision model in organizations was specifically tailored to tune out engineers from UX decisions. Both of these things are wrong from my pov. I certainly don't want to diminish the value of having UX as a specialization. However, I cannot recommend a title whose narrative champions one set of professionals at the expense of others.

_hardwaregeek 8y ago
That's a very interesting view, as Norman had an engineering background himself. I didn't notice that tone myself, but that doesn't mean you're wrong.
rpedela 8y ago
I'm going to offer a contrarian contrarian viewpoint. I certainly agree that engineers should not be shut out of the process, by default. There are some engineers who are good at UI design, like you and me, and their deep technical knowledge helps them invent unique solutions. However most engineers aren't and I wouldn't expect them to be either. I went out of my way to learn UI design and psychology, but most engineers don't do that which makes it tough for them to provide useful feedback, insights, etc. So I understand why some people don't want engineers involved. Just last week, I had the very first design meeting for a new project and a veteran engineer was invited. He didn't even let the presenter finish before talking about how the backend should be built and how much time it would take. That wasn't helpful. I think engineers who are good at design are immensely valuable, but most engineers suck at it.
- pcmaffey 8y ago
  Super contrarian view - information architecture is the most fundamental aspect of product design. And a database "backend" represents the atomic model for a product's IA (with API being the next layer). Perhaps the engineer was contributing something crucial to the product design, you just couldn't grok it. Product design is so much more than UI/UX, fwiw.
  - verisimilidude 8y ago
    This is more true for some products than others. I worked on one product which involved a massive store of XML documents and a suite of somewhat complicated serializations and transformations. It was the right architecture for the project, for sure. And it was definitely the fundamental gene of the product; all of the product's design had to flow from this XML-heavy information architecture and backend. But most of the products I've seen are not so unique. For the vast majority of web products out there, simple CRUD apps backed by a relational database, I don't think the information architecture needs to be front and center in product design conversations. People can make assumptions about this kind of app and they usually won't be too far off the mark.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

_hardwaregeek 8y ago

That's a very interesting view, as Norman had an engineering background himself. I didn't notice that tone myself, but that doesn't mean you're wrong.

rpedela 8y ago

I'm going to offer a contrarian contrarian viewpoint. I certainly agree that engineers should not be shut out of the process, by default. There are some engineers who are good at UI design, like you and me, and their deep technical knowledge helps them invent unique solutions. However most engineers aren't and I wouldn't expect them to be either. I went out of my way to learn UI design and psychology, but most engineers don't do that which makes it tough for them to provide useful feedback, insights, etc. So I understand why some people don't want engineers involved. Just last week, I had the very first design meeting for a new project and a veteran engineer was invited. He didn't even let the presenter finish before talking about how the backend should be built and how much time it would take. That wasn't helpful. I think engineers who are good at design are immensely valuable, but most engineers suck at it.

pcmaffey 8y ago
Super contrarian view - information architecture is the most fundamental aspect of product design. And a database "backend" represents the atomic model for a product's IA (with API being the next layer). Perhaps the engineer was contributing something crucial to the product design, you just couldn't grok it. Product design is so much more than UI/UX, fwiw.
- verisimilidude 8y ago
  This is more true for some products than others. I worked on one product which involved a massive store of XML documents and a suite of somewhat complicated serializations and transformations. It was the right architecture for the project, for sure. And it was definitely the fundamental gene of the product; all of the product's design had to flow from this XML-heavy information architecture and backend. But most of the products I've seen are not so unique. For the vast majority of web products out there, simple CRUD apps backed by a relational database, I don't think the information architecture needs to be front and center in product design conversations. People can make assumptions about this kind of app and they usually won't be too far off the mark.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]