6 ms·

One other thing he touched on in passing: people are assuming they'd know what to build from the start. Even in relatively trivial applications a lot of work go

One other thing he touched on in passing: people are assuming they'd know what to build from the start. Even in relatively trivial applications a lot of work goes into finding the right way to express what you're trying to build. I recently worked on a small app and spent 40 hours trying out different approaches to the user interface. The solution I went with could be coded up in about 2 hours, but I had to do 38 hours of work that eventually got thrown away before I arrived at it. This sort of thing happens all the time in professional software development. Sometimes it is a waste of time, e.g. people rewriting things in a new language/framework for negligible benefits, but a lot of it is a necessary part of developing a polished app.

slongfield 5y ago
“I didn't have time to write you a simple UI, so I wrote you a complicated one instead.” -- Mark Twain, paraphrased.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Blaise Pascal, translated and paraphrased. (Or at least as a lower-bound on its age anyway.) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
- SilasX 5y ago
  Except today more often I see "Our devs put together a basically usable UI, then we ramped up and hired a full time UXer, and it sucks now."
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    I've seen that happen a thousand times, yes. (Slightly exaggerating, but still.) I guess we'll just have to wait until people get used to the idea that the Web is an interactive document format, not a replacement for the GUI. I'm hoping the modern SPA trends pass into the void like the Macromedia Flash UI trends did.
    - hallway_monitor 5y ago
      At many companies anything is a SPA now, which seems like the worst example of cargo cult mentality. It takes twice as long to develop, but with all these people who only know JavaScript you have to give them something to do.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
Totally agree. I always get in trouble when I say that we must build a first version to get a “feel” for the task and then refine for a while. This may involve scrapping the whole thing a few times. This is especially true if something is totally new. Once you have an established UX it’s much easier to plan and make changes.
lisper 5y ago
Ron's second law: The hardest part of getting what you want is figuring out what it is.
adt2bt 5y ago
I had a similar realization with food recently, bear with me. You ever hear how in certain cultures, Mom's food is the best? Now, of course there's nostalgia involved. A hint of home can make your taste buds sing just a bit louder. But also, even for a 'simple' meal, there are so many options a chef can make that subtly change the meal. For example, looking only at one ingredient, you can end up with a dizzying amount of options. For example, do you use chicken thighs or white meat, sear it first or let it braise, brine it or salt it right before going on, use a jar of pre-ground spices or add your own concoction of 5 spices? Each of those is a choice, and only one set of choices ends up with Mom's chicken cacciatore. In software, any good UX is usually the result of thousands of intentional choices. It takes trial and error and research and actually time spent using the damn thing to figure out the tradeoffs involved in many of those choices. Just like it usually takes new chefs dozens of crappy, burnt, lifeless meals before developing the taste required to make those tradeoffs effectively.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  The thing that hit me many years ago was when I was very young (less than five, I think), and I was at my great grandmothers house, and she fixed dinner. And I LOVED the creamed corn she made! I made such a fuss about it that she had to get another can off the shelf and make a second helping. It was just plain creamed corn with condensed milk. But it was also the best thing I had ever eaten. She was very confused. As was my grandmother. And my mom. None of them understood just how important that “granny corn” was, despite the fact that it was straight from a can into the pan to be heated a little, and then put into a bowl for me. I heard that story time and time again, for decades. Association is a huge part of impression and memories. That’s why smell is such a good trigger for emotions, because it is very primal and connected so closely to those parts of your brain that are involved in association.
- MonkeyClub 5y ago
  > You ever hear how in certain cultures, Mom's food is the best? Just had the semi-shocking realization that the cross-section between those cultures and the cultures where moms are stay at home is quite large.
grawprog 5y ago
Even with simple projects.. I just finished working on redoing a static webpage for a client. Really simple, started at 17 pages, cut it down to 6 pages, only text and images with a contact form and a few links. I ended up having to build 3 different versions just to get a layout and design that worked for the client's business and another version I built initially for my own working environment the customer never even seen and wasn't charged for.
irrational 5y ago
When I was working on my masters degree project I thought I created a pretty good UI. At least I couldn’t think of a way to make it better. Then I did a 1 on 1 evaluation with a user who knew nothing about the subject matter. She had some recommendations that significantly improved the UI. I changed the UI and then I did a 1 on 1 evaluation with a knowledgeable user. He had more recommendations. I implemented them and then did a small group evaluation and then a large group evaluation. At each step suggestions were made that greatly enhanced the UI. By the time I was finished the UI was much different than what I came up with on my own, but tremendously improved to my great astonishment.
agumonkey 5y ago
yes, it's akin to when people describe discovery / invention as cutting away the cruft to isolate the gem. when you get the gem, everything fits, it's small, solid, shiny.. but it took hundreds of cuts.

slongfield 5y ago

“I didn't have time to write you a simple UI, so I wrote you a complicated one instead.” -- Mark Twain, paraphrased.

OJFord 5y ago
Blaise Pascal, translated and paraphrased. (Or at least as a lower-bound on its age anyway.) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
SilasX 5y ago
Except today more often I see "Our devs put together a basically usable UI, then we ramped up and hired a full time UXer, and it sucks now."
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  I've seen that happen a thousand times, yes. (Slightly exaggerating, but still.) I guess we'll just have to wait until people get used to the idea that the Web is an interactive document format, not a replacement for the GUI. I'm hoping the modern SPA trends pass into the void like the Macromedia Flash UI trends did.
  - hallway_monitor 5y ago
    At many companies anything is a SPA now, which seems like the worst example of cargo cult mentality. It takes twice as long to develop, but with all these people who only know JavaScript you have to give them something to do.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

Totally agree. I always get in trouble when I say that we must build a first version to get a “feel” for the task and then refine for a while. This may involve scrapping the whole thing a few times. This is especially true if something is totally new. Once you have an established UX it’s much easier to plan and make changes.

lisper 5y ago

Ron's second law: The hardest part of getting what you want is figuring out what it is.

adt2bt 5y ago

I had a similar realization with food recently, bear with me. You ever hear how in certain cultures, Mom's food is the best? Now, of course there's nostalgia involved. A hint of home can make your taste buds sing just a bit louder. But also, even for a 'simple' meal, there are so many options a chef can make that subtly change the meal. For example, looking only at one ingredient, you can end up with a dizzying amount of options. For example, do you use chicken thighs or white meat, sear it first or let it braise, brine it or salt it right before going on, use a jar of pre-ground spices or add your own concoction of 5 spices? Each of those is a choice, and only one set of choices ends up with Mom's chicken cacciatore. In software, any good UX is usually the result of thousands of intentional choices. It takes trial and error and research and actually time spent using the damn thing to figure out the tradeoffs involved in many of those choices. Just like it usually takes new chefs dozens of crappy, burnt, lifeless meals before developing the taste required to make those tradeoffs effectively.

bradknowles 5y ago
The thing that hit me many years ago was when I was very young (less than five, I think), and I was at my great grandmothers house, and she fixed dinner. And I LOVED the creamed corn she made! I made such a fuss about it that she had to get another can off the shelf and make a second helping. It was just plain creamed corn with condensed milk. But it was also the best thing I had ever eaten. She was very confused. As was my grandmother. And my mom. None of them understood just how important that “granny corn” was, despite the fact that it was straight from a can into the pan to be heated a little, and then put into a bowl for me. I heard that story time and time again, for decades. Association is a huge part of impression and memories. That’s why smell is such a good trigger for emotions, because it is very primal and connected so closely to those parts of your brain that are involved in association.
MonkeyClub 5y ago
> You ever hear how in certain cultures, Mom's food is the best? Just had the semi-shocking realization that the cross-section between those cultures and the cultures where moms are stay at home is quite large.

grawprog 5y ago

Even with simple projects.. I just finished working on redoing a static webpage for a client. Really simple, started at 17 pages, cut it down to 6 pages, only text and images with a contact form and a few links. I ended up having to build 3 different versions just to get a layout and design that worked for the client's business and another version I built initially for my own working environment the customer never even seen and wasn't charged for.

irrational 5y ago

When I was working on my masters degree project I thought I created a pretty good UI. At least I couldn’t think of a way to make it better. Then I did a 1 on 1 evaluation with a user who knew nothing about the subject matter. She had some recommendations that significantly improved the UI. I changed the UI and then I did a 1 on 1 evaluation with a knowledgeable user. He had more recommendations. I implemented them and then did a small group evaluation and then a large group evaluation. At each step suggestions were made that greatly enhanced the UI. By the time I was finished the UI was much different than what I came up with on my own, but tremendously improved to my great astonishment.

agumonkey 5y ago

yes, it's akin to when people describe discovery / invention as cutting away the cruft to isolate the gem. when you get the gem, everything fits, it's small, solid, shiny.. but it took hundreds of cuts.