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October 17, 2003
Peak Awareness
Have you noticed that you are very aware of other cars that are the same make and model as the one you drive? Living in Seattle, we have what would have to be considered a "Standard Issue" car -- a green Subaru Outback wagon. The first day we had it, my wife walked out to the parking lot and tried to unlock the green Subaru Outback wagon that was parked next to ours.
Well, I've started a User-Centered Design program at the University of Washington and now I notice more people discussing usability issues.
I started off this morning with "Stupid Interface Design" from Volker. Mike talked about bad UI design earlier this month. I've started reading more UI-type blogs, so I guess that's another reason why it seems like it's everywhere.
Several people have experessed surprise that I would want to take "non-coding" classes. I've explained that superior human-computer interfaces can be the differentiation between mature software products. As applications move from being the first one to do something to having to compete with applications that do the same thing in later releases, the difference is often the interface.
It's also the piece that seems to be missing from the applications I have developed. I understand the process of building software, but I don't understand the science of how to get a person, or better yet a group of people, to interact with the software in a meaningful and natural way. And that's where these classes come in.
Posted by michael at October 17, 2003 06:35 AM