>As someone with a good amount of professional experience both as a developer and a designer, I'm consistently surprised by how quick so many developers are to assume their personal usage habits, osmosis-gained knowledge from projects, and folk wisdom about design trumps the expertise of seasoned credentialed professionals in the field.
Same here, and couldn't agree more. Except that I'm not surprised.
The thing is, developers with this pov have often been exposed to really shitty UIs where there's poor design aesthetics, matched with no understanding of the user's problems, coupled with fancy effects, that end up getting in the way and breaking in subtle ways - and ultimately don't represent what the developer is trying to do.
People have a varying level of being exposed to such UIs, but professional developers, esp. dealing with enterprise portals and internal systems have been really burnt by this.
Sorry to be nitpicky-- I largely agree with your comment-- but I always must point out that interface design is a communication medium, not an aesthetic medium. Like technical writing, it's a communication medium even if there are some secondary aesthetic considerations.
Same here, and couldn't agree more. Except that I'm not surprised.
The thing is, developers with this pov have often been exposed to really shitty UIs where there's poor design aesthetics, matched with no understanding of the user's problems, coupled with fancy effects, that end up getting in the way and breaking in subtle ways - and ultimately don't represent what the developer is trying to do.
People have a varying level of being exposed to such UIs, but professional developers, esp. dealing with enterprise portals and internal systems have been really burnt by this.