Re: [Usability] User Experience Advocates

[Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste kde org>]

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Felipe Erias Morandeira
<femorandeira igalia com> wrote:
> I wonder if it would be possible to get interaction designers involved
> *before* the application has been written.

Most of open source software is in the maintenance phase and does not
have the luxury of a full redesign from the very beginning of the
process. Sometimes you will get projects that are interested in
reengineering bits and pieces of an application, but you are still
constrained by the parts that will not change.

>
> To cite Alan Cooper:
>
> "Many people have the mistaken assumption that what interaction
> designers do, and what needs to be done, is user-interface design.
> Interface design is certainly part of what needs to be done, but it
> holds only a secondary role in the process of design, much like
> packaging does in retail sales. Interface design is what is done after
> both the *purpose* and *behaviour* of the interactive product are
> already established. But a bad product in beautiful and imaginative
> wrappings is still a bad product.
>
> When experts are called in to do interface design, they are summoned
> only after the product is already substantially built. The opportunity
> for significant design has passed, and the designer's efforts - no
> matter how heroic - have relatively limited impact."
>
>
> Food for thought.
>
>
> Felipe
>
>
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>



-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project
KDE e.V. Board of Directors
www.kde.org