Interface Design for Programmers
“Design for Programmers” is a meme that I’ve run into on several recent occasions. In particular I attended Rick Cecil’s presentation on the subject at BarCampRDU, and a co-worker pointed me to Amy Hoy’s presentation from web|works in 2005.
Rick’s talk focused on “User Experience” versus “Interface Design,” but he brought up one important point that I think Amy missed (or at least didn’t emphasize very strongly). Amy defines interface as:
expectation (user expectations)
interaction (mechanics of interaction)
behavior (how the software behaves)
The missing piece that Rick mentioned was context. A user’s experience (a term which I prefer to “interface” or “interaction” — but that’s just me) is rarely without relevent context. At Lulu that context includes the software that our user’s use to create their content. We don’t write or support those tools, but they’re critical to the user’s experience on our site. Gaining an understanding of context can be very difficult, but I highly recommend contextual inquiry as a tool for exploring context.
Regardless, Amy’s presentation is excellent, and I highly recommend that anyone (programmer or not) take a look.