[IxDA Discuss] Am I a Unicorn?

[Adrian Howard]

On 6 Nov 2006, at 20:48, Daniel Weese wrote:

> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted  
> material.]
>
> While interviewing over the last 2 months, I came to realize that  
> "Developer" and "Designer" have nothing in common but the letter D.  
> I interviewed at several places in Nashville, and each time I took  
> along some examples of my design work, as well as an interaction  
> design document I had done on a project. Everyone loved the work  
> and the detail, but they all said the same thing. They basically  
> code by the seat of their pants and fix it as they go along, or fix  
> it after the users complain when it hits the market.

If it's any comfort not all development shops are code-n-fix! A lot  
do - but not everybody. This kind of behaviour isn't just bad from  
the perspective of producing a good user experience. It's bad all round.

You'll end up with a ghastly code base that's a complete bugger to  
maintain in the long term. Google around for "Big Ball Of Mud" :-)

You can also get problems that are just as hard from the "design  
everything up front" shops where you'll find it's often quite hard to  
get input early enough in the process to have any real effect. Too  
many people still see the UI as something that can be glued on a  
quite a late stage.

>   I tried to explain to them that some design work up front might  
> cut down on rewriting all that code, and that alienating your user  
> base from day one was a poor approach, but they prefer to give the  
> appearance of progress to the bosses by them all typing away at  
> their desks. I finally had to take a job at a company that likes my  
> design thinking, but still operates a code-as-you-go shop. I came  
> to realize that a developer/designer is a difficult thing to sell  
> in this ar
>  ea. I'm
>  hoping to slowly blend design into the next iteration of this  
> product. We'll see how it goes.
[snip]

Incremental development isn't necessarily bad. Quite the opposite in  
fact. Doing it without any sense of direction is the bad thing.

You might want to have a look at some of the agile methodologies like  
Scrum / XP / FDD, and maybe hang around on the agile-usability[1]  
mailing list. I've found teams run on agile lines to be much more  
willing to integrate user experience issues into the development  
process.

Cheers,

Adrian

[1] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-usability/