[IxDA Discuss] Do Engineers Understand UX documents? (was "Alan Cooper on Software...")

[Matthew Nish-Lapidus]

Agreed!  Anybody, developers or otherwise, will better understand the
project if involved to some degree at each stage.  "Throwing over the
wall" never works, in any circumstance.   At my office, a medium
agency, we build project teams and try to keep all team member
involved from the very beginning.  Not only does that help each person
understand their role, but sometimes great ideas come from people you
wouldn't think of as "creative."

Sorry, I know this veers off topic a little.  In the end,
developers/engineers will always better understand the design
requirements if they're involved in creating them.

The other side to this is the idea that developers are inherently
different than designers, which I think is false.  Each person has a
specialized skill, but on a good team there should be a certain amount
of skill overlap.  If the developer has an interest in design then
he/she will take more care to follow the design while deving the
interface.

Matt.

On 11/1/07, Joseph Selbie <jselbie at tristream.com> wrote:
> Christopher,
>
> My previous answer to your question was that getting the engineers to
> participate in the design process was essential to them "getting" the
> essence of the project -- a holistic understanding without which they may
> easily stray during the development phase. To answer your question more
> pointedly, I'd say that engineers will "get" many types of documentation
> (perhaps all types) as long as they have participated in the process that
> led to the documentation. But if they don't participate, no particular
> documentation type will insure that they "get" it.
>
> Joseph Selbie
> Founder, CEO Tristream
> Web Application Design
> http://www.tristream.com
>
>
> Lots of good answers here... but so far not one person has said that,
> in their experience, engineers don't understand UXD documentation.
> David's distinction between "value" and "understand" is good: do
> engineers understand our documents but still dislike them?
>
> This is what I really wanted to know, because, again, in my
> experience the opposite -- that they totally "get" and greatly
> appreciate our documentation -- is decidedly true.
>
> -Cf
>
> Christopher Fahey


-- 
Matt Nish-Lapidus
email/gtalk: mattnl at gmail.com
++
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mattnl
Home: http://www.nishlapidus.com