[IxDA Discuss] Alan Cooper on Software Design: Code=Design?

[Steve Baty]

Chris,

Our applications are all designed on paper first through deliverables such
as wireframes on the ux side, for example; and various technical documents
on the development side - class diagrams; workflow diagrams; state diagrams;
entity relationship diagrams etc etc. When we encounter solution design
issues where we aren't certain that one piece of technology will work
happily with another to produce a desired result, then we'll often produce a
code-based proof-of-concept, but we don't 'design' the application using
code.

Besides which, our 'design' process involves at least four different
disciplines working together, and only one of those could write code, so
it's hardly a suitable medium for communicating design decisions.

Steve

On 30/10/2007, Christopher Fahey <chris.fahey at behaviordesign.com> wrote:
>
>
> -------- excerpt --------
> Software is the only medium where the construction materials are
> entirely the same as the design materials: source code. When a design
> engineer works out a complex problem for how a program will work, she
> uses source code. When a production engineer later uses that code as
> a design document and produces his own, release-quality, shippable
> software, he uses source code. In no other medium is this true and it
> is this watershed more than any other that defines the post-
> industrial era.
>
> Virtually every industrial age product is first designed on paper or
> in some other cheap, disposable, high bandwidth, easy-to-iterate
> medium. In fact, it is these characteristics of the tools that allow
> design to exist at all.
> ...
>
> Yes, software can be a cheap, disposable, high bandwidth, easy-to-
> iterate medium. Advocates of Agile methods would have you believe
> that all software is so. If only it were true. ...
> ------ end excerpt ------
>
>
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Steve 'Doc' Baty B.Sc (Maths), M.EC, MBA
Director, User Experience Strategy
Red Square
P: +612 8289 4930
M: +61 417 061 292

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