leeor

What I have been fighting inside for the past few years is proven to be correct by Alan Cooper.  What we are taught in school is proven to be true by Alan Cooper.  Thank you for your persistance and knowledge in this field.  I have managed to create virtually bug free software by designing on paper, listening to the user, and coming up with the solution I believe is best for a given scenario.  User experience is key.  A very simple way to have a developer understand "User Experience" when it comes to the UI and feel of a software program is to simply say "How would you have liked it to look like and act?"  As simple as that, a developer would be forced to take additional time to map out a software program and design it to make it work the way the developer themselves would like it to be.  An example would be a simple program that tracks a workflow.  Yes you can put an auto-refresh on a webpage to poll the data base to re-fill a datagrid, but what about sending an Email or SMS to the user to let them know that there is a new item in the workflow, or a change.  It is *easier* to just let the user "minimize" the web page and check it now and then, it is more complicated, or takes a few more lines of code and one more hour to insert some logic that enhances the overal user experience.  Also, Alan metions that developers enjoy working on open source software more.  The majority of open source software, while may be well thought out, lacks in User Experience/User Interface design, and is merely more enjoyable to the developer for the simple fact that there are no deadlines, at the least.  The bottomline, there is more freedom in every respect when it comes to creating open source programs.  What you get are thought out programs that are virtually unusable withour understanding the code that went in them!  There is a balance that can be achived in the real world.

Finally, the user *does* know what they *want*, but she does not know what she *needs*.

-Leeor

My grandma's getting one tomorrow!  (seriously) 

Ok, Amanda just makes too much sense!
I've been programming VB since version 3.  When .Net came around and I couldn't show Form2 I just closed Visual Studio and went back to VB6.  It really was frustrating.  If it wasn't for the "Student Evangelist" program, I think I'd still have VB6 laying around.  Now I love VB.Net and I'm really appreciating Object Oriented Programming!  It's too damn cool!   (Inside I miss WinForms too, ASP.Net really took over)

I would love Amanda to expand on how to really make use of the framework, something she just mentioned.  I remember the days of going through the Win32API definitions trying to make use of all those cool APIs.  I use the Object Browser tool with .Net when I look for those cool features you don't find readily avaialble, but I still find myself bringing some old WIN32APIs into .Net to do things because I really can't find them.  Such things as Windows Handles of Open Processes is what I can think of right now when I needed to automate an external program.  (Heh, reminds me of SendKeys )

Great interview, really confirmed my views.

Is it just me, or was there a Chris Sells video here just a few moments ago?   where did it go?

And to comment on this video, a nice little input on the planning that goes into VS... making predictions and.. taking a month off