[Sigia-l] Programming IAs was: Little things an IA MUST know/do

[Karl Fast]

> "The most important thing is that I am saying, "People who haven't
> coded, jerk the chain of programmer's". People who understand the
> programming process and come at it from a developer's point of
> view, don't do that." --Alan Cooper


True words. And so is the reverse. Good programmer's understand the
issues of the IA and interaction designer. Bad programmer's don't
and just "jerk the chain of the IA."


I recently finished teaching an HCI class to computer science
students. It was their first introduction to the topic and an
eye-opening experience.

When I started I wasn't sure if the point of the course was:

  1. to turn them into interaction designers, OR
  2. to make them aware of HCI issues so they could be better
     programmers

The prof who normally teaches the course said it was more of the
first one: to make them interaction designers. I came to believe the
opposite.

A few will go on to careers in interaction design. At least I hope
    so: some would make much better interaction designers than
    programmers (they usually know who they are).

A few will never touch this stuff again. They'll do hard-core low
    level work. Their users will be other programmers. They will do
    interface design of a different flavor: designing API's.

But I think the vast majority will be in the middle. They will write
     software to be used by end users. Interfaces and interaction
     will be there. They won't design the interface or do the IA
     work. However, now they have a framework for thinking about the
     problem, they understand it's importance and subtleties, and
     they have a language for communicating with the designers.


My point is that programmers who understand interaction issues (and
IA issues) will be better programmers. Just as IA and interaction
designers who understand programming & implementation isues make
better designers.

Does anyone have any similar experiences (I know George has already
written nicely about how experience programming has helped him as a
designer).


--karl