[Sigia-l] Can UI designers kill people?

[Cindy Alvarez]

> "Patrick Neeman" wrote:
> to realize
>> how
>> their solutions function in real world environments, and how to design
>> as
>> such.
>
> Well, I've been both a designer and a programmer for longer than a decade
> so
> this is not news to me, but the vast majority of programmers just aren't
> equipped at all to deal with architecture/usability/interaction/IA/UI
> issues, period.

It is absolutely useful if engineers can understand how "real users" use
their apps in the real world, and it is also absolutely true that most of
them are not equipped to learn this on their own.

I don't say that to disparage engineers but simply to note that one of the
reasons they do their job well where I would not is that they tend to see
the world differently.  None of them would have any desire to design a
start-to-end user experience on their own, but are happy to contribute
ideas when I bring up UI concerns: "well, if I'm a user and see the page
in that situation, I might fear that you lost all my data."  Sometimes
they have great ideas!  (and sometimes not, but that's why we have an
interaction designer to sort them out and oversee the whole process.)

Cindy Alvarez