We are really buried this morning, and my SO comes home from the UK later today, so I do need to get out and move some snow around. Looks like about 30cm out there at least. Shades of last year.
I suppose there's a bit of cleaning up to do around the house too :) Anyway, it's not looking good for productivity today. Luckily yesterday was fruitful at getting lots of the pieces in place for the tougher coding job today.
User Interface design is a challenge for any company, but it's also tough to start from a blank sheet. My experience is that its important to think before coding, yes. Think about programmatic structure as well as UI organization. I think too often companies depend on non-programmer UI designers who don't have a good sense of how the code comes together. Yet other companies think that their programmers can design the UI. Both are mistakes.
A UI designer has choices and sometimes two different approaches are both viable, yet one may have substantially different impact on both effort and resource cost/complexity than the other. Having the understanding to pick the right direction is the challenge there.
I think a good approach is to understand the coding constraints, and 'toolbox' of whats available, then craft a walkthrough, then implement a first draft approach, test that for efficiency and usability and evolve it. You may need to rip some stuff out, but it avoids situations where UI's are designed without code awareness, and some programmer spends 50% of the effort on trying to get a pulldown list to work when a radio button would have met the UI design intent just as well.
Anyway, that's well underway, and I see some changes that will be necessary, but I'm persevering to get through to something functional so that other development can proceed before trying to make the app look pretty and perfect.
Plus it's easier to find people with the skills to criticize and fix than it is to find ones who can visualize and implement.
Researchinator seeks to find a balance...
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