the blogomancer

UI is hard: "It's always nice to see someone who understands. Via Scoble, I read this post by Damien Katz about re-writing the Formula Engine in Lotus Notes. A fascinating story, but the part that made me smile was this: UI stuff is hard, but not many people actually appreciate how difficult it is to do correctly. Everyone thinks they're an expert, but very few have actually spent any time thinking seriously about it, reading any article or books on the subject, watching users behind one way mirrors during usability tests and seeing how easily users get confused and distracted. So one day I'd had enough, I couldn't stand it anymore, I was tired of battling all day with people who thought their 'little' tweak would have no repercussions whatsoever. Being a UI guy isn't just producing UIs, it also requires negotiating with lots of people, at least at Iris it did, which was the part I liked the least about the work."