This week has been an eye opener into the reality that I’m a programmer and not a designer. I’ve nearly completed my second year as a professional software developer and have quite the project list for my resume, and still have so much to learn about software development. This post is about the user experience design problem I encountered with two clients.

The first example comes from an Auction Manager application I wrote that handles property auctions and contacts.

This application was not based off any other application and was created from scratch. As I created this and went through various meetings with the client it was clear there are various steps and seperations during the process of property auctions. As an application that will grow over the years I imagined that using an Outlook style explorer bar would be benefitial and make the application easy to understand and learn. Once work started picking up for the client and the software was used more they found that this kind of style slows down the work flow, because of the extra clicks it takes to get to the various screens they need. After I visit them this week I’m sure I’ll come up with a better idea to repair the work flow and create a better user experience, but my question is how do you plan and prepare the great user experience if the application never existed? What works for some clients may not work the same for others.

The second example I have is a point of sales system I created for small businesses. This is still in development and I’m 100% sure this interface will change within the next two weeks.

While creating this software I searched the internet to view various screen shots of point of sales systems to get an idea of how I could improve the ease of use for users. A lot of systems out there are screens loaded with information that will completely confuse the user. By simplifying everything and making the whole process faster. The boss and other office co-workers liked the system and said it should be a really big hit with people. One of our clients that will be using the software soon came to have a sneak peek at it. Their first reactions were that all the information is displayed on the screen and there is no contrast between the various parts which will leave users confused. Her point of sale system that she is switching from is QuickBooks POS, so everything she compared to was that. If it doesn’t function like QuickBooks with the various screens they use, then it appears to confusing to learn? I just don’t understand the design side of things to accept feedback like this.

Every client is different, and small businesses seem less likely to have training sessions because their work schedules are so busy. In the last year I’ve heard multiple comments that clients want their software to look and function exactly like Microsoft products and other big name companies like Intuit. Their reaction really comes from years of using these products, which causes me stress because of the thought and ideas I’ve put into the making the software I’m presenting. New innovative ideas don’t stand a chance in a fast moving busy small business. I am confused on how to approach the user experience design side of things because all I’ve done is programmed most of my life.

If anyone has some great adivce on resources to read or listen to I’d be more than willing to take a look. Right now I try to learn as much as possible from various web searches on the topic and listen to the Pixel8 podcast.

Within the past week or so I’ve started studying up on N-Tier applications since I’ve been experiencing overload on one particular client expanding faster than I can keep up with application maintenance. This client has grown so much in the past 2 months that I have been working almost non-stop to develop a solution that works with their business. Now that I understand what N-Tier is and means, I really feel silly for not looking into that sooner. You’ll read that it’s mainly for large scale applications, but there is actually a need for such a architecture in small business too. From this point on I plan on creating layers for every project I work on. It makes perfect sense and will ease future projects because I can reuse the various layers.

I would keep typing more, but I’m half asleep right now, so I’ll try to catch up with more posts tomorrow. Goodnight!

Since I’ve had the chance to get back to coding a little bit outside of work, I’ve dug into an unused program that comes with the NetAdvantage package. That app is called AppStylist. After I figured it out and read through the documentation for using what it generates I started going nuts styling all my applications. The results you can achieve with the presentation layer are quite stunning. I’m sure my clients will appreciate the new look.

One thing I haven’t figured out if it’s possible or not is the ability to remove a loaded style from the running application. A majority of the Infragistic controls are documented, but AppStylist seems to lack a little in that department. I’m sure trial and error will pay off sooner or later.

In other news, have any of you read what scientists are planning to do under the Alps? They managed to create a device that will blast particles together traveling at light speed to recreate the big bang. Now is it just me or this sounds incredibly stupid? To top it all off I’ve actually had a nightmare about it the same night I read the story. The idea of them possibly causing a catastrophic event just freaks me out. Microsoft asks you how would you move a mountain in their interview process, this sillyness might be a possible solution.