Adventures in web design!
As you may know, I'm currently in South Dakota working on some loan processing software. There were some prototypes of input screens that were made before to show to potential users for comment. Unfortunately these were made by programmers and we tend to think functionally all the time.
This is what the loan application looked like before.
I've been heavily influenced by a friend on the impact of design on functionality however, especially over the last year or so. I've also been lucky enough to read a few books concerning design that have changed my mind about its role in the development process.
Of course I'm not professional designer but I tried my hand at a better look and feel.
This isn't the original attempt. Markus looked at it and gave some ideas on 'calming down my design' - I didn't change everything but if you want to look at his version it's here.
Usually we see a push from designers to understand what is going on programmatically and leverage that knowledge in their design. Recently in fact, Christina Wodtke of ElegantHack had an article on just the topic. But I'd like to see a push for programmers to work their way forward, to strive for a good design and usability of what has traditionally been [boring] business software.
<Ren>But why Stimpy, WHY?</Ren>
For three simple reasons I can think of right now:
1. In many fields design is called "planning". It's simply pausing and thinking before implementing something. This is crucial in building modular solutions that can be changed and refactored easily.
2. Because of what the Pragmatic Programmer folks "The broken window syndrome". The more organized and elegant something is, the more likely you perpetuate the conditions that make it so.
3. Finally, design is about communication. Many times when we think about functional requirements we forget that we not only need to implement business rules but we need to make it easy for the user to understand what our software does.
Of course I've never had an original thought - Joel has written extensively on good UI design for programmers. The free version is worth it - I haven't purchased the actual book.
Well, I better get out of the office.
7:58:13 PM 
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