This is what happens when you let programmers design interfaces (PNG)

Re:This is what happens when you let programmers design inte... by halo on Sunday April 13, 2008 @07:27AM (#162350)

I think this is overly harsh. As far as I can tell, this is a program made by a single person in their spare time and was then open sourced. This is what happens when someone develops an application for themselves based around their own needs and then decided other people might want to use it - I'm sure the developer didn't set out to create a "great user experience".

Controversially, despite its ugliness and widget abuse, it does have some things going for it - it's largely self-explanatory and unambiguous and is probably incredibly quick to use due to its general lack of reliance on tabs and submenus.

A better example of a truly bad interface is Lotus Notes 7 - its UI was an utter disaster yet the application remained popular. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ln7.jpg - thankfully much, much improved with Lotus Notes 8 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lotus_Notes_8_home.png)

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Re:This is what happens when you let programmers design inte... by Todd on Sunday April 13, 2008 @03:57PM (#162590)

Agreed. I have used this app off and on for years. A very nice contribution on the part of the developer. I see the UI of this app as being more a symptom of the target audience. It is targeted to other software developers (I assume) since it is a project on Code Project. It is targeted to the power user elite. Every option is no more than a mouse click away and many are a keystroke or two away.

Your point is taken about bad UI design, though. There are many exemplary instances. I find that bad UI design can come from any number of functional roles.

Many programmers I know (myself included) have been around good and bad designers for so long, and have used apps similarly, that a sensibility has developed within us. Some of us also know about user experience and usability testing. If you seek elegance in code, you will often want the UI of your product to be similarly elegant.

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Re:This is what happens when you let programmers design inte... by Goladus on Sunday April 13, 2008 @09:34AM (#162389)

Exactly. This is a ToDo list application. There are dozens of valid approaches to designing one. This looks like an app that could be very fast and effective once you got comfortable with it.

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Re:This is what happens when you let programmers design inte... by tfinniga on Sunday April 13, 2008 @09:29PM (#162761)

I agree - I think it would be a stretch to say someone 'designed' this UI. This is a small project, with an easy UI.

Getting a simpler UI would take more work, but just because someone is a programmer doesn't mean they can't design a good UI if given proper design requirements, and enough time.

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