A look back at the best from this week in the past.
Flashback: A Year Ago This Week on Tyner Blain [2006-04-07]
A look back at the best from a year ago.
Don’t Make Your Products Too Simple
Joshua Ledwell wrote a short article expressing his perspective on designing software that is neither too simple nor too complex. He also links to some excellent other articles on the topic.
Software Usability and Learning Curves
Learning curves have been studied for decades when evaluating manufacturing systems and proposing cost reductions. The Boston Consulting Group did an oft-cited analysis in the 1960’s that describes how people get faster at tasks through repetition. Peter Abilla looked at the extension of this to writing software. We look at how it applies to using software.
Goal-Driven Documentation
Why do we write documentation? Because someone told us to write it? Because our competitors have it? Or because we want our software to be easier to use? It should be the third one, but often, writing documentation is an afterthought, and it is deprioritized, and we just get it done, instead of thinking about the goals for doing it in the first place and doing it right.