I wrote yesterday about problems I had with an application I wrote for a client. Today I delivered the program and, apart from a few minor glitches which always seem to appear in version 1.0, it worked fine.
Now I am no great shakes as a designer. My artistic skills are zero. But that didn’t bother me a great deal. Designing a desktop application is a lot different from designing a web site, although there are some similarities. The first thing to do is sort out the Information Architecture – or figure out what goes where.
Much of that came from the client. In this case it was a little easier than some jobs because I wasn’t starting from scratch. They had an existing system which they wanted replaced and so they had a pretty good idea of what they wanted. The hard jobs are when the client knows they need something but they don’t really have any idea of what it is that they need.
So I started with certain ground rules in place. I then needed to produce an interface, or UI, that matched their needs. But what was most pleasing to me was when I loaded up the application the first response from the client was “I like the look of that.” It was pleasing for two reasons. First, writing a progam is a very personal thing and when people criticise it is like them criticising your children. You created this thing and it is all right for you to criticise it, but heaven help anyone else who does.
If you want to sell applications you need to develop a thick skin because not everyone will like your designs.
The second, and more important, reason that I was pleased with the client’s response is because no one is happy using an application that they think is ugly. There are lots of theories on usability, and even more experts, but here is my theory. An application is completely unusable if no one wants to use it. But if they are happy with the look of it, if it feels nice to use, then the battle is half won.
Usability is very much an emotional experience.