My colleague Kendall Miller of eSymmetrix has written a great post on the importance of UX in software engineering — please check it out and give him some feedback:
http://reliable.esymmetrix.com/development/what-happens-when-engineers-dont-rule
Found myself nodding and smiling throughout. Whether we like it or not, people’s expectations are being raised constantly by the plethora of online destinations and tools that offer sleek, intuitive and (dare I say it) sexy experiences. And what people see in that “personal” realm colors their expectations of what they see and use in the professional realm. As designers and engineers we don’t have to LIKE that — but we DO have to accept it and design our solutions accordingly.
When the user experience sucks, people walk. Apps don’t get used, products don’t sell, cost savings are not realized, redundancies and process bottlenecks remain. I’ve been saying for a very long time that designers need to think more like engineers and engineers need to think more like designers. We NEED each other, need to collaborate and learn from each other to meet this exponential growth of expectation when it comes to web apps.
Kendall’s as sharp as they come folks — lots to learn here.
