Microwaves and IT

I was trying to follow the instructions on the back of the box the other day when I cam to a part that had me stumped.  It said that in order to defrost the item I held in my hands I needed to set the power to low and put it in the microwave for 2 1/2 minutes.  Now, I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent (some may not agree with that statement) and I consider myself to be somewhat of a technology geek.  I like silly, geeky things, but, darn it, I can't defrost anything in our microwave!!!!

Now, thinking just like the instructions, I set the power to low and then tried to enter a time, but for some reason I was entering in the time for "Step 2" of the overall process instead of Step 1.  So, I hit the "Defrost" button and was asked to enter in the weight of the object in kilograms.  Tossing it up and down like the frozen pork sandwich from Costco that it was, I guessed at about 0.1 KG.  I tossed it in the microwave and crossed my fingers.  I came close but it was probably about 0.15 KG, which I couldn't enter as it expected only a single digit after the decimal point.  (By the way, the correct method was to enter in the time, then enter in the power setting.  I had this epiphany on the bus on the way to work this morning.)

We sometimes build applications the same way that manufacturers build their interfaces.  it makes perfect sense to one or two people, or even the "study group" that looked at the interface, but when you give it to someone that has never seen it before, has never been part of the privileged few that saw the development process, the interface sucks.  Sorry for the bad news, but interfaces made by geeks are ... well, geeky.  They make sense to geeks, some of them,  but honestly don't make sense to anyone else. 

You see this in many applications and still see it today.  I was looking for an application to catalog by DVD collection using information sucked out of the Amazon.com database.  I found half a dozen applications, but they all looked like they were put together by Picasso.  I then found an application that looked like it was put together very well.  They had the complete package from the functionality that I wanted to a simple, pleasing user interface.

Project Managers, don't trust developers when it comes to user interfaces.  Look at the designs yourself and see if they make sense.  if you can't figure out how to do something, get it redone as someone totally unfamiliar with the project is going to be completely lost.  If the response is "the user wants it this way" then this really means that there are too many geeks trying to cook and it might be time to bring in a professional designer to help you out.