The other day I linklogged to the so-called worst web interface design ever. In actual fact, shoddy as it was, it did actually make sense from one respect; it was designed to be a straight port of the old-school terminal applications that had been used until recently for accessing the same database, so as to avoid retraining costs.

This is perhaps the most over-zealous interpretation of a rule of software design that is often ignored - namely respect local working practices. Technologies are not simple black boxes that can be dropped in and expected to work straight off; often there will need to be adaptation and customisation, either during its design or after implementation and during use. Too often this is ignored, and we attempt to make every technological implementation revolutionary and groundbreaking, rather than flexible and sensitive, belying the fact that most successful innovation is small and piecemeal. Instead of trumpeting the big we should celebrate the art of subtle refinement and improvement.

Aside - governments, the British one in particular, happily ignore this fact when it comes to IT projects, with the result that, as Chicken Yoghurt reflects, the complexities involved end up creating a really terrible product.

Anyway, gradual improvement is still more than no improvement at all, though. In the case of the web app above, the general layout and work processes could have been retained with a little refinement, along with a total redesign of the controls that would have looked half-decent in a web browser. That would have probably required little retraining - after all, people accessing the site would already be used to using a web browser form design paradigm in other applications. A successful redesign would combine the two skillsets together in an intuitive way. But there’s an art to these things, one that too many in the software trade haven’t picked up on, sadly.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 30th, 2005 at 14:34:06 and is filed under General.