Keeping the User in Mind
This week I found a short and sweet article on Code Simplicity by Max Kanat-Alexander (https://www.codesimplicity.com/post/developer-hubris/). The article is titled “Developer Hubris†and discusses the common notion among developers where they get the impression that the program they wrote is of vital importance and interest to the user simply because the developer put a lot of time and energy into ensuring that the program accomplishes its goal. This is usually never the case. According to Max, the user doesn’t care how the program works, what went into it or how long it took to write. They simply care that the program does what they need. He also goes into how some features of a program can be viewed as problems (i.e. pop-ups) because these features get in the way of the accessibility of their project. The user doesn’t care about the features that don’t have a direct impact on their work.
I agree with Max in that the developer should realize that not everyone is going to see their program as high and mighty as they do. A software developer needs to be realistic in their mindset and know that not everyone is going to love their software. The main attractant to a program is what can be done with it. A user will not have any interest in a piece of software that doesn’t satisfy a certain requirement. The main focus of the developer when writing their software should absolutely be the user and what they can do with it. That doesn’t mean that every user won’t care about the behind the scenes content. Some people are naturally curious and enjoy learning details like that, especially in this field of study.
Certain pop-ups and options can be annoying to the user but that doesn’t tarnish or get in the way with the fact that the program does what the user needs it to do. In fact, I would venture to say that there are many programmers who would prefer these pop-ups. It allows the user to tweak certain options to his/her preferences. It actually seems that including more options for the user to change makes the program more user-friendly rather than not. To me, allowing for more flexibility is the true way to keep the user in mind.