“These Things I Believe”

These things I believe is a beautiful mantra of software philosophy.
I agree with everything there.

Here are some choice quotes:

Are users dumb?

• When software is hard to use, don’t make excuses for it. Improve it.

• When a user makes a mistake, don’t blame the user.
  Ask how the software misled them. Then fix it.

• The user’s time is more valuable than ours. Respect it.

• Good U.I. design is humble.

“These things I believe”

A good software developer defends his work by actions - fixing it, improving it.
A bad software developer places the blame anywhere but on their own head.

What is the task of the U.I. designer?

• Users do not know what interface they want.
  Users do not know what features they want.

• Users know the tasks they want to do, and the problems they have.

• We learn more by watching the user work than by asking the user.

• The job of the U.I. designer is to provide what the users need,
  not what the users say they need.

• It is to make tasks easier, not to provide features.

“These things I believe”

And my personal thoughts:

If you believe users to be idiots, then you will write idiot-software

Kroc Camen

I would go as far as saying that:

With intelligence, you can write good code.
But without philosophy, you cannot create art.

Kroc Camen

It takes love to write beautiful code (and a beautiful functionally interface), and there’s not much of that in this technology-world of pent-up, angry, aggressive and indignant geeks.