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bombelayesterday at 5:02 PM2 repliesview on HN

Talking to the users, allowing them to show you what they are trying to do with your software, almost feels like cheating, because of how easy things suddenly appear to be when uncertainty fades away.

Obviously, the number of uniquely different users has an influence, and users most often do not truly know what they need, but that's our job to tease appart.

Turns out the users most often benefits from small changes that reduces friction toward achieving their goal. Any time saving will be appreciated, but only if it can be trusted to work. Nothing worse than the dread of knowing an action might or might not work randomly.

I use most software today with a constant sense of fear that the next action will break something and waste my time. Undo probably doesn't work properly anyways


Replies

devmoryesterday at 5:14 PM

"What problem are we trying to solve?" is a question I have to ask constantly in corporate development environments, and rarely does anyone presenting the task to be done actually know the answer!

It's very frustrating.

show 4 replies
boogiekniteyesterday at 8:47 PM

i consider a sign of maturity in myself that i always defer to adapting my software to fit how the user is trying to interact with it. the sign of immaturity is that my deference masks internally screaming, "why would you want that!? why would ANYONE want that!?"

my "customers always right" approach has produced much more successful and useful software compared to my perfect little hobby projects which will never be complete and noone would ever use anyway