User Experience

Cryptic Error Codes

Saturday, April 04 2015 ux

Of the many pieces of feedback that have been publicly posted for Windows 10, the following request to eliminate error codes and to use plain language caught my eye:

Care about the User Experience

Monday, January 21 2013 ux

A great user experience is an essential part of a successful project - whether you’re talking about the next great website, a wonderful product or an internal bespoke system.

Everything's broken but we can fix it

Friday, September 21 2012 ux

If you haven’t read it already, go and read Scott Hanselman’s post Everything’s broken and nobody’s upset”. Do it now, I’ll wait for you.

First Impressions - Visual Studio 11

Saturday, March 31 2012 ux

Last week I attended one of Microoft’s “Windows Camp” developer days looking at Windows 8. The morning was a series of informative talks, followed by a hands on lab building a Windows 8 Metro app.

Reinventing the Validation Wheel

Wednesday, November 16 2011 ux

A comment by SaltySeaDog over on my post Easier Property Validation with dynamic in C# 4* got me thinking.

Custom Chrome

Wednesday, October 26 2011 ux

If you’re working on an application that uses custom window chrome - whether you’re using Windows.Forms or WPF - then make sure you check out the Marlett font, already installed on your system.

I recently stumbled upon a great entry from 2007 on Phil Haack’s blog: Don’t be a Validation Nazi, where he writes about the perils of being overly strict on validation. This is an area close to my heart, as I’ve seen so many systems end up user hostile due to overly strict validation. This can be particularly frustrating when it’s forced on the system by a misguided analyst.

Who's Needs First?

Tuesday, December 14 2010 ux

It’s very common for us developers to put our needs ahead of the needs of our users. Often this manifests in the way we build our user experiences, choosing an approach that is easy to implement instead of another that might be easier to use.