Jesse Smith’s Blog

I discovered a great new (to me) blog the other day - UX Crank. “UX” is short for “user experience”, which is the new fee-yan-cee way of saying “user interface”. His posts are direct and to-the-point, and usually pretty insightful.

I love reading about user interface (er, “eXperience”) design. It’s one of those things that very few programmers or software companies seem to care much about, and it shows. The thing is, it’s something that programmers really need to understand, because the design of the user interface is really woven throughout the entire program and affects just about every aspect of the program. It’s not something you can outsource to a graphics designer and then slap on at the end like a coat of paint. So in the end, the programmers usually end up becoming user interface designers by default, whether they’ve bothered to study the subject or not.

With EverybodyInn, I design the user interface screens and dialogs first, as part of the initial planning of a new feature. I put a great deal of time and thought into working out the best way to present each feature to the user, to minimize confusion, extra mouse clicks and window changes, or unnecessary choices. My belief is that by being simple and so easy to use, EverybodyInn is an obvious and compelling choice for anyone frustrated by the difficult and complicated interfaces found in other inn management systems.