Actually, UI design is relatively simple. Unfortunately, most of the people tasked with it are either (a) even more simple or (b) ignorant managers, who have heard that it is simple, but don't quite understand what "simple" means in the context of a computer. Read Joel Spolsky (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/fog0000000249.html) on the subject.
Joel also has a post on why internal company software UIs suck, but I can't be bothered to look it up. His (fairly obvious) conclusion is that, once your internal software is "almost good enough," it will stay that way forever, because there is no money and no interest in improving it in any way.
I don't know about Apple (perhaps the Wrath of God makes a difference there), but I can certainly testify that Microsoft, who otherwise spend an ungodly amount of time, effort and money in getting the user experience right, are just as uninterested as any other large corporation in getting their internal stuff to interface to human beings. Some of it, weirdly enough, has no GUI at all, and in fact still depends on a DOS Box. (It's actually worse than that: it's some sort of hideous .NET thing that's derived from a DOS Box but which leaves useful features like extending the number of history buffers out.)
Birks is probably correct in the first place. Don't blame the programmers. Don't even blame the designers. If a company like Dell can sell this shit, then they will, and they're the ones to blame.
Of course, buying an Android in the first place is an exceptionally unwise decision, as I made plain in my earlier post.
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Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-19 05:35 pm (UTC)Joel also has a post on why internal company software UIs suck, but I can't be bothered to look it up. His (fairly obvious) conclusion is that, once your internal software is "almost good enough," it will stay that way forever, because there is no money and no interest in improving it in any way.
I don't know about Apple (perhaps the Wrath of God makes a difference there), but I can certainly testify that Microsoft, who otherwise spend an ungodly amount of time, effort and money in getting the user experience right, are just as uninterested as any other large corporation in getting their internal stuff to interface to human beings. Some of it, weirdly enough, has no GUI at all, and in fact still depends on a DOS Box. (It's actually worse than that: it's some sort of hideous .NET thing that's derived from a DOS Box but which leaves useful features like extending the number of history buffers out.)
Birks is probably correct in the first place. Don't blame the programmers. Don't even blame the designers. If a company like Dell can sell this shit, then they will, and they're the ones to blame.
Of course, buying an Android in the first place is an exceptionally unwise decision, as I made plain in my earlier post.