[sdiy] Can your *really* teach "Engineering"?

[Antti Huovilainen]

On Thu, 20 Aug 2009, Barry Klein wrote:

> logical easy to use interfaces and screwing them up.  An interface is not
> good just because you can do a ton of things using the menu system.  It is
> good if you can do the most critical things quickly and easily.  Doesn't
> take an engineer to determine that but seems to take one to screw it up.

Not really. Realizing that you need a good interface is rather trivial. 
_Designing_ said good interface is much much harder. Especially when 
you're faced with real world limitations on cost and time.

Asking random engineer to design a good user interface is like asking 
random architect to write software.

Antti

"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow"
   -- Lt. Cmdr. Ivanova