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

[Samppa Tolvanen]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 9:31 PM, Antti Huovilainen<ajhuovil at cc.hut.fi> wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Aug 2009, Barry Klein wrote:
>
> 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.
>

No. You didn't get the point. That "random software engineer" has
probably written the firmware up to the specification. I think Mr.
Klein here criticizes that the same engineer who has done good job up
to specs also handles the GUI. The mess (s)he pulled together reflects
the need, but UI doesn't need to reflect what has been implemented. If
80% of the end users don't need advanced setup options, it's quite
necessary to understand this. There's nothing to prevent doing this
today even on memory limited devices, let along computers.

Samppa