
Make Data Not Look Like Data - soundsop
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Make_Data_Not_Look_Like_Data
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sh1mmer
This is why it's important to have good UED (user experience design) people.

It can be very frustrating for a programmers to work with them because they
just don't seem to care how hard it is to create some design they've come up
with. They keep warbling on about some people called "users", who are the most
important apparently... funny that.

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jordyhoyt
Short, and very very good. Those diagrams will definitely stick with me.

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extension
This is the opposite of the problem.

For any non-trivial application, the user needs to understand the data model
they are working with. They don't need to know the gritty details of how
things are encoded and enumerated, but they do need to be aware of the
entities and their relationships. This is true for _any_ kind of user, savvy
or not.

Deep usability problems happen when the application omits, hides or distorts
aspects of the model that the user is manipulating. For example:

\- inline formatting codes in word processors

\- fake folders in filesystems e.g. My Documents

\- "apply" button in dialogs

\- wizards

Design should start with the user model, then create the user interface to
manipulate it. The internal model can be different from the user model but
they should have a one-to-one mapping.

~~~
eru
Perhaps they should have a well-defined mapping. Why should one-to-one be
helpful?

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Herring
Bad screenshot. It blends into the article so I thought it was about him &
ignored it. It took a while to find wtf he was talking about in the dzone
article.

