

What Interface Engineers Wish Designers Knew - timf
http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/announcements/2009/02/future_practice_interview_bill.php

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ahoyhere
The "interface engineers" are the developers, and the "designers" forget that
Photoshop is static and web apps are not?

The problem is that they hired the wrong people.

Perhaps they'd prefer to hire "interface designers" instead. I hear they
understand that Photoshop is not static, and do not use bizarre print
advertising terms like "lockups."

Netflix has never had a good UI. They have a great business, but the UI is
fair to middling at best.

If there's any doubt about this, just remember the system for reordering your
queue, which involved entering arbitrary numbers into text fields.

~~~
weaksauce
Or you could drag and drop them like a normal desktop application. I actually
find that netflix has a pretty usable interface. Maybe it's not the best but
very usable for most intents and purposes. If your only option was to use the
text boxes then it would be a whole different story as that is a usability
nightmare.

~~~
ahoyhere
If they added drag n drop, it was after I used it.

I had the service initially when it came out, and for years, the text box was
the only option.

~~~
weaksauce
They must have added it after you left. They must have hired on some usability
gurus to make the site very user friendly(in my eyes, but I am not a typical
user).

For Example, they added a javascript hover over a movie title in the list and
they "pop-in" an info box of the movie that you are interested in while your
mouse is hovered over the title. This does not prevent you from clicking
through but it is an easy way to decide if the link is actually worth clicking
on.

Another example of the UI adding instead of detracting from the overall
experience is when you actually add a movie to your queue. Another pop-in
happens that gives you more recommendations based on the movie that you
picked. The key thing that makes it usable is that when you are done looking
at the recommendations you can close the pop-in and you are back at the
original list of titles without any jarring transitions. There is another
subtle way in which they make the pop-in more usable by making the original
page visible behind the pop-in at all times. This keeps your sense of where
you are in the netflix site.

I am definitely not saying that they have a great UI. Just that they have a UI
that works well for most use cases.

