Monday mornings can be a hard slog, especially when you’ve worked a bit on the weekend and it is hard to know where the working week starts and ends, sometimes. That said I’ve had quite a good morning this Monday morning and am that much closer to the next Surfulater release.
I did hit a small roadblock though, stopped for a Coffee and hit the Blogs and my day has well and truly been made by a post by Kathy Sierra over at Creating passionate users titled If your software was on a date….
Kathy asks
“How would your software (or product, service, book, cause, etc.) behave on a date?”Â
and goes on to list her “Dating Rules For Software” which include:
- Look your best
- Be fun. Don’t be negative. Be the one others want to be around.
- Be trustworthy and consistent.
- Don’t be fake.
- Be polite, be helpful.
- Be forgiving.
- Be sensitive, be a good listener.
- Don’t assume I’m an expert.
- Be fun.
- Don’t assume there’s no competition.
- Check your ego with the valet parking attendant.
- Married people really DO have more sex.
I loved reading this, the rules are down-to-earth, simple and sensible,yet so many software products would score poorly when judged against them. The explanations for each rule are a delight to read. It reminded me of “ABOUT FACE, THE ESSENTIALS OF USER INTERFACE DESIGN” by Alan Cooper which is a must read for all software developers. My approach to the design and implementation of the user interface for Surfulater was certainly influenced by Alan’s book.
I’d like to think Surfulater scores reasonably well against Kathy’s dating rules, but it is up to our users to pass judgment not me. I’d love to hear what you think.
Time to get back to working on my dating skills.