Sticking with interfaces that work
October 9th, 2007[ Software Development ]
I’m often viewed as a luddite when I suggest avoiding fancy pants, gadgety interfaces for software applications. A fictional example? SmartCompany wants to build an application that allows team mangers to take the score sheets from their sports team home, scan them and store them online, and then (insert features here)…..
High level meetings like this get me thinking about interfaces. In this useless example, paper is the interface and it currently works just fine. Why mess with it?
The problem I see over and over again is failing to recognize these successful interfaces and instead assuming that they pale in comparison to the new technological ones you’re planning to create and sell. That’s often not the case. At least for a minute take a step back and assume that the existing interfaces are there because they just plain work.
A good example of this thinking is ScanCafe. I haven’t tried them out, I’ve just read about them at CoolTools. What I like is that instead of building an application that requires users to migrate to a new interface (digital camera, scanners, etc), they’ve stuck with what user’s already know how to work with (prints, slides, negatives, mail, etc).
“Here is how it works: You pack up your images and mail them to ScanCafe’s headquarters in Northern California. They count them up, and repackage them before shipping the pieces to India. In India they are scanned, touched up, rotated and then privately posted to your account at their website. You then go through the images online and select which ones you’d like to keep.”