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altaccHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

When I worked for a consultancy in early internet days I also often repeated "the customer doesn't …

… When I worked for a consultancy in early internet days I also often repeated "the customer doesn't know what they want until they see what they don't want". People weren't used to web GUIs and there weren't the common patterns we see today, so it wasn't until they had a half working version they could actually give feedback, so getting early feedback was essential to reduce the frustrating of building something that is immediately changed. It still applies today but less to do with usage patterns and more to do with missing requirements the customer forgot to tell you about.

Original discussionGUIs are built at least 2.5 times149 source comments · at import
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throwaway2037HN

This part is genius: > I have made GUIs many, many times and my best case scenario goes something like: > 1. A design has been made, everyone loves it. Detailed drawings have been made. > 2. The devs are told to Make It > 3. The devs Make It, exactly to spec > 4. Everyone looks at it and everyone hates it > 5. So many meetings. So much stress. This Is Terrible! What To Do? > 6. A new design is made. So much better! Detailed drawings are made. > 7. The devs are told to Make It > 8. The devs Make It, exactly to spec > 9. Everyone looks at it and They Do Not Love It > 10. So many meetings. So much stress. This Is Terrible! What To Do? > 11. Someone suggests in one of the many, many meetings what amount to basically minor changes, moving something, changing some colors, changing some text, something like that. > 12. The devs Make It, exactly to spec > 13. Nobody’s happy. But nobody hates it…

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anilakarHN

Conversely, I've seen way too many designed-by-designers GUIs and UX flows that can be best characterized as a glittery, polished turd. They sure look nice in Figma but often only have one well-specified happy path from which the end user will surely deviate. Managers will easily greenlight broken designs because they can only see the visuals, not the complete picture. If you find a talented designer, they are valued so much they will only get assigned to design tasks. If you have a rockstar 10x developer, their mind just cannot comprehend the average 0.1x end user. What you need is someone who understands design but dislikes it enough to not focus on aligning single pixels or fixing the kerning. They need to be able to code but hate it with passion, because hard-working programmers create software for hard-working end users and the end user is not hard-working.

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chiiHN

> "the customer doesn't know what they want until they see what they don't want". like all good NP-complete problems, the issue of making a good GUI is verifiable easily by a customer, but they cannot tell you what a good GUI is.

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