I think what GM is talking about is still a meaningful subset of communication.

It's about the communication where you're trying to present some abstract idea to someone else in a clear way. Although, maybe all communication can be boiled down to that. If I punch someone in the face my interface is the punch and the abstraction I'm exposing is my anger for them...

Edit: I see GM said something similar.

Yeah a big fan of this and I think the reverse is also true - to design software at large is to design the communication and organizational structure of the team that will come to maintain it. I think in today's fast-moving companies where organizational structure is more fluid and transient, this is even more true - it's often easier to reorg than to refactor and it's easy for a shadow, unofficial organizational structure that mirrors the software design to remain even if that's not officially how the organization is structured.

Not entirely sure what you mean by abstract but a lot of UI/UX comes down to how something feels, which means creating that emotional comfort is important. How a code base feels to someone is important because that will determine the comfort level and whether they will work to understand or try to defend themselves mentally against it. I guess it's not all of communication in the sense that code can't listen and even a strong UI is very limited in how it can respond to what the user's doing.

I think I was talking specifically about UI (and not UX) - so trying to stick to the 'interface' and less about the other aspects (like feel, emotions, etc.). "Abstract" in my case, just because I don't really have a better way to describe the "abstract" idea that I'm trying to convey.

Let's try an example that probably won't work...

The physics of opening a door involve the hinge, the mass of the door, and applying 'enough' force in the proper direction somewhere where I can rotate that mass along the hinge.

But, we can abstract that idea for users. We can add a handle/plate/some device/etc. that we use to 'tell' users how to open the door w/o worrying about all of the physics. That's the UI.

But in terms of the UX of opening the door, there are other factors. Lighting. Is there ****ty music playing in the background. Is the door / overall entrance wide enough to accommodate the amount of traffic. Things that aren't really part of the implementation or interface of how to use the door, but still have a large impact on the overall experience of going through the door.

Thanks! Lots of new stuff to learn will be a nice change. Very eyeopening getting the position essentially on the word of a couple of their developers who I worked with on a somewhat unpleasant project. Pays to be pleasant to the customer I guess. Things I'll get to work with:
R
Windows
.NET
Visual Studio

Should be exciting, driving down to Portland today to start the apt hunt.

Congrats as well!

yeah i think UX is close to what i'm talking about, but as candybar said that term usually does imply a whole vague emotional experience, and like jj i'm interested (or at least sometimes interested, so i wish there were a term just for this) in just the user's "figuring it out" experience. "usability" is probably the term i should have stuck with. ie, not did they think it was ugly or pretty or cool or whatever, but how long did it take them to do what they wanted to do? how many moments of pause or confusion were there?

also, congrats on new job kerowo

Thanks, if anyone is looking for jerbs in Portland this is a huge list of tech companies in Portland. http://portlandtech.org I pretty much crawled the list a half dozen times this year and there are a lot of dev jobs here. FYI

Keep in mind a lot of what you're describing is core components of UX.

Lets take documentation for a code base. The onboarding process of facebook could be something like "Hey, there is a 50gb github, glhf" or it could involve someone sitting with you and talking you through everything for a day or it could involve a highly organized multiweek bootcamp.

None of these things chance the codebase and the documentation (UI), but will change how you view the process (UX). So its both the vague emotional ambiguity and breaking the process down into something doable.

Video games with really complex controls actually spend a bunch of time with this via tutorials. Older games generally take a show, don't tell approach. (Granted they're demonstrating mechanics rather than controls per se.) But the subject is pretty interesting. There is probably a good chart out there somewhere they breaks down the various sub-elements of both UI/UX and you can pick/choose whatever ones interest you and articulate the idea a little more clearly in the future.

Also, a lack of international standards for faucets and door locks are just a total wtf issue wrt what you're mentioning.

yeah, mikhel, agreed on all that.

i think you there's no limit to how "big" you can go, in the sense of everything happens within some system or environment, and you can account for those factors or not. in the conversation above, i was using "usability" in the more constrained sense of an interaction between a person and a thing (screen, lightswitches in a room, etc) and how confusing or smooth that is. which admittedly is a small concern in the grander scheme of things. but i still find it interesting and think it's important, in that it can make or break an experience. also, while i find "engineering" those larger systemic issues interesting, i have my doubts about people's ability to do so. the problems are vastly more complex, and the solution spaces orders of magnitude larger. ofc, the rewards for success are larger too.

**** OFF

This is partly why acquirers so often run things into the ground. It's a pretty radical change in culture for the employees moving, and stuff like that adds aggravation that just encourages good, key people to quit (unless it's part of a smart ploy by the acquirer to get rid of people easily - finding fireable offences or just making it a horrible place to be). Another acquired company that's going to struggle going forwards imo.

i can't imagine anyone talented agreeing to this. i mean even if you're in india, i'd imagine you could find better remote work.

as a side point, i feel like the phrase "proprietary internal system" has become a highly reliable counter-indicator of quality.

WorkSmart is also not an internal proprietary tool - it's a product made by a company called Crossover based in Austin, TX.

I did some work through crossover and I say with all due respect: **** that.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I'd have to set up an automated mouse and key typer script with my photo in front of the web cam and run it all night every night.

Here's exactly how this would go at my company:

Boss: WorkSmart says you're below par.

Me: Yeah I have **** all to do. Remember all those times I complained to you about it?

Boss: Well just try to look busier please.

Everyone I know would have the exact same reaction.

If they wanted to get the whole company working together on something then they probably succeeded.

I figure I probably know who the company is. There's a place here in Austin who's whole business model is to buy failing companies and replace everyone with outsourced labor, through the site Crossover. They bought a company I worked for years ago. I had done contract work for that company over the years because they had literally no one on staff with some domain knowledge that I had.

No big deal - it was just their entire billing system, which literally no one at the company knew anything about - where it was, what tech it was built on, how it worked, etc. After I left they switched code management from Perforce to git and actually lost the entire repo for the project. They also lost the build machine, which, without he repo, could not be reproduced. So making changes to that machine was basically "coding in prod" all the time.

Anyway I had so much leverage because of this that they didn't make me jump through their hoops but holy crap it seemed miserable.

Yeah, they saved a ton of money by globally outsourcing EVERYTHING but literally no one knew how to do anything and it was a giant trash fire.

They also take screen shots of your desktop on a regular basis, and monitor what web sites you go to and how long you spend on them. The whole thing was very creepy.

Portland?!?!

Agree with you on all of this. Just wanted clarify. Its a very complex and interesting subject. Imagine making documentation easier for Salesforce? Sometimes I seem offbase with rejoining human and technical skills, but this is a prime example. Millions of users have a better UX at 1k a user = $$$$$$$$$$$

That is absurd.

This is disappointing and absurd. I don't know why anyone would do this. Was being jocular with this type of monitoring for outsourced contractors. (Hi!) To think that is its remotely reasonably is nuts. (hi jj)

Sunshine is overrated

I'd move to Portland for the right job. It's a nice place. But until someone is ready to give me like 50% over what I make now, I think I'm good here.

Is that to me? I'm confused.

1 month update at my new job. Have been writing code at my new job but it takes me longer than usual. A lot of the time, each task touches a new code base or concept that I am not familiar with. So I spend most of my time reading up documentation on how to do things. Currently right now I'm trying to figure out what jwt tokens and certificates are for and how do I use that to communicate with a 3rd party API. All while on top of that learning Scala which hasn't been so easy so far.

I feel so dumb and slow.