01.31.07
It’s very difficult to get a perfect user experience on the first try. Most of the time, creating a product with a great user experience takes many iterations of design and development. But with rushed schedules, who has the time for that nonsense? Is the experience “good enough”? SHIP IT. Fix it in the next version.
This is the kind of environment many software developers find themselves in. The resulting user experience generally is still pretty good, but not perfect. So what’s a developer to do when improvements are needed but time and priorities don’t allow it?
Too often I hear the words: “We want to fix that too, but we really need something new in the next version.” Product management will end up saying bug fixes are delayed and tweaks aren’t made because it’s important for the next version to have some cool new feature that “makes it worth downloading”. Why can’t a better experience be reason enough to make it worth downloading? The way I see it, an obsession with features and marketing will only lead to a product that does many things, but none of them really well. I’m not saying it will be a horrible experience; for most users it might be good enough. So if the users aren’t complaining, it must be all fine and dandy, right? But wait! Users generally don’t realize what they are missing until they are shown how great it can really be. So can a company driven by wow and sparkle, which compresses schedules and never gives enough time to get it right, ever release great products? I guess only time will tell.
Posted in Development at 8:16 pm by Osman Ullah
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01.30.07
My site now has a favicon! But it’s only working in Firefox for some reason. For IE users this is what it looks like:
I got my inspiration from various icons here.
followup: It seems like it’s working in IE after all. Probably just a cache issue on my laptop. And hey thanks for the comment riz. You are officially the first comment on my blog. Be proud. 
Ick. Looks like smilies are next on the list.
Posted in Announcements at 11:00 pm by Osman Ullah
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01.28.07
Hmm. So for some reason I have not figured out yet, I decided to start a blog today. I don’t even have a name for it yet. Seeing as I am not the type of person who likes to hear himself talk, nor am I the type who would keep a journal, nor am I the type who typically speaks without being spoken to, I’m not quite sure I am blogger material. I guess we’ll see. I’ve read it is important to keep posts short. Well that’s not going to happen for this one. It doesn’t really matter since nobody knows about my blog anyway, I suppose. I don’t even know who my target audience is going to be.
As mentioned before, I don’t quite know what possessed me to start a blog today. I have been encouraged to start a blog, mostly for professional reasons. Well, all for professional reasons. But the thing is, most of the stuff I would want to talk about is about my life outside of work…deeper topics like the state of the world today and the state of our society. Things that will make a difference. Because when it comes down to it, while the software I work on impacts the lives of millions of people (I still can’t fathom that actually, maybe that is part of the problem), what really gets to my soul is that a lot of people can’t afford to eat or go to school, or even live. They have to figure out what to do so they can wake up the next morning, not how to get their hands on the next version of AIM. They probably haven’t even heard of it. It’s happening in my country, in my society, and in larger magnitudes around the globe, which in today’s world really is also an extension of my society. I feel like addressing that is more important than coming up with a cool new way to send files to your buddies. Alas, I don’t know if I can really write about that and be relevant and/or interesting.
I guess on the flip side, I am a software engineer who loves to work on UI. I do not mean to belittle everyone who is working so hard to build this new society on the internet. It has totally changed the way we communicate…activism for change in the world is proliferating on the internet, through blogs, through IM, through message boards, through communication. With these tools, we can change the world. So I guess through work I am starting to be a part of that. Although I am not sure what file transfer and new buddy icons have to do with it. Maybe the problem isn’t a lack of importance–maybe I just haven’t figured out what I have to offer to the UI developer community. My peers feel that there is something there, and I guess I do too–I just don’t know what it is yet.
This is getting quite long; I didn’t expect this to happen. While I haven’t really spent much time thinking about what I have written, I know it has been lurking at the back of my mind for a while. Maybe I am the blogging type after all. Although I don’t know if it’s interesting to anyone besides myself. If I am going to keep this up I definitely need to learn to not be so long winded. And then there is still the question of what this blog is going to be about…
Posted in Ramblings at 2:30 am by Osman Ullah
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