Re: Bringing their UI skills up to speed (Score 1)

I recently taught a session covering the fundamentals of UI design and usability to a group of about 50 engineers in downtown Bangalore...uh, I guess that was in July. I found these students refreshingly more receptive to tools and best practices than many students I've taught in the US, apparently because they possess a basic element of humility.

I present UI design and usability from this perspective: a successful design is one that factors for the human machine and its social and performance constraints. Too often UI design devolves into a subjective game resembling hand-ball with a curtain, which is totally unnecessary because in the end, lacking good customer data, no one really knows what constitutes good design...except the target customer.

Presenting the just the basics, stuff that is more than available in the US, I've found a great number of these junior -to- senior developers have taken hold of the teachings and have gone through extraordinary lengths to learn more so they can be successful UI developers.

The ACM's SIG-CHI has enjoyed an impressive increase in contributions from emerging Indian and Chinese experts, and the world's leading UI researchers often share their wisdom in these communities, so there's a change in the works.

Its interesting - not once have I experienced anyone on these teams argue that they can deliver intuitive UI design because "they too are computer users and thus know what is intuitive", an extremely common engineer cop-out for instituting good UI design methodologies. These developers understand they are located 10K miles from the target market, and the UI design fundamentals so often scoffed at in the US are simply accepted as tools enabling them to become more successful.

From a management perspective I suppose in the end its all how you sell an idea, how you position it as adding to their own personal "equity" as a developer. We've seen improvements in Asia, and slowly, in the US as well. I suspect competition is good for business in this regard.

I'd like to emphasize that being Indian or Chinese or Russian doesn't preclude anyone from doing good UI design - not making it a priority does, which displays reckless corporate disregard for maximizing profits over the product lifecycle. Once they accept their own limitations and how to use well understood tools for UI design, I've learned these eager contributors are often more than willing to put these new tools to work.

Again, thanks for the opportunity to be involved in this discussion. Cheers!