Any tweaking I allegedly did on this post was the merest polishing of your fully-formed pearls of wisdom. Cheers.

Indeed, the theory of good UX practice and the actual implementation can differ quite a bit once exposed to the natural elements of a corporate environment.

Granted: It is easier to pull process off thorough a 1,000 people-strong company than a 30K massive enterprise population (i.e. Microsoft) Nevertheless, I think well-proven success in the same industry, has UX prominently driving product development! (I won’t say any names).

Your comments on “feature owner” do resonate perfectly with that aforementioned corporate reality. Most people don’t realize that products are in part reflection of internal politics inasmuch as market strategy! It is a state of affairs, and we have to acknowledge and deal with it, even use it on our favor. In fact, this is a topic I write exactly about the inaugural Faz magazine (revistafaz.org). I think I will translate and post it in this web so I extract your thoughts a little bit more.

Changing subjects: I see on your blog that you are taking a renewed initiative to keep it pregnant with your work… That motivates me to do likewise. What you do through beautiful visions and a brush, I will try to do with words. I have to admit, sometimes I rely on others to get a mildly legible English. Credits to this entry goes to my friend Ken Grobe (kengrobe.com), a true “word czar” who took time to edit my thoughts and polish them to something recognizable. I cannot promise he will further help in the future… So it may all be going down hill from here. ;->

I’ve read (and dreamed) about approaches like this. It makes complete sense but I have yet to work in an organization with the patience, courage and vision to employ such tactics. The pressure to rush to the finish line is too great – and it creates a “townspeople storming the castle with torches” planning and design process.

I adore the sentiment expressed by Cooper in “About Face” that software should behave like a respectful, good friend. A good friend helps you and never shames you. This simple mantra helps me keep the end user in mind — especially useful when I’m part of a feature team that is focused on one small piece of an existing product. The natural (and understandable) tendency for the feature owner is to magnify and elevate his or her particular feature in the UI. It’s important to step back and see the product as a whole and remember that creating pleasant experiences for users is the goal: not individual features, not sales. It sounds like the methodology at Ask fosters this kind of user advocacy. Bravo.

RT

but for me the keyword is “switching” (a word you use extensively within the article)

i agree, applications can easily adopt the “switch to finder” model, but (and a ‘huge’ but) can the user do the same?

can the user adapt to the switch application model? i firmly believe he/she won’t and i am on his/her side, until OSes find a more intuitive way to “let you know where you are”.

even without your “switch” model, users get lost in the myriad of open windows.

so perhaps the key element should (and shall) be something that links the application with the finder window (in this example). and that is exactly what the dialog box does (and beautifully in OSX, where the open/save dialog is not just linked to the application, but the file itself.

i think another approach cluld be to take the little proxy icon on the file top bar and drag it to the finder icon on the dashboard, meaning “i want to save this file”. in this case, no “switching” could confuse the user, and the gesture will mean exactly what you want it to mean: to save the file.

what do you think?

Ligia -exIconita

besos!!!