DataWebTect

Since my childhood, I wanted to be an inventor. But I always thought that to be an inventor you need your own laboratory and stuff that goes with it. Then about a year ago, I was reading a book and it stuck me that it was easier than I thought. Then I started writing my ideas in a notebook. Couple of ideas were stricking. Then I was not sure what to do next. The obvious choice was to get it patented. I reviewed the Patent office whis has more details than I really wanted to know. Then I got information about a patent lawyer and used the county law referral service to get the initial consultation with a patent lawyer for $35. But the lawyer was not there and an assistant walked me through the process and told that the costs could be between $2500 to $10,000. But I was not sure if I spent that much whether I would be able to get it back. Then I got another idea, may be, just may be if I made a prototype and sell it without patenting. I met couple of CAD tool companies to design and develop a prototype of the product. The thinking here was to make a prototype and then take it to the  companies and see if they will be interested. Turns out it would cost me around $1000 for the drawings and the prototype. Well that was cheaper but not what I wanted. Then I got in touch with a long time friend in India to see if he can help me with the CAD drawings and then create a prototype. My friend kept his word and I am really thankful to have received the drawings. I just left it like that.

Don Norman talks about the simplicity in design and found his site through Joel’s post. Simplicity is  a myth because it never sells.  In his essay, he points out the toaster with multiple controls and a SUV with tons of controls on the steering wheel in Korea. Having many controls gives a false sense of control to the user. I happen to do the same thing with my purchases and if you think about it you would be doing the same. It is inherent  in Human nature to compare and pick the one with more complexity even if you do not use them. Even the iPod is complex if you try to use it the first time. A simple nano has more than five functions and the notepad has 23 menu items and you may never have noticed.

In software development also, we always strive for simple design but will end up becoming complex by the time it is released. It is bound to happen, we tend to “goldplate” the product, even if the customer wants it or not but to show that we put our due diligence and give a false sense of “more bang for the buck” for the customer.

Rands in Repose has a post about the textmate which is a text editor for Mac. I do  not have Mac but Rands describes the design of this particular text editor in very succinct manner. For the developers the text editor is one of the challenging piece of software and being one I constantly use Notepad(yes, notepad) and Textpad. The requirement for a good editor is essential, because you are going to use it for any number of reasons from storing a temporary code segment until you test your examples or for editing a new language for which you do not have an IDE downloaded. As such the understanding and the use of the text editor should be intuitive and as Rands says should allow the user to discover and use it at his convenience ,  rather  than  screaming about the feature as it happens in excel and project. I agree with Rands about the wizards and I never use them, because you never know what will be the outcome. I have not a seen a single wizard that could magically solve all my problems or create an application from scratch. It is, in my belief, an over ambitious effort to provide wizards thinking that the developers are dumb or trying to make the dumb feel helpless.