Design

Why would I ever want to see this welcome screen again? Beautiful designs start with the needs of the user, not the the requirements of the business. This welcome screen probably started because someone said “We should welcome users every time they start the application, lots of other apps do it!”. The problem is, this welcome screen is counter-productive and adds no value to me the user. One thing I have learned is this type of thing is all too easy to happen to an application. »

Agile methodologies say that big up front design (BUFD) is bad. What happens when requirements change? What happens when scalability issues are encountered? How can you know solution X is better than Y? BUFD fails in these cases because unpredictable issues changed the design. For the most part, I agree in that it is impossible to plan for everything. But I don’t believe it to mean that design is dead. For example, if you are designing Windows Vista, would you want to have the Windows XP architect involved? »