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vapeducator30 karma

Have you been evaluated for Aspergers Autism Spectrum Disorder? You are giving multiple indications that you fail to recognize social and interpersonal signals and you misinterpret the reactions of others to your own attempts to interact. You seem to have difficulty understanding that most people are not willing to quickly engage in deep, meaningful, objectionable, personal, sexual, or controversial subjects with anyone who they don't know well and with whom they haven't already established with enough interest, trust, and safety to take all of the risks associated with those kinds of subjects.

You are apparently intentionally breaking the personal boundaries of people who have not invited you to do so, and whatever that's motivating you to do so is quickly recognized as sociopathic behavior.

Other people may enjoy talking about those subjects only with people who've earned the right to do so over many years of established trust and strong bonds of friendship. You may never reach that point in a relationship without behavioral modification to avoid losing new relationships immediately when you violate such boundaries.

vapeducator14 karma

Sorry, but your assertion about software developers is entirely untrue. In fact, there are many software developers who specialize in user-interface design, user-interaction design, human factors HCI, as well as the other underlying layers. Part of a software engineer's job is to design the software using patterns such as model-view-controller so that user-interface layer elements (view) are loosely coupled to other layers, so that the internal data and control layers aren't dependent on the presentation layer. This allows multiple presentation layers to use the same internals, but it doesn't prevent the software developer or engineer from knowing the dependencies.

The majority of the users I've ever worked with have no interest in customizing the user interface for themselves, just like nobody wants to customize a suit or a dress for themselves, even though they'd certainly want to wear customized clothing. So they go to a tailor, dressmaker or a seamstress who has those alteration skills so they only have to get measured in a sitting and await the results.

The problem is that the underlying business process interaction necessary to complete transactions is often quite complex, requiring management of dynamic state, multiple modes, complex logic and other difficult things even without discussing specific user interface limitations.

The user interfaces that work best are those that work the way that the user would expect, based on their knowledge of the business process, such that the software supports or improves the process without interfering with it in an obtrusive manner. The software should be resilient, tolerant of errors, guide users to fix errors using understandable language, and have a memory to speed future interaction using the most common prior data patterns.

vapeducator9 karma

The principle-agent problem is an example of why the software development team needs architects and designers who can balance the needs of all the stakeholders, so that the one's writing the checks, signing the contracts, and approving the progress don't take priority over those who use and need the system the most.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design

To give you an example of how I dealt with this issue, I required that I be paid to work along-side the real intended users of the system so that they felt confident that I knew their job well enough that I could perform it myself, if I was hired to replace them. I would spend a lot of time observing at first, taking notes and video recording. Then I would develop questions to explain difficult or intricate issues, to ask them at quieter times when it wouldn't be bothersome. This has a lot of big advantages. The users learn that I'm interested in what they do to the finest degree. I'm not judgmental about problems and I elicit their suggestions about how they might see problems handled better if they were in charge. It alleviates a lot of the fear of the unknown - software that they'll be forced to used from people they don't know and have no confidence in. They'll still have some fear until they start seeing that the software works right for what they do - but at least they usually start with a positive attitude when they know who's building the system for them. I would show the business process modeling flow for their position to verify its accuracy. I would sketch out several possible UI designs/themes to get their feedback of the elements that work or not. It's hard for people to mentally visualize a user-interface without actual pictures to represent the possibilities.

The result was that my first iterations were always much closer to the mark for the final result because I had basically received many rounds of feedback and paper prototyping before any code was written at all. The users could see how the system was really coming from themselves, not being dictated to them from people who don't know how they work. Then when the system actually makes their job easier, well that's what assures enthusiastic adoption of the system and pleased users all-around.

vapeducator2 karma

The users don't have the skills, breadth of experience, nor knowledge of interaction design to be effective user-interface designers. That doesn't mean that they can't participate at all. On the contrary, their input and feedback is very important, but needs to be evaluated by a designer who knows how to change the interface to work better, often in ways that the user doesn't even know that exist or is possible. You can read some of the methods I use to elicit useful info from users here. If you ask the users if they felt I listened to them and used their feedback, they'd say yes. But they didn't directly design the UI: I did, based on the info I gathered from them and from my experience building a lot of systems.

I built several successful retail point-of-sale systems starting in the mid 80's, in the dBase, xBase, foxBASE, clipper era. Those systems lasted for more than a decade, as long as the businesses themselves lasted, until they got sold and merged into other entities. I also built touch-screen apps for emergency call-center dispatch systems in the early 90's. I worked for several software development consulting firms where I developed solutions for many clients.

vapeducator1 karma

Have you started learning and exploring keyboards and synthesis? Have you listened to Tomita's adaptations of classical works?