The deity's in the details

One of the minor projects I've worked on recently has been to aggregate all the many and varied web-based tools used by the business together behind a straight forward menu system. It was a simple task which didn't take much time and into which I didn't put a great deal of thought (ok, that's a lie, I put an inordinate amount of thought into how everything should be grouped and presented for ease of use, but that's getting away from the point). Hence I was surprised to discover the general rapture with which people received it.

With hindsight, it's obvious why it's so popular - previously people had to bookmark a large number of different tools, each had their own user name and password there was no simple way of moving between the various utilities. It was hardly impossible to navigate, but it was awkward and involved far more effort and thought than should have been necessary. But now it's been fixed and all is well.

I just find it an interesting example of how great a difference decent design can make in these sorts of circumstances - bad design is one of my pet peeves, you see. I've been fortunate in most of the projects I've been given to have had the opportunity to make the decisions about the interface myself. And even when I haven't I've done it anyway - largely because it's something I enjoy doing, but also because I believe I'm good at it. When it comes to demands made by the project sponsors, I'm usually happy to talk through the details with them and am perfectly capable of compromise where necessary. But not with the interface. That's something I'm particular about to the point that I will run roughshod over the project sponsor if I disagree with them (that I'm capable of running roughshod over anyone came as a a surprise to me too). It's not just pride on my part (although I'd be lying if I said that didn't factor into it somewhere) - I've seen too much effort going into developing tools that no-one uses because they're simply too complex or too difficult to use and I refuse to let that happen to my work. A good user interface should be a joy to use, and if I don't always succeed at that level, I can still guarantee that whatever I create will at least be straightforward and logical.

And hopefully the end users agree. I discovered today that the menu I created has been given a nickname by the people who use it.

It's called god.