What is the best constellation for creating easy-to-use, highly sophisticated and flexible software? I don’t thinks there is one. It very much depends on the task at hand and those involved. But one thing is for sure, the interaction between parties needs to be a huge priority.

It is something that has been rumbling in my mind for the last couple of weeks. The expanding mental gap, growing between “designers” and “developers” especially in the public forum. Developers tend to, as my colleague Pelle describes in his post ‘Everyday is a whining read’, have a more calm attitude towards designer buzz words like web 2.0, AJAX etc. This is a result of “the Gap”. No designer has ever been euphoric from the fact that .Net 2.0 is a revolution in rapid development, and SQL Server 2005 Analysis services is setting new standards for data mining. And no developer will ever be over head and heels hearing about a technology that topped ten years ago, just used in another way. The enthusiasm must come from purpose, in both cases that is. The purpose has to be obvious and give meaning to the eye of the beholder.

Here in 2006, we have some of the best technical tools available, allowing us to build ever more flexible and advanced software solutions. The increased focus on usability and simplicity enables us to create this software, with interfaces that allows the technology to be accessible to everyone. The tools are there, the ideas too. That’s why we need to focus even more on the interaction and understanding between Designers and Developers/System Architects.

This Blog is a one of the tools we here at TraceWorks use for the purpose of closing the Gap.

There has been quite some buzz about web 2.0 over the last year or. I suppose almost everyone working with development and design has read Tim O’Reilly’s article What is Web 2.0, so I will not go into details about that.

What strikes me the most when browsing developer and company sites these days is that it seems like there are two kinds of persons speaking about Web 2.0 – designers and developers. Not surprisingly these two groups have cornered themselves into positions it’s hard to escape from: While most developers I know keep saying “I hate all that hype. I’ve been doing that in JavaScript for the last 83 years or so”, designers like it because it looks good – or at least so I’m told they think.

So what do I think? For starters I sometimes feel like Sheryl Crow with all the hip things going around:

Don’t like the scene anyhow
I dropped acid on a Saturday night
Just to see what the fuss was about.
There goes the neighborhood.

I’m not in love with the idea about Web 2.0 because it is trendy. Anyone who’s seen my wardrobe should know that I’m not really into trends (or they should consider buying a magazine about fashion). I think Web 2.0 is cool because it makes me able to do stuff that wasn’t possible on the web some years ago.

I like to get RSS feeds in my browser, I like the open minded approach of wikipedia (even though I haven’t contributed myself), I like that even my friends can create a blog, et cetera. Especially I like that you don’t have to have a clue about syndication, create database tables and XMLHTTP requests.

With Web 2.0 applications you can access your information anywhere anytime without using Microsoft VPN and other old school techniques. I personally find it unbelievable that in the year 2006 I haven’t got the same possibilities when I’m not around at the office because of mere technicalities; Microsoft VPN just doesn’t do the work and Outlook Web Access is so bad it is upright insulting - even though Microsoft has made use of all the stuff that is hip in Web 2.0. Gmail, however, lets me read my mails when I want it the way I want it.

Also I like to personalize applications in my browser, just as I do whenever I get a new program or switch machine – what is important features for most persons not apply to my use. Netvibes and live.com let’s me do that.

Wordpress let’s anyone create a blog in five minutes – even me. I couldn’t care less if Wordpress is written in PHP, ASP or assembly language. It makes me focus on the task at hand (writing something interesting) and takes care of all the boring stuff like updating the menu, archive, search functions and so on.

But this is not a matter of technology and some of the stuff you’ve mentioned has been possible for some years now, I hear my developer friends cry out. Well, that’s just fine by me. It might have been available for programmers, but I’m not interested in programmers – I’m interested in genuine people like the ones you meet in the metro.

This is similar to mobile phones; I don’t care if my mobile uses GSM, UMTS, WLAN or a fourth fancy technology. That I’ll leave to some engineers at SonyEricsson or my phone company. I don’t even want to know if the work is done by SonyEricsson or my phone company. I care if my mobile does what I want it to.

Call it DHTML, AJAX, ATLAS or Web 2.0… Call it what you want. The point is not what it is called or some specific programming language. The point is that anyone can benefit from it.

So why is this post relevant for the average user of TraceWorks products? Because we’ve put a lot a development hours in making our forthcoming product flexible – you can drag and drop boxes and charts just as you like. We don’t know what is important to you – but surely you do. Also you don’t have to reload the whole page every time you make a minor change, but only the section you’ve changed.

You see we don’t just add fancy stuff because it sounds smart, but because it makes our applications smarter, faster and better.

It’s not like our blog is the buzz blog everybody is talking about yet - after all it hasn’t been running more than a few days. But imagine my disappointment when I discovered that our little blog, which made absolutely no harm to anyone, all of a sudden had disappeared from the face of the blogosphere.

Oh my my, to the battle stations… We tried loading static HTML-pages, looked through the php code, checked the database (I even made a manual back up), downloaded and uploaded casual files, altered the htaccess file and did all sorts of silly stuff, but we just couldn’t find the problem.

After several hours it turned out that someone - I will not mention any name, but let’s just say that I recently called him “my brilliant team member” - forgot a comma in a plug in we are using for the web site.

So that’s what it takes to make a site and its administration tools crash completely:
A single comma.

While I do not know so much about programming, I do know a thing or two about the structure of human languages.

For instance most kids in high schools in Denmark are taught that

1. if you do not know when to use a comma, don’t use them at all
2. if you know how to use a comma without disturbing the meaning of the sentence, do that

Eventually the students who master this can dwell into books for years, get actual knowledge about the syntax of Danish and maybe one fine morning claim to understand the rules at hand.

The rules of when and how to use commas in Danish have been the object of much debate and actually we’ve had quite a few competing systems over the years: grammatical, pausing (put out of use in 1996) and unified/new.

Grammatical and unified were combined into one comma in 2003 and thereby obfuscating matters even more.

My estimate is that less than 50 persons in Denmark can write a post the length of a standard page without making at least one error - and just to be clear: I’m not one of them, even though I graduated from the faculty of humanities and my parents have been teaching high school students Danish grammar since I was born.

No matter how serious these errors would be, they wouldn’t make the page or the entire book (including cover and ISBN) disappear!

We can get dual core 64-bit wireless laptops that run eight hours on batteries, but do we get even the faintest hint that our software isn’t working? No. Come on, we must do better than that!

We have been looking for new notebooks for about six months. We are very satisfied with our current HP (Compaq) nc8000 notebooks. But you can never get enough power under the hood and the new Intel Dual-Core processor seems to fulfil our demands for a step-up in performance.

Most of the manufacturers are starting to use the new Dual-Core processors along with some nice GPU’s, so the selection is getting larger. It should be no problem finding one that has the features we need, at least in terms of performance. When you look beyond the spec sheet and on to the actual laptop, they are still miles away on the design.

I’m not talking design as in “is it pretty or not” - that is a luxury we PC users have gotten used to ignore. What I’m talking about is, if the keyboard layout and connection options obstruct daily use or not. I have yet to find one of the newer notebooks, that can steer free of one or more design flaws.
Worst of all, in my opinion, is the “fn” and “CTRL” key switch. When they have switched the position of the two key, making the “fn” key the outermost key in the bottom-left corner.

To me it is beyond belief how someone in charge of product design can let this happen. I use the CTRL key all the time. So much that on my nc8000 the text on the left-shift, CTRL, and ALT key are almost worn off.

You only have to take a glance at Fitts’ law to learn that using the valuable space that is the edge of your work area (in this case the keyboard), for keys/buttons etc. that you hardly ever use is poor design. Take a look at your browser for instance; it is not a coincidence that the “close window” button is in the top right corner (or left if on a Mac). Placing keys/buttons near the edge of your work area makes them easier to find and hit/click.

It all comes down to how you use your laptop, I guess, but laptops with the “fn” and “CTRL” key switch will have a very hard time getting on my shortlist.

… I’ve been told by a wise man. And I think he was right. But as my brilliant team member Jesper continues: So is the divine!

While I can only guess what Jesper meant (or go over to his desk and ask him), I do know what the person who brought the devil into our conversation meant; the fact that we as designers use so much time on issues that might be of no importance in the bigger scheme of things.

The catch, however, as I see it is that sometimes actually one minor detail could turn out to be the single factor that makes a product better than the competing ones. We’ve all seen it so many times, that I do not have to come with examples (besides that, for every example I could come up with, there would ten counter examples, so let’s forget about that).

What I do know is that I care quite a lot about what might appear to be minor design details when I buy stuff If: I complain about the keyboard layout on my laptop, the default look of program X and lack of plug-ins for program Y. I see no reason for believing that our customers are any different - when they write me, they want feature a, b and c and they want it now.

The problem remains that we just can’t keep on adding new features without investigating how it matches the overall road map and product consistency.

Because of that, we have to look into every little detail and issue - we want to know whether they turn out diabolic or divine.