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Re: Design Question

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On 11-12-19 06:22 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:49:04 +0000, Novice wrote:
> 
>> Agreed. This is actually an older program that I am bringing up to date
>> and I'm trying to be truer to OO principles in it than I was in the
>> original coding. I thought of doing the abstract class and the two
>> sibling subclasses but wanted to make sure that was the right OO
>> approach. But the whole question disappears entirely if I put the score
>> on the main game window and keep it updated as the score changes.
>>
> I'd normally take a somewhat different approach: since this game is all 
> about the user interacting with a graphical front end, I'd design the GUI 
> first and think about the class structure only when happy with that. 
> 
> IMO the design of the GUI is extremely important and deserves a lot of 
> care because, if its poor as many GUI designs are, the application will 
> suffer because people are going to be less enthusiastic about using it 
> regardless of how good the design and code behind it may be.
[ SNIP ]

I wouldn't argue with that much at all. I'll elaborate a bit on how I
really like to see things work so you can see the differences. :-)

Over the years I've seen that workflow and presentation in UIs
(navigation, what's visible and what's not, what's enabled and what's
not, how are the pages broken out, etc etc) end up being so important
for most clients in UAT that it's best to get all that worked out in
requirements.

If I can convince people to go along with the idea I try to introduce as
much storyboarding, wireframe and prototyping as I can. Which is usually
not much, because in decades of software development I've run across a
lot of negative attitudes about all of that. I'm not sure why, because
invariably the folks who do none of that end up with big surprises
during acceptance testing.

I also try to get business eyes onto working interfaces as early as
possible during development. In my experience the more often, and the
earlier, that users see the UI and experience the workflow, the more
likely you are to have smooth UAT.

Having said all that, when technical requirements are completed, I don't
normally do detailed design or implementation on the UI first. I've done
the due diligence to establish exactly what that UI should look like, so
I prepare the business logic first. There is a lot of iterative work in
any case, so it's not accurate to say that all of the lower layers get
completely coded up, and only then do I do consider UI work. But I do
have a bias for ensuring that the business logic is designed and coded
earlier than the presentation.

I also aim for very early "happy paths" that exercise all critical or
somewhat nebulous technologies. This may not often be required, not if
everything you're using is tried and true. But if something is dubious
and/or critical, and there's not been time for a pre-requirements Proof
Of Technology (POT) mini-project, I try to get such a "happy path" POT
in as soon as possible. This can often require doing UI work quite early on.

I don't think that any experienced practitioner would discount the
importance of the UI. You might have arguments about how pretty you make
it, but IMO that's what trained graphics designers are for. I used to
work for one web app shop that had a trained graphics designer on staff,
and this guy was cerebral. He didn't have patience for the superficial
special-effects kiddies either; it was all "form follows function" and
human interface guidelines and minimalism. He was well ahead of his
time, this was just over a decade ago.

AHS

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Thread

Design Question Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-12-19 00:13 +0000
  Re: Design Question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-12-18 19:24 -0500
    Re: Design Question ilAn <idonot@wantspam.net> - 2011-12-20 16:47 +0200
      Re: Design Question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-12-20 10:39 -0500
  Re: Design Question markspace <-@.> - 2011-12-18 19:23 -0800
    Re: Design Question Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-12-19 13:26 +0000
    Re: Design Question Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-12-19 13:28 +0000
  Re: Design Question Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-12-19 07:16 -0400
    Re: Design Question Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-12-19 13:49 +0000
      Re: Design Question Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-12-19 22:22 +0000
        Re: Design Question Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-12-19 20:13 -0400
          Re: Design Question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-12-20 07:37 -0800
            Re: Design Question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-12-20 10:42 -0500
              Re: Design Question Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-12-20 17:46 -0400
        Re: Design Question Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-12-20 20:40 +0000
  Re: Design Question Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-12-19 13:34 +0000
  Re: Design Question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-12-19 06:25 -0800
  Re: Design Question Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-12-19 11:38 -0800
    Re: Design Question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-12-20 07:42 -0800
      Re: Design Question Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-12-20 11:51 -0800
        Re: Design Question soulspirit@gmail.com - 2011-12-20 14:55 -0800
          Re: Design Question Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-12-20 15:25 -0800
            Re: Design Question soulspirit@gmail.com - 2011-12-21 01:11 -0800
              Re: Design Question Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-12-21 11:08 -0800
                Re: Design Question soulspirit@gmail.com - 2011-12-21 15:27 -0800
                Re: Design Question Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-12-21 18:06 -0800

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