Questioning Alan Cooper when he says developer’s job is at conflict of interest with user needs and difficult to treat usability

Jeff walks through his career, started out doing web tech, fascinated by IA, got into it

Learned lessons earlier on

Five years later, started job as developer but now doing UX

Two contrasting projects: One he knows the code backwards, one he doesn’t. Interesting to see contrast between project where he knows the code and where he doesn’t. Difficult to feel like the UI is “magic” when you know the code backwards - feels more free in ignorance of the code.

Good to do lo-fi prototyping etc, but especially user testing.

Fin.

Discussion:

Can cut off options too early if put in developer arguments too early.

(me) Everyone needs to user test anyway. But I find I an detach myself as a developer and see things as a user.

Others not sure about this. example - if you’re coming up with multiple undo, part of your brain starts screaming!

Talking about advantages of coming to UX as a developer versus coming to UX as a developer. As a developer - you can’t be blagged by IT guys saying “it can’t be done”; can open up new possibilities that UX people mightn’t have been aware of.

You can have a website without designers, but you can’t have a website without developers - you can’t make it work by putting a wireframe online. So UX people need to know enough to spec it, not be blagged.