Joel on Software

2000/05/09

We've talked about the principles of good design, but principles only give you a way to evaluate and improve an existing design. But... how do you figure out what the dang design should be in the first place? Many people write big, functional outlines of all the features they thought up. Then they design each one, and hang it off of a menu item (or web page). When they're done, the program (or web site) has all the functionality they wanted, but it doesn't flow right. People sit down and they don't know what it does, and they don't know how to accomplish what they want.

Microsoft's solution to this is something called Activity Based Planning. (As far as I can tell, this concept was invented by Mike Conte on the Excel team, who got bored with that and went on to a second career as a race car driver). The key insight is to figure out the activity that the user is doing, and focus on making it easy to accomplish that activity.

Read all about it in Chapter 9, the final installment of my book on UI design.

College students: my company has paid summer internships in New York City, including free housing, free lunch, and the chance to develop software people will really use, with great mentors on interesting projects. Don't miss this chance of a lifetime. We only have a few spaces and they always go fast, so apply today.

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You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

About the author.

I’m Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, an enlightened project management system designed to help great teams develop brilliant software, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy.