Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfolkins | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like you don't. But many in my org come to me with an idea, and having them think through the logical pieces and build a functional wireframe would help under resourced people like me so much.

Also, many people just think that business logic for sanitization and validation "just happens." The barrier to wireframing, for them, is too high so they don't. But in this idea, I could see someone submitting a wireframe to me and my response being "well what happens when a phone number is international?" I'm educating stakeholders on the functional cost of producing their idea.

This would theoretically create a feedback loop for future ideas and initiatives as now, they've begun to be educated on the process. They have direct experience.

Anyway, anything to lower that barrier in order to partner with and teach my executives and their supporting staff would be a huge win. At least for me.

View on HN

> many people just think that business logic for sanitization and validation "just happens." The barrier to wireframing, for them, is too high so they don't

Maybe the barrier is where it should be. Or maybe it should be even higher! People who can't understand the logic of an interface have no business creating or suggesting interfaces. An UI is meant to be used, not looked at like a pretty picture in a frame. It should feel good and feel smooth and increase productivity... not look good. Some of the best looking UIs I've ever seem were also the most utterly user-hostile, unituitive and productivity lowering.

Sure, if you can afford to pay someone 500/hour or smth "outrageous" like that (hint: you need a word-class artist, with advanced knowledge of user psychology, that also has the brain of a business logic analist or of programmer involved in product design) you could get something that both looks goorgeous and feels smooth and increases user productivity 10x. But usually you need to make sacrifices, and the ones the user will hate you for are those that make his life harder despite seeming nice and slick at first.

Clarification, I'm talking about a tool like this one that incorporated flow control and process into the wireframes.

> Maybe the barrier is where it should be. Or maybe it should be even higher!

Across the industry people in leadership positions assume that making UI/UX is easy. Those same people are usually the owners or major stakeholders of the project. Any avenue to put more functional ownership back onto that group to empower and educate is a worth endeavor.

I take your point about usability as opposed to visual design, and that many slick-looking UIs actually lower productivity.

But:

In this example, unless not handling international phone numbers leads to failure of the project, that can be handled later, say once the project is approved and time estimation is being done. If I'm building a notes app, and someone is proposing a new sign up form to increase conversions, and it has a phone number field, handling international numbers is the last thing to worry about at this stage (unless international numbers are a significant problem with the old form leading to abandonment).

We shouldn't doom good ideas with irrelevant details, which are absolutely relevant later, but not now. Product development happens in phases of increasing fidelity, and issues need to be brought up at the appropriate time, not too early, not too late.

> handling international phone numbers

Imo this is one of those things best left unhandled, eg. "just use a plain mostly unvalidated textfield, and throw and error only when you want to use that data via another system like for a text message campaign". Mostly in real-life if you want to target the entire freaking planet (not just 99% of phone using people, but 99.999%), you'll get to realize that any validation is not enough and that some phone numbers need to contain arbitrary letters and symbols in them (better don't ask... the world is big and weird :P), and that yeah, those numbers will not be procesable by things like Twillio, but human users with local knowledge will know how to actually "dial" them...

But it needs to be a conscious decision, to consciously choose to not-validate and to understand that you give up the ability to 100% target phone numbers for things like 2-factor-auth later on.

Not "forget that phone numbers need to be validated" and then, go and say, "oh, let's do phone-based 2-fa mandatory" or whatever user interaction messup like that.

I agree with your main point about empower people.

It seems that people are coming to you to help estimate how long an idea takes to implement. If that's the case, I agree with everything you've said.

But if they're proposing an idea, say a new sign up form to increase conversions, phone number validation is an irrelevant detail to worry about at this point (unless that was a significant problem with the old sign up form).

In your scenario, I agree, number validation is irrelevant. So I'd ask that you pick something that is relevant for your environment.

Whatever it may be, would a tool that educates and puts some of the cost back on the "idea person" or stakeholder be a good thing? I think it would.

> would a tool that educates and puts some of the cost back on the "idea person" or stakeholder be a good thing? I think it would.

So would I, as I mentioned in my reply to you. It's easy to propose ideas without regard to cost like a "minor enhancement" that takes 6 person-months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com