揭露冰山般的秘密 The Iceberg Secret, Revealed

揭露冰山般的秘密

http://tinyurl.com/b2clht

關於軟體的客戶(或非技術經理)以及程式師兩者間語言翻譯的秘密。

你知道冰山有90%是在水面下嗎？沒錯，大部份的軟體也是這樣。那些漂亮的使用介面只
佔10%的工作，而其他90%的程式設計都是看不到的。如果再考慮到一半時間在抓蟲這個事
實，使用介面就只佔了5%的工作。如果只計算使用介面中的視覺部份(能在PowerPoint裡
看到的部份)，其實就不到1%了。
這並不是秘密。真正的秘密是非程式人員並不知道這件事。



重要的推論二：把使用介面的畫面展示給非程式人員看時，如果這個介面非常漂亮，對方會認為這個程式幾乎已經完工。
非程式人員只會看著畫面，他們看到的是一堆像素的組合。如果那些像素看起來像個有功能的程式，他們就會認為：「哦，要讓這個程式真的動起來應該不會有多難吧？」 這裡有一個很大的風險：如果你先做出使用介面的原型，認為這樣就能與客戶進行討論，結果每個人都會認為你幾乎都做完了。接下來你花了整整一年去做「裡面」的事，卻沒人會看到你的工作成果，大家還以為你什麼都沒做。

重要推論四：因為政治因素要求由各技術經理或客戶「啟動」專案時，可以提供數種美術設計讓他們選擇。
改變某些元件的擺設方式，改變外觀和字型，移動標誌位置，標誌也可以變大或變小。拿些無關緊要的家家酒內容給他們玩，讓他們覺得自己很重要。這些他們就不會嚴重影響你的時程了。好的室內設計師會定期拿些樣本之類的小東西給客戶選，不過從來不會跟客戶討論洗碗機的位置。不管客戶想怎樣，反正洗碗機就是放在水槽邊，沒必要浪費時間去爭論，就是得放水槽邊，連擺高一點都免談；客戶想玩設計就讓他去碰些無害的東西，比如流理檯面要選義大利花崗石，還是用墨西哥瓷磚還是挪威木砧板，這種事他改變主意200次都沒關係。

The Iceberg Secret, Revealed by Joel Spolsky
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html


Important Corollary Two. If you show a nonprogrammer a screen which has a user interface which is 100% beautiful, they will think the program is almost done.

People who aren't programmers are just looking at the screen and seeing some pixels. And if the pixels look like they make up a program which does something, they think "oh, gosh, how much harder could it be to make it actually work?"

The big risk here is that if you mock up the UI first, presumably so you can get some conversations going with the customer, then everybody's going to think you're almost done. And then when you spend the next year working "under the covers," so to speak, nobody will really see what you're doing and they'll think it's nothing.


Important Corollary Four. When politics demands that various nontechnical managers or customers "sign off" on a project, give them several versions of the graphic design to choose from.

Vary the placement of some things, change the look and feel and fonts, move the logo and make it bigger or smaller. Let them feel important by giving them non-crucial lipstick-on-a-chicken stuff to muck around with. They can't do much damage to your schedule here. A good interior decorator is constantly bringing their client swatches and samples and stuff to choose from. But they would never discuss dishwasher placement with the client. It goes next to the sink, no matter what the client wants. There's no sense wasting time arguing about where the dishwasher goes, it has to go next to the sink, don't even bring it up; let the clients get their design kicks doing some harmless thing like changing their mind 200 times about whether to use Italian Granite or Mexican Tiles or Norwegian wood butcher-block for the countertops.