Developer on Fire
Developer on Fire
Episode 153 | Billy Hollis - User Focus
Guest:
Billy Hollis talks with Dave Rael about relationships with technology, focusing on users, user experience design, and escaping invisible cages
Billy Hollis is a software designer, developer, author, and trainer. He and his team have designed and created applications with an international reputation for advanced user experiences. Billy has a contrarian streak that often challenges conventional wisdom in the industry. He speaks frequently at major conferences, usually doing sessions to help developers to become more focused on designing and developing software that users love.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Billy Hollis
- - Emphasis on the user
- - Billy's relationship with Microsoft
- - Billy's joy with XAML
- - The things that "light Billy up"
- - Advice to newer coders for applying Billy's lessons from having learned from different eras of computing and focusing on users
- - How Billy stays current with what he needs to know
- - How developers can learn to how to understand users better
- - Empathizing with users who use computing differently than the programmer
- - User experience design
- - The things that have Billy most excited
- - Billy's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Billy
Resources:
- Next Version Systems
- Billy on .NET Rocks! on XAML
- XAML
- Build 2015
- Nik Molnar on Developer On Fire
- Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone - "The Wand Chooses The Wizard"
- Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It - David S. Platt
- Billy's Pluralsight Design Course: Creating User Experiences: Fundamental Design Principles
- Alan Cooper on Developer On Fire
- Alan Cooper on personas
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity - Alan Cooper
- Syncfusion
- Billy Hollis - Creating User Experiences: Unlocking the Invisible Cage
- Billy and Elevator Panels
- The Nielsen Norman Group
Billy's book recommendation:
- Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design - William Lidwell
- Usability Engineering - Jakob Nielsen
- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition - Don Norman
Billy's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Listen to the user and usnderstand their job
- Learn to draw
- Conciously understand good and bad user experience
