I’ve been reading Roy Fielding’s dissertation “Architectural Styles and
the Design of Network-based Software Architectures” (http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm) in which he introduces the concept of Representational State Transfer (REST).

I really liked his definition of a software architecture style, which I wanted to share with you.

He says:

“A style is a named set of constraints on architectural elements that induces the set of properties desired of the architecture.”

This is quite a mouthful, let’s break it down:

A style is a named set […], meaning that it’s just a name or reference to identify a more abstract concept […] of constraints…

Just noticed this usability fail in the online interface of my savings account:

You know you have a problem if you use a couple of icons without labels and then have to place a legend right next to it, so users understand them.

The Nielsen/Norman Group claims that there is only a handful of universally recognised icons. For the remaining 99.9% they recommend using a text label next to it.

In general it seems, as if the usability benefits of icons are overrated. Users mostly recognise the positions of buttons/icons/features and not the visual representation itself (Source). When Microsoft added text labels to their Outlook toolbars, they saw a sharp increase in usage numbers for non-expert users (Source).

“You folks have a lot of angry customers out there. How are you going to respond?” is the finishing line as well as the central question Alan Cooper is trying to answer throughout his book. Cooper is an angry guy, you can hear that in his writing. He’s fed up with the way technology treats its users. And he has found the culprit responsible for all this: software engineers.

A thesis Cooper repeats throughout his book is that engineers quietly run the show. He ascribes them passive-aggressiveness and a narrow world-view. And he has found them guilty of covertly pushing…