Many companies mistakenly commit engineering resources to a project prematurely — before they’ve defined the customer; before they’ve assessed the competition; and before the product, itself, is fully-specified. A great product does not simply evolve. A great product is designed.
And a significant element of a great design is usability, which is similar to the popular industrial concept of ergonomics — which is the applied science of designing equipment so as to maximize the user's productivity while reducing his fatigue and discomfort.
Isn't It Obvious How To Make A Product More Usable?
Superficially, it would seem that creating a usable product is the easiest thing one could do. Unfortunately, it's this kind of thinking that makes so many products so complicated to use. Products must be conceived and designed from the viewpoint of the end user, and not from the engineering department's.
Too often, companies rely on the brilliance of their programmers to create new features and an interface with which to access them. Unfortunately, because programmers have a tendency to address user interfaces from the inside out, this technique rarely results in the most intuitive or usable designs. In other words, programmers solve problems in a way that make sense programmatically, rather than in a way that make sense to a user. This is a key reason why so many software programs and modern hardware devices are so complicated to use.
Why ULTRAsomething?
For over two decades, ULTRAsomething's founder, grEGORy simpson, has created user interfaces for new products, or modified and improved user interfaces for existing products. Many of these interfaces (developed for companies such as Opcode Systems, Be inc., and Muse Research) have been recognized within the industry as either revolutionary new concepts, or as the easiest to use products in their class.
By combining his mastery of user-experience design with an ability to discuss complicated technical issues with a programming department, Mr. Simpson continues to create groundbreaking user interfaces for innovative software and hardware products.
