Why did design become so important to me

I have been ranting about design for a while. However, I am not a designer, I am a software engineer dammit. I got all the design information that I know from books and blog posts.

I finally got it this week. I just finished reading Made to stick. I finally realize that it is not all the books with their statistics and theories about design and usability that stuck. It is the personal experience that I had years ago (with a previous employer) when I participated in a usability study of the software that my team was writing.

It was one of those one-way-glass usability studies where the developer team sits on the other side of the glass watching user after user struggle doing simple tasks with the software. It was a softphone type application and users had a lot of trouble just making a call. Despite the huge button that said "call" in the middle of the application window. Some of the developers were literally yelling at the glass: "Push the damn call button!"

The Made to stick book made me realize why this experience stuck with me. It was Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible and Emotional. Given the fact that I have a good story to tell about it, it scores a perfect 6 out of 6 on the stickiness scale.

I highly recommend this experience (witness a usability study of your software) to anyone involved with creating software. Then, tell me if it sticks with you.