Designing a UI

Interesting discussion about whether significant effort should be expended upon UI design.

Opinion One:

The best UI's are undoubtedly those that are intuitive and reinforce the user's actions thought text, graphics and actions. It should be obvious what the user needs to do. The increased development time is rewarded by the building up of a suite of controls that tackle these issues over time, user satisfaction, and decreased training costs.

Opinion Two:

Significant effort should not be expended upon bells and whistles for the interface. It should meet requirements. Any usage issues can be countered by training, which would be cheaper and faster; as any usage issues cannot be tackled by increased development time, which implies that the application is delivered faster.

Opinion Three:

Why doesn't your app have full keyboard support, you losers.

Opinion Four:

Usability is less important in Intranet Applications as these can be countered by training; also, by maintaining the look and feel of existing applications, there should be fewer usage problems as people will encounter nothing new.

Personal Comment:

I note that none of the standard project documentation mentions usability testing. Nor are there any recommendations regarding UI design for people with disabilities.