My friend Jacques asked me on twitter: “What are the top things you wish developers knew about interface design?”. Not feeling confident in my ability to expand on this in 140 categories, I thought I’d send this to the blog for exploration.

As a former developer (both front- and back-end), I enjoy a unique perspective on how the user experience-developer relationship goes. There are hundreds of things I’d love developers to know about user experience design, and this list represents a sampling of some of the more important things I want developers to keep in mind more often:

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In our cluttered world, we rely on certain standards or patterns to help us understand how things work. As designers, we utilize design patterns to solve design challenges by using previous solutions that have already been tested and proven to work well.

For example, on the web, a website typically features navigation across the top, or down the lefthand side. Generally, a logo in the upper lefthand corner links to the homepage. On a door, the knob is on the unhinged side, around hand height. These patterns and standards help us to use these objects without needing to relearn them. They’re essentially cognitive shortcuts that allow us to get thru the world without being disoriented all the time.

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…users are wrong.

They call things the wrong name. They have a vision of the structure of your organization that is different – sometimes radically so – than the truth. The act in irrational and unpredictable ways. And guess what? It’s OK.

The trap companies fall into too often is trying to correct the user. “That’s not really what that department is called”, “That’s not the language we use here” are the all-too-common cries of stakeholders innocently protecting the institutional structure and language. The problem with doing this is that trying to teach a user the right way to think rarely ends up in the intended goal. Instead, users get confused, projecting those bad feelings onto the brand that was simply trying to preserve it’s organizational purity.

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Today, I received an email from rule.fm, a new project management tool that I was turned onto by a friend. In the email, rule.fm asked me to upgrade to the pro version of their software – free if done in July. The issue? I’d already upgraded. In fact, the email itself was quite telling, saying this: “If you activated earlier this July you’re already good to go.”

While this isn’t a big deal, rule.fm missed out on an opportunity to deliver a stellar experience, although, it probably isn’t completely their fault.

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I recently bought an HTC Thunderbolt as my new phone, and so far, it’s been a great device. The industrial design is beautiful, and it’s clear the designers took a good deal of time to work on the aesthetic and material components of the design.

However, there is one element to the design that wasn’t thought out: the kickstand. Specifically, the kickstand and it’s relationship to the charger.

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