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• SQL Server DBA - How to get a good one!

  - by ETFairfax

  I'm a lone developer. I am currently developing an application which is seeing me get way way way out of my depth when it comes to SQL DBA'ing, and have come to realise that I should hire a DBA to help me (which has full support from the company). Problem is - who? This SO thread sees someone hire a DBA only to realise that they will probably cause more harm then good! Also, I have just had a bad experience with a ASP.NET/C# contractor that has let us down. So, can anyone out there on SO either... a) Offer their services. b) Forward me onto someone that could help. c) Give some tips on vetting a DBA. I know this isn't a recruitment site, so maybe some good answers for c) would be a benefit for other readers!! BTW: The database is SQL Server 2008. I'm running into performance issues (mainly timeouts) which I think would be sorted out by some proper indexing. I would also need the DBA to provide some sort of maintenance plan, and to review how our database will deal what we intend at throwing at it in the future!

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• Is it good idea to require to commit only working code?

  - by Astronavigator

  Sometimes I hear people saying something like "All committed code must be working". In some articles people even write descriptions how to create svn or git hooks that compile and test code before commit. In my company we usually create one branch for a feature, and one programmer usually works in this branch. I often (1 per 100, I think and as I think with good reason) do non-compilable commits. It seems to me that requirement of "always compilable/stable" commits conflicts with the idea of frequent commits. A programmer would rather make one commit in a week than test the whole project's stability/compilability ten times a day. For only compilable code I use tags and some selected branches (trunk etc). I see these reasons to commit not fully working or not compilable code: If I develop a new feature, it is hard to make it work writing a few lines of code. If I am editing a feature, it is again sometimes hard to keep code working every time. If I am changing some function's prototype or interface, I would also make hundreds of changes, not mechanical changes, but intellectual. Sometimes one of them could cause me to carry out hundreds of commits (but if I want all commits to be stable I should commit 1 time instead of 100). In all these cases to make stable commits I would make commits containing many-many-many changes and it will be very-very-very hard to find out "What happened in this commit?". Another aspect of this problem is that compiling code gives no guarantee of proper working. So is it good idea to require every commit to be stable/compilable? Does it depends on branching model or CVS? In your company, is it forbidden to make non compilable commits? Is it (and why) a bad idea to use only selected branches (including trunk) and tags for stable versions?

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• What are some good seminar topics that can be used to improve designer&developer communication?

  - by tactoth

  Hello guys the thing I'll tell is what happens in the company I work for but I know it's more like a common issue in software companies. I'm development team leader in a internet service company that provides service that's very similar to dropbox. In our company we have mainly two divisions: the tech division and the designers division, both have their own reporting hierarchy. Designers focus on designing UI and prioritizing features, while developers focus on implement designers' ideas (more like being driven as our big boss has said). Then here comes our issue: the DEV team and DES team communicate very bad. DEV complain DES for these reasons: Too frequent changing of requirements Too complicated interaction (our DEV team has actually learned many HCI principles) Documents for design are incomplete, usually you just get 'design principles' and it's up to DEV to complete design details. When you find design defects, you ask DES team to resolve them, then DES team quickly change the principles and you gonna spend another several weeks because the change is so fundamental. While DES complain DEV for these reasons: Code architecture is not good enough to adapt to changing requirements (Obviously DES knows something about software development) Product design is about principles, not details. DEV fails to realize this. Communication should be quick and should be mainly oral. Trying to make most feature discussion in document for reference is too overloaded and doesn't make sense. As you can see, DEV and DES have different ideas on product design, and encourages very different practice. We have this difference because of the way we work. So our solution is that we should plan some seminars to make each part more aware of the way the other part work. Then my question is, what are some good topics for such seminars? Guessing some people may not think seminars can solve this problem, please also suggest your solution.

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• Using Clojure instead of Python for scalability (multi core) reasons, good idea?

  - by Vandell

  After reading http://clojure.org/rationale and other performance comparisons between Clojure and many languages, I started to think that apart from ease of use, I shouldn't be coding in Python anymore, but in Clojure instead. Actually, I began to fill irresponsisble for not learning clojure seeing it's benefits. Does it make sense? Can't I make really efficient use of all cores using a more imperative language like Python, than a lisp dialect or other functional language? It seems that all the benefits of it come from using immutable data, can't I do just that in Python and have all the benefits? I once started to learn some Common Lisp, read and done almost all exercices from a book I borrowod from my university library (I found it to be pretty good, despite it's low popularity on Amazon). But, after a while, I got myself struggling to much to do some simple things. I think there's somethings that are more imperative in their nature, that makes it difficult to model those thins in a functional way, I guess. The thing is, is Python as powerful as Clojure for building applications that takes advantages of this new multi core future? Note that I don't think that using semaphores, lock mechanisms or other similar concurrency mechanism are good alternatives to Clojure 'automatic' parallelization.

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• How to make a good portfolio for IT student (who loves programming) like me?

  - by Viet

  I am currently a college student, and going to apply for an university in probably next month. Unlike art student who easily put on their works such as models, designs and so on on their portfolio; I am hitting a dead corner trying to find a "creative" way to showcase my work as a programmer. It would be normal if programmer shows his good project with source code and everything else. Well, it should be no problem with actual "good" projects, but all of my projects are crappy (can't help it because I am still student, and don't have much work experience) and I don't even know it's worth to show. Nonetheless, I have learned a lot in only 1 year since I started programming. I am now familiar with Java, PHP, Actionscript3, C#, Objective-C and on my way to learn Ruby. I plan to build a Flash portfolio using Actionscript with Ruby as backend to show what I have learnt. The problem is idea. How to show people that I learned a lot of useful thing? Otherwise I hit the dead end and LOL just show what I have on Github (but i certainly never want that...)

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• Are DDD Aggregates really a good idea in a Web Application?

  - by Mystere Man

  I'm diving in to Domain Driven Design and some of the concepts i'm coming across make a lot of sense on the surface, but when I think about them more I have to wonder if that's really a good idea. The concept of Aggregates, for instance makes sense. You create small domains of ownership so that you don't have to deal with the entire domain model. However, when I think about this in the context of a web app, we're frequently hitting the database to pull back small subsets of data. For instance, a page may only list the number of orders, with links to click on to open the order and see its order id's. If i'm understanding Aggregates right, I would typically use the repository pattern to return an OrderAggregate that would contain the members GetAll, GetByID, Delete, and Save. Ok, that sounds good. But... If I call GetAll to list all my order's, it would seem to me that this pattern would require the entire list of aggregate information to be returned, complete orders, order lines, etc... When I only need a small subset of that information (just header information). Am I missing something? Or is there some level of optimization you would use here? I can't imagine that anyone would advocate returning entire aggregates of information when you don't need it. Certainly, one could create methods on your repository like GetOrderHeaders, but that seems to defeat the purpose of using a pattern like repository in the first place. Can anyone clarify this for me?

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• 301 redirect: Is this good or bad for 2 domains?

  - by Tim

  Since i couldn't find any appropriate answer to my specific question, I wanted to ask you. I've read alot of things about the 301-redirect for moving pages and so on. A customer of mine has booked a new domain last year for better search results (he included his main keyword into the domain. Before he had only a domain with his business name, which had nothing to say about what he does). I told him, that he should do a 301-redirect so he doesn't loose his position in Google and to redirect all new customers coming from the old domain to the new domain. After about one year where his site hat a good amount of traffic the search results of Google for his keywords are getting more worse. Since he didn't maintain his website (no new content, bad content on all pages and so on) I assumed this would be the problem. He gave his website to another company which also makes websites. They told him, that this 301-redirection is very bad for his website. They removed it, and also updated his content and the template so now he has the same meta keywords on every page (instead of the specific ones I put there before). He also removed the canonical-tag which I placed there to ensure no duplicate content. What I am now afraid of is, that without this redirect Google now will find duplicate content and therefore kick him out of the index, which would be a nightmare, since most of his customers come over his website. I need verification of the fact, that the 301 isn't bad but in fact the correct way of working with 2 domains. If possible with good sources I can point out to him since he don't wants to hear anything about this. If someone also has a few words about the keywords and the canonical-tag I would really appreciate it! Thank you very much!

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• Can it be a good idea to lease a house rather than a standard office-space for a software development shop? [closed]

  - by hamlin11

  Our lease is up on our US-based office-space in July, so it's back on my radar to evaluate our office-space situation. Two of our partners rather like the idea of leasing a house rather than standard office-space. We have 4 partners and one employee. I'm against the idea at this moment in time. Pros, as I see them Easier to get a good location (minimize commutes) All partners/employees have dogs. Easier to work longer hours without dog-duties pulling people back home More comfortable bathroom situation Residential Internet Rate Control of the thermostat Clients don't come to our office, so this would not change our image The additional comfort-level should facilitate a significantly higher-percentage of time "in the zone" for programmers and artists. Cons, as I see them Additional bills to pay (house-cleaning, yard, util, gas, electric) Additional time-overhead in dealing with bills (house-cleaning, yard, util, gas, electric) Additional overhead required to deal with issues that maintenance would have dealt with in a standard office-space Residential neighbors to contend with The equation starts to look a little nasty when factoring in potential time-overhead, especially on issues that a maintenance crew would deal with at a standard office complex. Can this be a good thing for a software development shop?

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• What is a 'good number' of exceptions to implement for my library?

  - by Fuzz

  I've always wondered how many different exception classes I should implement and throw for various pieces of my software. My particular development is usually C++/C#/Java related, but I believe this is a question for all languages. I want to understand what is a good number of different exceptions to throw, and what the developer community expect of a good library. The trade-offs I see include: More exception classes can allow very fine grain levels of error handling for API users (prone to user configuration or data errors, or files not being found) More exception classes allows error specific information to be embedded in the exception, rather than just a string message or error code More exception classes can mean more code maintenance More exception classes can mean the API is less approachable to users The scenarios I wish to understand exception usage in include: During 'configuration' stage, which might include loading files or setting parameters During an 'operation' type phase where the library might be running tasks and doing some work, perhaps in another thread Other patterns of error reporting without using exceptions, or less exceptions (as a comparison) might include: Less exceptions, but embedding an error code that can be used as a lookup Returning error codes and flags directly from functions (sometimes not possible from threads) Implemented an event or callback system upon error (avoids stack unwinding) As developers, what do you prefer to see? If there are MANY exceptions, do you bother error handling them separately anyway? Do you have a preference for error handling types depending on the stage of operation?

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• What is a good way to refactor a large, terribly written code base by myself? [closed]

  - by AgentKC

  Possible Duplicate: Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity? I have a fairly large PHP code base that I have been writing for the past 3 years. The problem is, I wrote this code when I was a terrible programmer and now it's tens of thousands of lines of conditionals and random MySQL queries everywhere. As you can imagine, there are a ton of bugs and they are extremely hard to find and fix. So I would like a good method to refactor this code so that it is much more manageable. The source code is quite bad; I did not even use classes or functions when I originally wrote it. At this point, I am considering rewriting the whole thing. I am the only developer and my time is pretty limited. I would like to get this done as quickly as possible, so I can get back to writing new features. Since rewriting the code would take a long time, I am looking for some methods that I can use to clean up the code as quickly as possible without leaving more bad architecture that will come back to haunt me later. So this is the basic question: What is a good way for a single developer to take a fairly large code base that has no architecture and refactor it into something with reasonable architecture that is not a nightmare to maintain and expand?

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• Is spreading code with refactoring comments a good idea?

  - by Uooo

  I am working on a "spaghetti-code" project, and while I am fixing bugs and implementing new features, I also do some refactoring in order to make the code unit-testable. The code is often so tightly coupled or complicated that fixing a small bug would result in a lot of classes being rewritten. So I decided to draw a line somewhere in the code where I stop refactoring. To make this clear, I drop some comments in the code explaining the situation, like: class RefactoredClass { private SingletonClass xyz; // I know SingletonClass is a Singleton, so I would not need to pass it here. // However, I would like to get rid of it in the future, so it is passed as a // parameter here to make this change easier later. public RefactoredClass(SingletonClass xyz) { this.xyz = xyz; } } Or, another piece of cake: // This might be a good candidate to be refactored. The structure is like: // Version String // | // +--> ... // | // +--> ... // | // ... and so on ... // Map map = new HashMap<String, Map<String, Map<String, List<String>>>>(); Is this a good idea? What should I keep in mind when doing so?

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• Is this a good implementation of a loop in Prolog?

  - by Carles Araguz

  First of all, let me tell you that this happens to be the first time I ask something here, so if it's not the right place to do so, please forgive me. I'm developing a rather complex software that has a Prolog core implementing a FSM. Since I don't want it to stop (ever), I'm trying to write a good loop-like predicate that would work using Prolog's recursion. After a few unsuccessful tries (mainly because of stack problems) I ended up having something similar to this: /* Finite State Transition Network */ transition(st0,evnt0,st1). transition(st1,evnt1,st2). transition(st2,evnt2,st0). fsm_state(state(st0),system(Energy,ActivePayloads),[]) :- /* ... */ transition(st0,evnt0,NextState), !, fsm_state(state(NextState),system(Energy,ActivePayloads),[]). fsm_state(state(st1),system(Energy,ActivePayloads),[]) :- /* ... */ transition(st1,evnt1,NextState), !, fsm_state(state(NextState),system(Energy,ActivePayloads),[0,1,2]). fsm_state(state(st2),system(Energy,ActivePayloads),[P|Params]) :- /* ... */ transition(st2,evnt2,NextState), !, fsm_state(state(NextState),system(Energy,ActivePayloads),[]). start :- Sys = system(10,[]), fsm_state(state(s0),Sys,[]). Is this a good approach?

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• In C++ Good reasons for NOT using symmetrical memory management (i.e. new and delete)

  - by Jim G

  I try to learn C++ and programming in general. Currently I am studying open source with help of UML. Learning is my hobby and great one too. My understanding of memory allocation in C++ is that it should be symmetrical. A class is responsible for its resources. If memory is allocated using new it should be returned using delete in the same class. It is like in a library you, the class, are responsibility for the books you have borrowed and you return them then you are done. This, in my mind, makes sense. It makes memory management more manageable so to speak. So far so good. The problem is that this is not how it works in the real world. In Qt for instance, you create QtObjects with new and then hand over the ownership of the object to Qt. In other words you create QtObjects and Qt destroys them for you. Thus unsymmetrical memory management. Obviously the people behind Qt must have a good reason for doing this. It must be beneficial in some kind of way, My questions is: What is the problem with Bjarne Stroustrups idea about a symmetrical memory management contained within a class? What do you gain by splitting new and delete so you create an object and destroy it in different classes like you do in Qt. Is it common to split new and delete and why in such case, in other projects not involving Qt? Thanks for any help shedding light on this mystery!

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• Programming logic to group a users activities like Facebook

  - by Chris Dowdeswell

  So I am trying to develop an activity feed for my site. Basically If I UNION a bunch of activities into a feed I would end up with something like the following. Chris is now friends with Mark Chris is now friends with Dave What I want though is a neater way of grouping these similar posts so the feed doesn't give information overload... E.g. Chris is now friends with Mark, Dave and 4 Others Any ideas on how I can approach this logically? I am using Classic ASP on SQL server. Here is the UNION statement I have so far: SELECT U.UserID As UserID, L.UN As UN,Left(U.UID,13) As ProfilePic,U.Fname + ' ' + U.Sname As FullName, 'said ' + WP.Post AS Activity, WP.Ctime FROM Users AS U LEFT JOIN Logins L ON L.userID = U.UserID LEFT OUTER JOIN WallPosts AS WP ON WP.userID = U.userID WHERE WP.Ctime IS NOT NULL UNION SELECT U.UserID As UserID, L.UN As UN,Left(U.UID,13) As ProfilePic,U.Fname + ' ' + U.Sname As FullName, 'commented ' + C.Comment AS Activity, C.Ctime FROM Users AS U LEFT JOIN Logins L ON L.userID = U.UserID LEFT OUTER JOIN Comments AS C ON C.UserID = U.userID WHERE C.Ctime IS NOT NULL UNION SELECT U.UserID As UserID, L.UN As UN,Left(U.UID,13) As ProfilePic, U.Fname + ' ' + U.Sname As FullName, 'connected with <a href="/profile.asp?un='+(SELECT Logins.un FROM Logins WHERE Logins.userID = Cn.ToUserID)+'">' + (SELECT Users.Fname + ' ' + Users.Sname FROM Users WHERE userID = Cn.ToUserID) + '</a>' AS Activity, Cn.Ctime FROM Users AS U LEFT JOIN Logins L ON L.userID = U.UserID LEFT OUTER JOIN Connections AS Cn ON Cn.UserID = U.userID WHERE CN.Ctime IS NOT NULL

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• Oracle OpenWorld Live 2012 Videos

  - by Chris Kawalek

  The Oracle virtualization team is back from a very successful Oracle OpenWorld! Hopefully you were able to come to the show and talk with our virtualization experts at the demo booths or in our sessions. But if you didn't, you can get a summary of what we talked about from a number of short videos. In this post, we're going to highlight the Oracle OpenWorld Live videos, and in a future post we'll cover the videos we shot ourselves (once we get them all posted!). If you missed it, Oracle OpenWorld Live carried keynotes and interviews with all kinds of folks during the show. They also archived these segments so you can watch them at your leisure. I've gone through the videos and selected some that highlight virtualization: Edward Screven on mission critical clouds. Wim Coekaerts talks virtualization. Rex Wang on Oracle Cloud. Ronen Kofman on Oracle VM Templates. Chris Kawalek on Oracle's desktop virtualization software. Chris Kawalek discusses Oracle Sun Ray Clients. If we missed you this year, we hope to see you at OpenWorld 2013! -Chris 

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• The biggest ADF conference "down under"

  - by Chris Muir

  While Oracle Open World is the place to be for ADF presentations, for Aussies living in Perth, San Francisco is a tad far away (believe me from experience, the 23hrs flight from PER-SYD-SFO is tedious).  That's why I'm very excited to see that the Australian Oracle User Group at this year's Perth conference is running its largest set of ADF presentation to date: 5! Okay, it doesn't compare to the 60 ADF sessions at OOW, but it's a small conference of around 300 people that runs for 2 days with 54 sessions total, not 40000 people that runs for 5 days with 1900+ sessions, so I think that's a good effort for a conference that's at the end of the earth! What's even better about this year's conference, is the AUSOUG conference is moving away from just consultants and Oracle staff presenting, but will also include customers presenting on ADF too.  This again proves Perth is a little ADF hotspot, which puts a tear to an ADF product manager's eye let me tell you ;-) The ADF sessions will include: Kevin Payne - JWH Group - ADF Mobile Application Development Matthew Carrigy - Department of Finance Western Australia - The times, they are a-changin’ - An Oracle Forms to JDeveloper ADF  Case Study Penny Cookson & Chris Noonan - Sage Computing Services - Impress your bosses with JDeveloper ADF dashboards on their iPads ...oh and... Chris Muir - Oracle Corporation - Speed-Dating Oracle JDeveloper 12c and Oracle ADF New Features  Chris Muir - Oracle Corporation - Develop Mobile Apps for Smart Devices: Converging Web and Native Applications You can check out the conference schedule here.  I hope you'll support these ADF presenters by attending the AUSOUG Perth conference, I look forward to seeing you there.

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• Is there any good ASP.Net MVC project with TDD & MOQ Source code available?

  - by melaos

  hi guys, i'm starting to learn TDD, Unit-testing on asp.net mvc and i'm trying to pickup all these mocking via MOQ. so i'm looking for any good asp.net mvc projects which source codes are made available to mere mortals like me :) i've found some good asp.net mvc source codes but not those that uses MOQ specifically. the asp.net mvc source code code camp server suteki shop So does anybody know any good open source asp.net mvc project which have good test/tdd examples using MOQ?

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• Is there a language that encourages good coding practices?

  - by Darrell Brogdon

  While I love PHP I find its biggest weakness is that it allows and even almost encourages programmers to write bad code. Is there a language that encourages good programming practices? Or, more specifically, a web-related language that encourages good practices. I'm interested in languages who have either a stated goal of encouraging good programming or are designed in such a way as to encourage good programming.

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• What's a good equivalent to python's subprocess.check_call that returns the contents of stdout?

  - by Chris R

  I'd like a good method that matches the interface of subprocess.check_call -- ie, it throws CalledProcessError when it fails, is synchronous, &c -- but instead of returning the return code of the command (if it even does that) returns the program's output, either only stdout, or a tuple of (stdout, stderr). Does somebody have a method that does this?

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• Would be good to include your freelancer account in your Resume / CV when applying for a job?

  - by Oscar Mederos

  I've been working as a freelancer for about two years in vWorker. Any person can visit a coder's profile, and see in how many projects the coder has worked on, (if the coders allows) see how much the coder obtained in each project, ratings, feedbacks, etc. Would be good to include a freelancer account in your Resume / CV when applying for a job? Is it something you would do if you have finished several projects there?

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• Multiple classes in a single .cs file - good or bad?

  - by Sergio

  Is it advisable to create multiple classes within a .cs file or should each .cs file have an individual class? For example: public class Items { public class Animal { } public class Person { } public class Object { } } Dodging the fact for a minute that this is a poor example of good architecture, is having more than a single class in a .cs file a code smell?

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• What are good places to get programming online certifications?

  - by Oscar Mederos

  I was reading Am I unhireable? and one of the suggestions @JohnFx gave was getting a few certifications. What is a good place to get online developer certifications? Please, provide info about the site if you used it. I already have some certs in ExpertRating site. Note: It could be certifications about programming in general (methodologies -XP, Scrum, etc-, Modeling, Design Patterns, Architecture, Refactoring, etc.)

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• Which operating systems book is good as a quick refresher?

  - by rdasxy

  I am preparing for a technical interview and need to review the basics of major operating systems concepts. We used Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems in school for our operating systems course, which is a good book, but too long to be reviewed in the course of a few days. For an example, I am looking for what Programming Interviews Exposed is to Weiss's Data Structures & Algorithm Analysis. Any suggestions?

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• Is there a good resource for learning Rails in depth? [closed]

  - by Kocheez

  I've been developing rails applications for about 6 months now (I was originally a java developer) and I'm getting familiar enough with building applications that I want to take my rails knowledge to the next level. The majority of books and learning materials I've found deal mostly with "how to use rails" rather than "how it works". I was wondering if there are any good resources for getting a really in depth understanding of the framework, such as how modules and classes are loaded, the underlying architecture, how servers interact, etc... Any tips on learning more would be greatly appreciated

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• What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

  - by jatin.thaker

  Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; John Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and John Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. John Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patanjali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardinian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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