PLATEAU 2009 Keynote

Title: User Experience Design for Programming Languages and Tools

Users are often at best an afterthought among software developers - even when they themselves are the users! Usability of programming languages and tools is all too often equated with raw functionality or casually dismissed as a matter of mere syntactic sugar. In one sense the usability issues for programming languages and tools are nothing special. Whether it's a UML modeling tool or a Web 2.0 ERP system, on the other side of the screen is a human eye and hand coordinated by a human brain. The same broad principles and specific techniques of sound interaction design apply.

This keynote by an award-winning interaction designer and design methodologist attempts to frame the issues in the usability of the tools we use, exploring the dimensions of user experience in programming languages and tools, as well as examining what might be unique or special about our experience as users. Specific recommendations and proposals for improving the usability and user experience of languages and tools are presented.

• Presentation Slides: PLATEAU2009-LarrryConstantine-keynote.pdf (3.1MB)
• Audio from Presentation: PLATEAU2009-LarryConstantine-keynote-audio.mp3.zip (13MB)

Speaker: Larry Constantine

• Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Engineering at the University of Madeira, Portugal
• Director of the Laboratory for Usage-centered Software Engineering

Bio

Larry Constantine, IDSA, is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Engineering at the University of Madeira where he teaches in the dual-degree program that he helped organize with Carnegie-Mellon University in the United States. He heads the Laboratory for Usage-centered Software Engineering, a research and development group dedicated to making technology more useful and usable. One of the pioneers of modern software engineering, he is an award-winning designer and author, recipient of the 2009 Stevens Award for his contributions to design and design methods, and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.