[RchLuvSlly]

Hello all dream.in.code users, I'm new here but I'm not really new in programming or software development. In fact, I'm currently working as a programmer in the IT department of a company. And, before I work in my current company, I have been developing software and marketing it myself, too, and I've already got quite a few business clients from my freelance software development work.

However, I have something in mind that I would like to ask. So here it goes: In my current company, I have just acquired agreement for my software prototype from all stakeholders. So, I'm currently proceeding with actually developing the software itself. However, in this early development phase, my superior has been quite pushing me to design a user-friendly visual/user interface. According to my previous experiences, visuals/user interfaces don't come first. Am I right or are we, software developers/programmers, actually supposed to bother the visuals/user interfaces before coding other more important features/functions for our piece of software?

Please kindly provide me an enlightenment in this issue and sorry for my long post (it's my first one ). Thank you all for your kind concern.

[modi123_1]

It depends on the software.. and usually goes hand in hand with the general design. If I were you I would get some of the future users and other folk in a room and flesh out what it will do and how they might like it to look.. that will get them off your back and a good jump on the design document.

[tlhIn`toq]

As modi says, it depends on the software. And it depends on your company team design. Some companies have GUI developers that don't do a lot of code-behind. WPF was designed with this model in mind.

The most important thing and it sound like you do this, is to have the data not tightly bound and relying on the GUI.

Realistically we are almost required to build some sort of GUI just so we can interact with the data and test our code: So why not build a GUI that could be used by the customer? If that later gets handed off to another dedicated GUI building team member they will appreciate the head start.

Sometimes my boss will create a GUI as his way of spec'ing out the program. He has a vision in his head of how it should operate. So he does the design work then hands it to me to make it all actually work. Often it means moving groups of controls to a UserControl etc. But at least I am handed everything he expects of the program. When dealing with non-programmers this can sometimes be the best approach before coding. Dummy up a GUI, take it to the conference room, project it on the whiteboard and start talking to people who matter. Make all your notes. Make all your changes. Call them back in and do it again.

[RchLuvSlly]

Hello all, thank you for the replies. I'll try to keep them in mind as my references.

[Whazabazaa]

I should keep it as clean as possible and let other people try it and give you feedback (no-programmers).

I think it's personal but it works good!