Would you miss Usability if it weren't there?

I've firmly believed that developers have as much to do with user experience as designers and functional analysts or product managers - if not more. Look at the checkbox in the screen that says "Erase after Importing".


Thanks to the way it is implemented, you can check/uncheck it anytime during the import process, any number of times. It just picks up the last state of the checkbox after import is done.

Obvious, you may say. But let's look under the hood to understand how this could have got killed.

The right way to implement this is (don't read too much into the syntax, this is just to illustrate the example):

for (int index: items) //for each item{
import(index); //do whatever it needs to import
}
boolean eraseOnImport = chkErase.getValue();// read the checkbox state

if(eraseOnImport){
for (int index: items) //for each item
{
delete(index);
}
}

A developer could at the code above and say - Whoops! 2 for loops iterating over the same list is suboptimal - so rewrite it as:

boolean eraseOnImport = chkErase.getValue();// read the checkbox state
for (int index: items) //for each item
{
import(index);
if(eraseOnImport){
delete(index);
}
}

Less lines of code, less variables used, less memory consumed, less processing time.
Two birds, one stone.
All valid code optimization techniques.
Wonderful.
But as a feature, this would mean - the first state of the checkbox gets read. You cannot change your mind once the import starts.


The lack of the flexibility doesn't make the feature less usable, but its presence pushes the usability up by a notch.

It is small things like these that constitute the difference between Customer Satisfaction and Customer Delight, don't you think?