#user experience.

You need better user experience (more…)

I won’t be able to sit back and play FFXIV using my wireless DualShock4 controller cause for some reason the entire bluetooth pairing/connection process is an unmitigated nightmare.

It doesn’t help that there is no clear answer online as to how this problem can be fixed, or what certain error codes even mean or that people seem to be reading-adverse and automatically treat the person in need like a complete moron who needs to be told to turn the computer off and on again.

It should also be pointed out that this very same PS4 was connected to my PC (in a state practically identical to its previously connected state) even before I had a PS4, and that it wasn’t until after I paired it with my shiny new console to jam out with my wife on some Lego Harry Potter HD that it decided that it would no longer see eye to eye with my PC.

And don’t even start with me about unpairing it from the PS4 or installing this DS4 tool or that InputMapper thingy, cause I’ve done it, I’ve done all of it. Well, almost all of it, cause I sure as shit haven’t bothered tearing apart my registry or wantonly uninstalling every single vestige of bluetooth driver that lairs deep within the bowels of my rig (and ho boy, there seems to be no end to the bluetooths that show up in my device manager).

Could I do those things? Yeah, sure... I mean, I used to work tech support, I’m a fairly deft hand with electronics, and I can usually work my way through most technical problems. Oh, and did I mention I figured this garbage out already before?

Here’s the thing...

I shouldn’t have to put up with this shit.

Nobody should have to put up with this shit.

More and more as I’ve gone through school, studying software engineering and its related disciplines, I’ve come to realize just how critically important it is to design and develop our technologies for the people using them. It’s so easy to forget people with lesser (and greater) depths and breadths of knowledge and experience than yourself, and that factor is painfully apparent in software engineering or really anything that relies on pushing out a user experience of any kind.

I feel like we often fail to stop and ask if maybe there’s a better way of doing this, or that we just throw up our hands and proclaim, “DONE!” when really, our work is just getting started.

Sure, there are realities of time and budget to bear in mind, but more and more I see those technically valid excuses as nothing more than a flimsy foundation to prop up short term thinking and greed. We’re so damn focused on just getting stuff out there, and to hell with anything beyond superficial quality.

But then, that’s just the natural result of working within the systems we’ve found ourselves trapped in. A rant for another time, I guess...

tl;dr