About GOM

Does change for change’s sake annoy you?

Do you believe that if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it?

Are you fed up when software you depend on, your favourite websites or your operating system gets a ‘radical, paradigm-shifting’ user interface makeover?

These issues are what I am aiming to address in this blog. I hope to document examples of bad re-designs, websites that really don’t work, or software that seems to have been randomly changed for no good reason. I’ll also include examples where an arbitary decision by a software designer stops me doing something that should be very simple. Those ‘slap forehead’ moments after you have spent an hour searching the internet’s cornucopia of message boards, for the solution to your problem, only to find there that there isn’t one.

As for my my qualifications, well I’m not a designer by trade although I have an engineering background and have always been interested in how things are put together. I have a clear sense of æsthetics and what makes sense with regards to workflows. I worked for several years building client, server and batch software for large information systems, so understand the process of software creation from well considered pre-build designs down to last minute changes made as a result of user testing.

Ultimately, though it is my opinion that matters to me, and I know what I like and what annoys me. I hope you find something interesting here.

PS Most of the software examples will be from the world of MacOSX or various flavours of Linux as my exposure to Microsoft products is very limited.

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