The Hard Challenge Of Making Easy Software

Michael Slater, Adobe, Santa Rosa

Stevenson Hall 1300
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

Creating an application to enable ordinary consumers to enjoy digital photographyturns out to be quite a challenging problem. The solution Adobe has developed, Photoshop Album, required some new paradigms and a lot of difficult design choices. The development process and experience with users provides a variety of lessons about the challenges of designing easy-to-use software and the hidden complexities that make what seem like simple problems sometimes very hard to solve simply.