World Usability Day was celebrated on November 13. This time, Universidad ORT de Uruguay and Concreta held a round table, "Usability in Software Design in Uruguay", in order to approach the subject from different standpoints. Artech was invited –together with IdeaSoft and Urudata- to talk about the fundamentals of Usability in GeneXus X.

Gastón Milano, from Artech's development area, presented the guidelines followed in GeneXus X to build a usable software product.
"Usability is a very important feature of software and is one of the pillars upon which our product GeneXus X is built," the developer told the crowded audience.

 

Gastón Milano talked about usability and, to give a current example,
mentioned the mobile device that he thinks has the highest degree of usability: the iPhone.

GeneXus X provides a more intuitive development environment that is context-oriented and dedicated to meeting the needs of developers, which optimizes both its use and learning curve.

Milano said that the construction of GeneXus X was based on the following philosophical standpoints: 

• Know the people for whom software is developed
• Understand the scenarios in which it will be used
• Enable users to achieve their objectives with ease
• Embrace the notion that in software less is more 
 

Features that enhance Usability in GeneXus X:

• New IDE with new editors.

• Simple development cycle.  • Global view of the KB through Bachman diagrams.

• Handling of different versions of the solution in the same KB.

• Dynamic categorization of objects for sorting and easily handling them.

• Powerful search engine.

• Different views of knowledge, for example, a chart containing a summary of the Knowledge Base.

Recommended multimedia items:

GeneXus X IDE sessions: Getting Started I and II, given at the XVIII GeneXus International Meeting. By Pablo Mazzilli and Fabián Bonilla.

Getting started I
Getting started II