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Why Users Hate IT Products and Developers
bfwebster writes "The Washington Post has a commentary by one of its regular columnists, Marc Fisher, on why computer users hate what he terms 'our techie masters.' One of his more pungent and, I suspect, on-the-money comments: 'Computer training has become the living hell of the American workplace...each new system is more confounding than the last, and each new product strips away many of the advantages of the previous system.' Not a Luddite screed; more an angry outburst asking why commercial software systems are often so wretched. Worth reading and pondering."
The short answer would be:
RTFM
i hate when users complain about this kind of thing. its not like they have to hack a kernel or anything in their job duties, the extent of their complaints are along the lines of 'OMG THIS NEW VERSION OF WORD HAS ALL THE LITTLE BUTTONS IN NEW PLACES' or 'LOL IT TOOK ME TEN MINUTES TO FIND WHERE THE SEND BUTTON IS NOW CAN I HAVE THE OLD ONE BACK.'
The software is usually designed for the wrong reason in the first place: to fulfill a marketability niche seen by some buzz-word driven demand. It's sold from a marketing and sales rep, whose usual job description could be summed up under "schmooz with customer", who pulls out his checklist of latest technologies to make sure he promises X, Y, Z and hyperbaric interoperability with toasters from obscure places like Kansas.
These requirements and obscure promises are handed to engineering who satisfy the technical aspect and ship it. Never have any of the QA departments I've seen have a dedicated usability expert; most of the QA engineers were just re-tasked programmers without any HCI design principle background or experience.
So, since corporate and enterprise level software development is driven by the sale by those out of touch with the true needs of those making use of the software the incredibly wide gap develops that frustrates the @#$( out of everybody.
Any spoon would be too big.
Each new system is more confounding than the last? But somehow these "mere mortals" manage to forward me tons of "funny" mpegs and powerpoint animations, and I'm sure that wasn't part of the computer training.
If it weren't for the poor-quality, buggy, and insecure software that microsoft puts out then the situation would be different
I'm starting to think this isn't the best place to promote my Anti-Sig Campaign.
You can come work at my school, we haven't upgraded our computing system in nearly 18 years.
Western Illinois University UIMS
University Information Management Systems uses an IBM Multiprise 3000 model 7060-H50(S/390) processor to support host-based administrative information systems. The H50 system's suite of operating system software is based on IBM's z/OS. More..
The four members of the systems staff select, install, test, maintain, implement, and trouble shoot a wide variety of z/OS based products on test and production systems. Over eighty products from about twenty vendors make up this system. A separate z/OS system is maintained on the same machine for use by WIU students enrolled in programming classes. More..
While these systems may not seem so out of date you have to remeber they're all COBOL backwards compatible from 1985 and up. So don't like upgraded, don't do it! Upgrading to a new system would be completely impossible right now as tied in as the entire thing is. The best case scenario for switching to something not so old would be a phase out plan, which is not in place.
So obviously this doesn't affect EVERYONE!
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Message to computer users and the non-techies: We the techies are smarter than you, and we like to prove it. If you don't understand my new program, it's obviously because you're stupid. Move along now.
Get a Mac, dude. :)
as the saying goes
"this job would be great if it weren't for the users"
moo.
[i]"Joan Mann of Old Dominion in Norfolk, has devoted years of study to dysfunctional relations between the Techie and the Clueless, or, in industry jargon, the "IT person" ("information technology") and the "end-user."[/i]
It should read "Guru" and "Luser".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is what I say: "Give me back my old computer stuff. And this is what I mean: I'd really like to have the system before that."
Really, given that the average office worker spends most of their day staring at MS Office, how could they NOT hate the people that bring them technology...
Also, why in the hell are companies "upgrading" constantly? What ever happened to the days of buy something and use it. Hell, that's what I do for my tiny business. Every "upgrade" is expensive and time consuming. I'll just use what I have, thank you.
Perhaps when developing a new system the developers could take some time to study the methodologies that are used in the gaming market. After all Games are highly technical but must be very easy to learn and use to be popular.
If anything they might start thinking more about the end user then they do right now
Example - Sniffer. Great piece of software. Does everything you could want. But it's so confusing with random tabs all over the place, buttons that are similar but do different tasks in different parts of the program, and completely lacking in intuitive interface....
haha, this is +5 Funny right?
What computer program do any of you use that you had to be trained to use? Microsoft Office? Umm, *most* people have no use for any of the apps other than Word.
I was able to sufficiently use Access and Excel in 30 mins or less.
Now, let's look back in the day. WP5.1, DOS 5.0, and Lotus 123. WYSIWYG+123 was not much better. Those applications required training and complicated Function Key cards above the KB.
Most people can fumble their way through the current Word version by searching the menus and using their doc "wizards".
People are just lazy.
If we are talking about mainframe frontends, they are even MORE insane. Most programers (while not the best UI designers) have made it much easier than using a VT100 term emu. for using the mainframe.
Stop the whining and learn to use the god damn things...
He must be new, and uninitiated by his bofh. My users would commit suicide before uttering such heresy. Almost.
This guy is just trolling.
War is necrophilia.
Not a Luddite screed; more an angry outburst asking why commercial software systems are often so wretched.
Heh, let's give 'em all Linux kernels to play with, and sendmail.cf files and procmail filters too while we're about it, and watch their eyes shine with joy as they appreciate the wonders of the non-commercial world...
Er, maybe not.
Think they're mad now?!?!?
What is the new system? What was the old system?
I don't believe this guy doesn't have complaints about the system he was already using. And I have doubts that this is about his computer masters so much as his masters at EDS or whatever big business contractor changes his systems and retrains him regularly.
OR GEE... could it be his idiot management doling out money for new systems when the old one worked better? No... it's the computer industry.
I think some of these "intuitive" people should work on THEIR personal skills. For example, they should know what I mean when I say, "It's only a flesh wound." Maybe the computer would "like" them better and make them "feel" better about themselves.
Wait, am I bitter?
-pyrrho
sure it may be hard to learn at first, but once you've mastered it, you can do anything.
SimonTek
There is a good point there. Users don't always understand what they want, or can't think through the "unintended consequences" of a system change. They see the result, not the process.
But on the other hand, I know that us geeks have a tendency to read our own agenda into what we're asked to provide, and to ride hard on anyone who disagrees with our intepretation of "how it should be". We deliver a wonderful process, and if it has a good result, that's just icing on the cake.
I used to work with a group of professional architects, and I learned a lot from watching them take user input, question it, refine it, and try to turn it into a project. They spent a lot more time learning about the customer's personality, what sorts of things they liked and didn't like... and the ones who were consistently loved by customers were the ones who were the best listeners.
(A nickle to the first person to identify the person I quoted above!)
Was anyone else reminded of that SNL skit with the Obnoxious tech-support guy? I can't remember the name, ah well.
I think a lot of this has to do with the elitist mindset of a lot IT workers. They see themselves as the masters, the ones who ought to be in charge because so much of the work is done through systems they built. But really, they should think of themselves as servants, trying to build the best system they can to support the end-users. After all, in a business setting, the end users are the ones who produce the true value of that business. IT people are just there to make it easier.
I think this attitude is seen here on slashdot a lot, I see posts by people who feel they are entitled to set policy because they can implement policy at the touch of a few buttons. But that's asinine, policy should be made by people paid to set policy. The IT person's job is to implement policy on a technological level.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Get rid of the people who are defensive about their work, and you'll solve the problem.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Just recompile the kernel! Piece of cake!
*THWACK*
Okay. Here's your 386 running Windows 3.1
"And this is what I mean: I'd really like to have the system before that."
*BEEP*
Here's your old Apple II.
Perhaps there are two issues conflicting here
(more than two, but I will limit my comments to
two).
You might have a bit of ego on the part of the
software developers. You have a sense of Just
Get the Darn Job Done on the part of the users.
I was a developer. I had to ego. I just had to
get my unique thing into the code. The feature
that is **ME**. The unique graphical icon,
screen, whatever that is uniquely mine.
I was also a user. I just had to get the job
done. To get the job done, I usualy needed
only the basics of the software tools at hand.
I only needed the fancy word process for the
same features that Notepad could have provided.
I have to confess that even when I make something
for myself, I can see the conflict within myself,
just the one person.
Mark
Cleara
gawd, do we have to do EVERYTHING?? :)
Don't blame the techies..... they're only as despicable as the car mechanic who throws random "auto-term" (for which no manual exists (get it auto, manual...)), or that goddamn waiter at the f**king french restaurants who turns his nose up when I try to pronounce something on the menu, or all those lawyers with their legalese ....
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
Yes, many computer products are hard to use, but in our corporate society, I don't understand why it is the developers who are getting the blame for that. Most software corporations strive to save money by doubling up on jobs and having people design the UI who are not skilled at it. Often it is the developers or marketing people, neither of who are trained in human interface skills.
Once senior management realize that they need skilled UI designers so that the end users don't get frustrated, then we will make progress. But as long as we live in a bottom-line society, we will continue to put out poortly designed software.
Now if only we could convince them to teach interpersonal skills in college. I mean come on, if you can teach an obscenely low level of math in college how hard can it be to teach interpersonal skills. However, interpersonal skills is one of those things that people like to claim can't be taught. I think it's something we need to get past. Practically anything can be taught, can't it?
When I was 17, I learned how to drive a car. There were 2 car types back then, automatic and stick shift, I learned them both. At the same time, I learned flash 3, motion tweening a little bit of actionscript (if thats what it was called back then). Today I can hardly belive Flash MX is made by the same company let alone the same product. A few years ago I started learning VB, now I can hardly get certification for it cause MS is pushing dotnet. Which i'm not to excited to learn cause its editor is so damn slow on my ancient 1ghz machine.
But I still drive around no problem.
Now I dont hate computers. I love it, but looking back, i'm not surprised at the other people who do hate it.
In software..
1) Corporations think it's a good idea to add more features to their software.
2) Corporations have no idea what people actually want to do with their software's new features.
3) Corporations fail to realize that what we often want are not new features, but actually smoother design, better ease of use, more speed, and more stability.
Thus, what we get is "bloatware" such as ICQ - where so many new "features" are added to the program that it becomes impossible to use and navigate even when you want to use the program for even the simplest functions. (When I got the latest version of ICQ it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to add a new contact by UIN#.) AIM is headed this way, too.
I can't stand Office XP because of all the stupid features you don't need.
Even Office 97 has a large plethora of thoroughly useless features.
Send To Routing Recipient, Send To Fax Recipient, Footnotes, Comments, Document Map, Field, Cross-Reference, Index & Tables, Insert Object, Insert Bookmark, Look Up Changes, Track Changes, Change Case, Style Gallery, Merge Documents, Letter Wizard, Formula
It gets worse as the version numbers get higher. Maybe what we want is more ease of use and less damn paperclip animations.
... entropy is getting the better of us. Have never been in a devshop where that wasn't the case. Most developers I've met have had the knowledge but most imho lack the discipline.
Always ask yourself this before you commit (to CVS): "Will this commit add value to the program?" - or have you introduced new weak ideas or hacked around to get a new feature introduced in a hurry. Abstractions live, details and entropy kill.
HCI - Human Computer Interaction.
It is a new major at such schools as CMU, Georgia Tech (the program I am in), UMich and a couple others. It addresses just this fact, that software is simply not made usable. Maybe it will be the up and coming craze, to "make software so that our mothers can use it"... or at least those of us in the major hope so.
So 20 years ago I would have had to pay more for an airline ticket than today, to fly to Washington, to by a copy of the WP, to read whatever this bozo has to say. Now I can do it sitting at my desk at the arse-end of the world withing seconds of him hitting the "publish" button. No progress or convenience there that I can see.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
Note however, that Fisher doesn't propose returning to his trusty Underwood typewriter to write his columns.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
In a few years those "HOT NEKKID TEENS" won't be so hot! (Of course there's always the Mature fetish crowd.)
I'll bet if the people who wrote MS Windows had to answer help desk calls, they wouldn't have changed the location of TCP/IP settings in every single operating system. I also like the quote "Techies, professors conclude, must act more like psychoanalysts; they must learn to "appreciate the difference between what people say and what they mean."" For example - "The CD-ROM won't read my CD" translates into "I keep putting the CD in upside-down" Or - "My Email program doesn't work" becomes "The voice in the computer says I don't need to dial an area code"
This frustration and hatred also applies to Free Software projects/products, probably even moreso.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
It's incidents like this that make me think it really is time to listen to the usability experts. Sure, the extremists we hear about seem to have some crazy ideas, but there must be some out there that have a clue about how we can make interfaces more usable, right?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Was anyone else reminded of that SNL skit with the Obnoxious tech-support guy? I can't remember the name, ah well.
I didn't see these until last year, but found them mildly amusing. Jackie Chan was funny as Burns' protege.
In one skit Burns said he was going to get his MCSE and get out of that [what looked to be an Apple] outfit. The MCSE, of course, is now part of the punchline.
(No, this is not a dig at competent MCSEs.)
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Ah... Mr. Fisher must also be using Gnome.
That is it, I am switching to Listerine
Nevertheless, nowadays we are seeing major innovation in OSes (e.g., Linux) and office suites (e.g., OpenOffice), and the experience of the end-user in these cases is improving rapidly. Installing and using Linux in 1997 was like pulling teeth compared to the polished installation and interfaces available today. And, by and large, it's still getting better.
To the extent that the gripes are justified, there is a great market opportunity -- an opportunity that will inevitably be filled. Don't like it? Start a company to fix it!
What bothers me most about this 'discussion' and others like it, is that it seems anxious to place blame on one 'side' or the other. it's not *US* vs *them*, really at all, and this kind of thing only makes the argument louder.
that said...the article seems to imply that it is on the 'techies' to adjust thier point of view, which is pure, pandering, horseshit. Why *shouldn't* perfectly (otherwise) competent adults be expected to learn a bit now and then, and adjust to new technology?
Anyway- if the new stuff sucks, blame the people who picked it out, and insisted on it, and bought it, rather then getting all catty with the poor schmuks who have to make it work and teach 'users' how it works.
pffffttt.
Skip "Breathe in, breathe out...the rest is easy"
People have mentioned the obvious: bugs, Microsoft, and bloatware, but another issue that should be considered is loss of control.
As companies centralize IT and "reign in" the freedom of the PC revolution, they force the users to standardize on a piece of software that has features the IT department likes. These features may be management capabilities that have no bearing on the capabilities the user wants. The users are then stuck with crummy software that can't be changed which doesn't do what they want.
I worked on large systems for large companies. However I never got to meet anyone that actually used the product. We were on the forth revision of software by the time I left.
I was basically the main coder. I was pretty good at my job, but I would get 100 page technical specs, 70 pages of which would describe how on the front page this dolphin would swim from one side to the other. On a company intranet. sigh.
Several years later I saw the said company at a careers fair. I mentioned that I wrote quite a lot of their intranet, and how it was doing. They said there were still many problems with it - and I wasn't surprised.
The trouble was that I had to go through my boss, who went through the company bosses, who went through the top level managers. The end users weren't consulted at all.
Also everyone wanted to see results _now_, requiring fast development.
Anyway, I've rambled enough.
At least in part, because they make more money each time they re-invent the wheel, and what's in their best interest is not in the users best interest.
With free software, it is just as difficult and technical - but long term standards are allowed to emerge and be built on, learnt slow or fast, used all or just some. You can form an education and a culture arround them, you can build learning, sharing, and application into that culture so that it becomes more and more second hand as society moves onto other things, and as those who really want to can specialize and grow as fast as their able to without artifical or closed limits.
The acceptance of closed software as normal commercial behavior has caused a lot of collateral damage, and I think this is one of the symptoms.
If i was an IT admin or some such i'd just give employees boxes w/ fluxbox and idesk, openoffice, and phoenix. 4 or 5 buttons on the desktop. That's it. Easier than a tv.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I don't see the point of the article, it seems this guy just got frustrated in his class about Outlook or something and decided to rant about it.
Then he wonders why techs can't improve things ? He didn't mention a single "advantage of the old system", that the new one took away. An advantage to him, could be a bug for another.. where does one draw the line ?.
What was the reason why the company decided to upgrade ? If the old system had so many advantages..
Overall he seems to negative and is just pissed he can't understand the new system.... trying to place the blame somewhere besides himself.
Also, could it have been that the instructors he had were not good ?.
PS: Like my english teacher would say, "show, don't tell".. he would have failed my senior year effective comp class if all his articles are so generic.
And they say the techies are the ones lacking communications skills? How about people ask for what they actually want; maybe they'll have a better chance of getting it that way...
From the article:
To overcome this cultural gap between techies and computer users, Mann concludes, tech folk "would need both technical and interpersonal skills."
She right. Me can't talk.
What short-sighted drivel. I despise the stereotype that IT people have no "personal" skills. In my experience, 9 times out of 10 the failure to learn a new system is laziness/stubborness on the learner's part.
It takes much longer to turn on your machine in the morning now than it did 20 years ago.
;)) and finally another floppy to load my document in. Faster, yeah right.
I don't know what kind of system this guy was using in 1983, but mine required one floppy to boot, one floppy to load the Word Processor (anyone remember WordStar, now that was a simple system
Techies, professors conclude, must act more like psychoanalysts; they must learn to "appreciate the difference between what people say and what they mean."
Actually, it sounds like techies are suppossed to be more like psychics than psychoanalysts.
In a study of 8,000 tech projects in businesses, only 16 percent of the new systems were deemed successes.
Maybe this because the techies gave the users what they wanted, instead of what they _said_ they wanted?
I don't know, you make the call.
Whereas Righteous Free Software programs like crontab and gnu make and grep always have intuitive, orthogonal systems that make sense at once!
Mind you, oddly enough I do find vi[m] extremely intuitive.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
From the article:
Techies, professors conclude, must act more like psychoanalysts; they must learn to "appreciate the difference between what people say and what they mean."
Or the userss could put forth some effort and actually try.
When ever I run in to people like this, it is because they don't care and/or don't try.
I Encrypt My IM's
if the OP (a journalist) doesn't like M-x trl-begin-entry (source here) maybe the OP can learn to instruct the machine more to his liking. (insert opportunistic teacher mantra here.)
Programs cost an awful lot of cash these days, and we the end user often get stuck with what should be (at best) a beta version. Let's see...interfaces programed by someone who will never use the software, the end of the printed manual, manuals (if they exist at all) written by someone who either a) has never seen the software or b) the programmer who won't use the software but knows it better than anyone else and oh its so simple a child could operate it. All of this BS boils down to somebody at the software company not doing their @$#^% job and we the end user get to pay for it--how's that for a start.
Sorry. POS software for a piece of lab equipment is not making me happy.
The first answer is simple. Ease of use and power are inversely proportional. If you increase ease of use you decrease power. A CLI with toos like grep is powerful, but harder to use than F3 in windows. You can sometimes get more power without losing ease of use, but only to a certain extent.
The second answer is that people fear computers. The tech industry on purpose or by accident has created the illusion in people's minds that computers are difficult to master, extremely complicated, and hard to learn. This is not the case. I tell people every day to build their own computers, and they have this fear they will mess it up, or that its difficult. In fact it is no more difficult that putting together a set of legos. Square peg and square hole. If people stop fearing computers and begin to believe they are simple, then people will have an easier time learning them.
The third problem is trainers. The method of teaching computers sucks. People learn processes, click this, click that, then click this. They don't know the meaing behind what they are doing. To use the old car analogy, they've reduced the number of controls in a car to steering wheel, two pedals, and stick. The driver doesn't have to know how the car works, because they can memorize what all the controls do, since there are few. In a computer it is impossible to reduce the number of controls to so few. So in order to make use of it, you have to know at least a little about how it works. The biggest thing people need to learn is file systems. We all know about the metaphors of desktops, files and folders. But common folk just don't get it. Because of this "easy to use" programs like MS Office become difficult. Trainers should teach people the parts of a computer, how they work, how their operating system works, and all the basic things that apply to everything they do on a computer. Once they comprehend this much, picking up a new system is not so difficult. Instead the trainers just say "click on the OK button in this box". If they don't know the meaning of this, they don't know what to do when something weird happens.
Summary
A)power or ease, can't have both
B)don't fear the reaper
C)learn the basics then the specifics
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
On the otherhand, I download a new Mozilla nightly build about once a week and the changes are so gradual that I rarely get thrown for a loop.
While with linux, I know I have the option of going with a distribution that I can manage myself more effectively than Redhat, outside the Linux world not many people have that luxury. Look at the hated Microsoft service packs. Look at people delaying upgrading their Macintosh OS. Look at people still using Windows 95.
As a user, I am happier with many small changes that are each easy to learn and deal with than a group of large changes that catapult me into the middle of the lake.
It doesn't matter if they hate us. Soon, none of us will be programmers (that's what indians are for) and they'll just have to hate us while we flip burgers in the "Service" economy. Thanks a bunch, repuglicans!
I've had a completely different experience with the IT department where I used to work. We had an open forum where we could suggest improvements in the software and report any bugs and they were fixed reasonably quickly. The software did most of the work for you. All of this made it really easy to sell pears to rich people.
My Blog
As an "aspiring" software developer I've run into quite a few applications that have seemed very poorly written.
.com boom screwed the computer industry in many ways. One of the biggest was the shortage of programmers who have actually had a degree and know all the important theory behind software development that the "Teach yourself X in 30 days" book will never cover.
One of my pet peeves is a system the Pro A/V Company I work for uses to track rentals and equipment inventory. Not to be mean but the thing looks and acts like it was written by someone who had an intro VB5 class and decided they were a professionally programmer. The real big downside is we have not been able to find anything that functions any better than our current setup.
I get the feeling a lot of the time that the
Right now the employment trend is showing this. I have quite a few friends who decided to for-go College to teach them selves a bit of C++, VB or web development and go get hired by some company. It worked out well for a few years but now almost all of them are having problems. Talking with a few people, they and other they know who have similar experience are finding themselves being fired in favor of a college educated developer who also has some experience from doing student work somewhere.
The other advantage to the employer is a small team of developers who know how to write well documented extendable code can be much more efficient than a whole room full of people who can just get stuff done fast but maybe not right.
Another side of it is no matter what we want to think computing is still a very young industry. How many years have the majority of businesses in the US had computers? What experience as a developer can someone really pull on when we really don't have more than two generations of people who have done this type of work? Ignoring the obvious differences in complexities with many other industries they didn't get off to the greatest start either. The automobile took many years of experience with simple engines to get something that "worked" and to get to where we are today has taken even longer.
Time and experience are the only real answer to the problem. I don't see much of a way around that.
You've got to be kidding right? Footnotes are essential for scholarly work...
_CMK
Bad spellers of the world untie!
People are missing the point of his column.
Having just sat through a 2 hour meeting with a salesperson featuring yet another new vertical application for the financial service industry, I have to say it's not just MSOffice or XP that's the demon.
Most new software for specialized markets is written in Visual C++ and is trying to ape windows 2K or Windows 2000 look and integrate with MSOffice on some level. The result? Overly busy apps that can break in numerous ways, with way too many controls, tabs and windows on the screen & counter-intuitive menus, poor keystroke bindings.
It's not the case that the users are stupid. The GUI metaphors designed for Outlook or Word quickly break if they get too complex...
That's why the writer of the article is right to feel nostalgic for his application 2 versions ago with a boxy DOS interface and fast key bindings.
Ahh! Success! An easy to use system at last!
(I really did like the Apple II. Especially the IIGS. Macintosh just about caught up in System 8.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
While I agree that these isn't enough communication between what users want and what the producer is making, I think the larger issue is of time.
Software schedules are very hard to create, and even when they are all laid out, they will change, but not often is the final date of the project allowed to move, or move much. I think we all need to realize that sometimes it's better to let the project finish on it's own then before it's time. I personally could use some more time on my part of my project for things that were completely unforeseeable.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
The computer industry defies the pattern of all previous technological revolutions, making little or no progress toward convenience. It takes much longer to turn on your machine in the morning now than it did 20 years ago.
20 years ago, most computers didn't have a graphical OS like Windows, Mac or X-Windows and either booted from a floppy or straight to a command prompt. Assuming he was even remotely familiar with the latter, would it not be concievable -if he was given greater itellectual prowess than a bowl of cottage cheese, as he so claims- that he could learn a new version of a software with a GUI without the whinning?
in a conversation with a co-worker; the rhetorical question - what is the function of the IT department anyway?
A: They observe you carefully and determine whether you're doing your job. Then they try to find some rule or regulation about the machine or network they control, that you use, that will prevent you from doing your job. Then they enforce it.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
From what I have seen, not having the IT staff train all the employees is a good to avoid friction between IT and the other departments. Have IT train a few enthusiastic and knowledgable non-IT people, and then have those people go out and train the rest of the employees. The teachers will be able to sympathize more with regular employees, and the regular employees will look at the teachers with more respect than if they were IT.
It seems a lot of people posting thus far are of the opinion that the only thing people ever use is Microsoft Word.
At every company I have worked for, there has been SOME proprietary piece of software in use that doesn't necessarily come right off a shelf. Sometimes this software is developed in-house, and sometimes by a team of consultants. In either case, every now and then somebody gets a bug up their ass to upgrade everything. In my current position, we are converting a Windows client/server app into a web-based app. I don't know all the reasons, but I'm getting paid for it, so that's enough for me.
In any case, I think the biggest complaint is with THOSE kinds of applications (think bank teller software!) and operating systems. I don't think most people would even notice if you upgraded Office 2K to Office XP, even under their noses. But if you upgrade(*) Win 2K to Win XP you'd better get out the flame-retardant underwear.
(*) 'upgrade' is meant in the loosest sense of the word here.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Or at least -part- of the source of the problem is that nobody wants to improve the old stuff. They just want to start all over again!
How many of you have worked in a software development shop? Lots, I bet. And how old was the oldest software development project that you'd keep incrementally upgrading? In my experience in the software world, it's not very old. There'd be a first release, some updates, a second version that's very much like the first version, only nicer. Maybe there's a third version.... This goes on for a couple of years, probably (which, in the real world, is a VERY short time).
Pretty soon, though, Marketing starts demanding a vast reworking. They're just not selling enough of the boxes. You need to do something radical, because the version they've got works nicely so the customers have no real reason to upgrade. So what do you do? You rebuild it completely from scratch in a whole new way -- so that it's completely different from the last version!
The whole problem is that the industry doesn't WANT to converge on a nice working model that you can understand and be happy with for a long time, because then you'd never buy any more! It's not like a car, where it wears out after a few hundred thousand kilometers. The software industry has to keep switching year after year in order to get the customers to keep following and keep buying so the cashflow stays high.
Also, if they converged on something and stayed with it for a while, it wouldn't be long until all the file-importing filters worked pretty much perfectly, and all the difficult features had been reversed engineered, and so on -- so now the competition pretty much puts out exactly as good a product as the original maker. We can't have that now, can we? The easiest way to do this is to make yourself a moving target, and to drag all the customers kicking and screaming along with you.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
Anyone can state the problem.
How about a solution?
That few percent that were deemed a success; what was different? What should the teeming masses attempt to emulate? Why?
I can see this with Windows XP and Office XP. Windows 98 & 2k do pretty much everything XP does without the snazz or bloat.
OpenOffice does everything I want it to as well, and it's like a free version of older Office
C'est la vie...
AS A USER, I personally consider a product mature (or stable, take your pick, I just want to get a message across) when itss user interface is either final or evolves slightly, and any other evolution is behind-the-scenes, such: as faster, more compatibility, less errors, easier to download and install, lesser requirements (as opposed to higher), and the such.
If you keep changing the user interface how can the product ever become mature? If a product does not reach maturity, how can users ever feel comfortable about it?
If certain clients have asked for certain features that the majority of clients won't use, why not tier it and provide a different edition for such? Or just plain add them in non-intrusive ways.
It's because I'm way too smart... te hee hee hee...
If the users figured out the software I'd be out of a job, I wish there was a patch/upgrade every day!
Yeah, For one thing I can't stand the jargon that Microsoft comes up with every two years or so. Especially all those damned acronyms. What in the hell is COM supposed to be anyway and what's the different from .NET? $1500?
I have been involved with building apps for corporate intranets, and I have seen project budgets slashed to ribbons on every one of them. No money alloted for testing, proper architecture,documentation or a proper interview process with users.
The result is buggy, undocumented, code unsuitable for the poor sod stuck using the app.
Companies just aren't willing to pay for a properly engineered system any more. We hand them a proposal, and all non-functionality related items are dropped. It's as simple as that.
BTW this is my first AC post.
It takes much longer to turn on your machine in the morning now than it did 20 years ago.
Could someone send him a computer with a cassette tape floppy? I'll kick in $5 for it.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
I've been an "IT" person for about 10 years now. Frankly i find most systems frustrating and much of it just plain useless. I get paid to install and manage useless frustrating systems. I am NOT being paid by "techies" i am being paid by fucking morons that have been sold a dream. Morons that will conclude i don't know what i am talking about or doing unless i spend 90 % of my day confusing the shit out of them and the other %10 making sure i am one up on the buzz notions. If this Washington Post moron wants to use his fucking 8086 to run dos edit then he should complain to his Pimp.. And complain about his pimp. Not the other whores in his string. They are just a bunch of bitches like him. Sucking cock for money. Pretending to be useful so they can collect their beer money without to much humiliation.
They're on to us! Hide all the evidence that we've been deliberately writing confusing software and in an effort to become their techie masters!
Remember: You have no idea what they are talking about and we never had this conversation.
I'm one of those software instructors who provides the training on the huge custom software package to the customer.
Typically when I arrive on site to show the customers the software we just spent a year creating for them, (**after the customer signs off on the requirements**) and I show them some super wham-o-dyne feature that is not included in the base package, I usuallyt get one of these responses...
1. (90% of the time) What a stupid feature. Why do we have that? Does anyone on earth use this feature?
Typical answer: No one else has it but you, your firm asked for it, and we spent about a jillion hours of developer time working it in and testing it even though the only person on Earth who thought it was a good idea was your project manager.
2. (10% of the time) What an excellent feature! I'll really use that. It will make my job easier. I'm glad we have this super wham-o-dyne feature.
I've seen it again and again. Most of the software ends up confusing users and being far too complicated because a few people insist on adding bizarre stuff to the base package.
I've seen the same thing in some open-source projects too, where the main developer can't resolve (or doesn't want to resolve) a dispute between two other coders, so they add in "options" so everyone can be happy. But it sometimes ands up making the final product a mess.
And as for spending enormous amounts of time in training on the new computer systems, I have to say that many times customers demand it.
If a customer lays down a lot of money for a custom software package, they simply expect an instructor to appear on site, in a tie, wielding donuts and coffee and lunches. We have CBTs that take about 2 hours and cost virtually nothing and cover the base package really well, but customers would rather have half thier staff sit around in a class room for two days instead. For non-technical personnel especially, they just demand that level of service if it's needed or not. So at least in my case, I can't take the blame for forcing the end users to sit through training! Guilt no more!
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
The basic argument of the article is that due to "techies" being analytical and "users" being intuitive that the techie is not anticipating what the user needs. Maybe this seems to be the case from the perspective of the perplexed user, but it quite simply is not so. How many young children are near experts with their family computers while their parents haven't a clue. The fact of the matter is that most computer technology, including most software, is quite intuitive. Otherwise children would not have such an easy time picking it up without any training. The problem lies in how the "users" have trained themselves. As we grow up, the technology of the time is introduced to us and we implicitly trust it, and learn to understand it. But most people do not do the same thing with technology that develops as we grow older. How many of us have grandparents that can not set the clock on a VCR? The users just need to learn to trust the technology and learn how to interface with it. They are probably never going to understand the underlying technology, and noone should expect them to. Just as I am never going to get into the particulars of in depth news reporting (which this guy sure seems good at), but I obviously can interface with it, ie. read the article.
Two questions (think of it as a mini Ask /. with a follow up)
Where is everyone today? Did I miss something? And don't tell me there was another shuttle crash or war or something...
Your Rights Online: Microsoft, Others, File "Stealth" Patents 1 of 7 comments
Science: Factoring Out Common Genes To Find Unknown Ones 1 of 5 comments
Your Rights Online: Acacia Climbing the Food Chain 14 of 127 comments
Science: Scientists Grow Pig's Heart On Sheep's Neck 6 of 33 comments
Apple: Six Tips for Homemade "Dot Mac" Servers 7 of 15 comments
Developers: New info on IBM's Power5 chip (G5's) 7 of 18 comments
Seriously...That whole pig on a neck thing was too cool.
Blarf.
Because theres some jackass with an office and a budget, and if he doesn't spend like a madman he'll be "downsized" or "demoted".
So he's got to spend and Microsoft loves these guys, they ramp out new software so these people can pay them money and get paid themselves.
And if the guy with the budget doesn't want to upgrade from Win 2K to XP, then third-party vendors get into the act, with bug fixes that are in the new version that only works with XP or 2000 Server.
If NT 4 SP6 or the rumored SP7 had USB support loads of places would have sat there and eventually the users would have figured it out.
The short answer seems to be "get a mac". Ease of use, standard ways of doing things, tendency to failsafe even if it wont let you eject the disk, and desscriptive error messages are the hallmarks of mac's human interface. even the computers cost more because in part they have higher standard for fabrication and higher level of standard features (fire wire, ethernet) so the software and users can count on commonality in operation and fewer options to choose from.
microsoft on the otherhand has won the market by doing exactly the opposite. Proliferation of features. Constantly changing features. This permits both the embrace-and-extend and the planned obsolescene (word 5 cant open word 6). It also muddies the waters so much thet people give up any buy the product with the most features rather than the product that integrates its features the best. And it lets them release code as they go, no need to plan ahead, just slam out the next feature.
This is not an isolated effect. its well documented in economics theory under the rubric "bad apples drive out the good". meaning when the buyer has insuffient information to make a comparison between good and bad before the purchase, then it becomes a race to the bottom, or a race for irrelevant aspects that a buyer can judge.
I am reminded of Dilbert Interviewing the elbonians for iso9000 compliance with a documented software development feature:
Dilbert: so what is your process for code development?
Elbonian1: We hold a village meeting and boast of our skill
and curse the devil spawned end user.
Elbonian2: sometime we juggle
Elbonian1: Then we slam out some code and fo roller skating
The amazing part is that as long as they always follow their process they are ISO 9000 level 2 compliant. They might even generate uniformly better code than someone without a process.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
There is plenty of evidence in IT history to support this, but it is not that easy to cast such a blanket observation. I also feel I have seen plenty of evidence of usability specialists designing over technical user interfaces.
One phenomena that has not been adequately researched is the user interfaces designed by the developer/techies themselves. I know a lot of people are going to say this is the problem, but I ask this question, why is it that of the many web sites out there, the ones that are designed by developer/geek/hackers, the blogs, etc, these seem to have much more clean, elegant and easy to understand functionality than the majority of other sites? I know this is an over generalisation, but I do feel there is a strong point here.
Also, I could go on and on about how developers have been too typecast in this position. How many of us have told management and business analysts of the problems inherent in changing the product, but you learn to keep your mouth shut if you want your job. Your opinion is not wanted, just shut up and sit in the corner and code.
If you can sell a new version of the product, with the training, this is how you make money. Without the upgrade path, there is no future in normal commercial software. You have to produce product, which requires new marketable features. And the shit comes back on the developer, who is often the one person who is very aware of the problems with this whole process.
I could write essays about all this... but that is for another place and time.
Take anyone off their current WinXP/P4 1GHz+ box and put them back on a 33MHz 486 running DOS or Windows 3.11 and force them to use it to do work for a week. Not even anything involving networking or receiving files from outside sources, just let them create a few Office documents and try to work with them. At the end of the week, ask them whether or not they still miss the "good old days". I'll bet anything they'll shut up.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
'techie masters' hate users
Once upon a time, techies told us that this was only a passing phase, that their products were just too complicated to have simple on-off switches like a TV. But while the machines grow quicker and fancier, they improve hardly at all in ease of use. The first computer system I was trained in 22 years ago came with two pages of instructions. Yesterday, I was handed a 53-page binder. What was it...a typewriter?
A lot of the time, I'd side with the Lusers on this! I don't need the hassle of doing the software "refresh", training the Lusers and dealing with their frustration. I'd rather they stuck with the old stuff too!
The real culprit (besides publishers) are the managers who have just enough tech knowledge to be dangerous. At my last employer, the techies were always in favor of avoiding unnecessary upgrades, but certain wannabe-techie managers would always override us 'cuz they wanted the latest and greatest, neato-keen cutting edge technology.
When the general Luser population found out about the refresh, they'd whine, p1ss and moan -- and blame I.T. staff, rather than the managers who overrode us. It was a no-win situation.
I'm an assistant in a basic computer science class (Word and Excel stuff), and 97% of the people in there have absolutely no common sense whatsoever.
This is what my time consists of:
Student: How do I format these cells to money format?
Me: Format up at the top, then to cells.
--5 minutes later--
Student: How do I change this number to have a comma?
Me: Go to hell.
Student: What?
Me: Oh.. format/cells.
I can't even imagine a program these people wouldn't have trouble with.
As much as i've personally spearheaded various upgrades throughout my time working with computers this article raises a very interesting point.
I can't remember how many times I have had users almost beg me not to do upgrades. It is not as if they didn't care about security concerns or the latest greatest version of the software, it's the trouble of having to re learn how to use the software. My most recent experience was with Quick-books Pro for Macintosh. The small business I worked for had spent approximately 3 years working with a copy of Quick-books Pro 4.0. All the inventory and accounting information had been tweaked to suit this particular business and for the most part everything worked as it should have. From my perspective this outdated copy of Quick-books was a constant thorn in my side. It had numerous bugs and the user interface was awful. Well, one week ago I got a call from the bookkeeper of the business. She was delighted to hear that Inuit had released a copy of Quick-books for OSX! This shocked and surprised me as I was under the understanding that Inuit wasn't going to release any more copies for the mac (not enough demand the phone rep told me). As I headed back into the shop to help do the upgrade I had visions of a improved user interface complete with networking support. To make a long story short they didn't change much. In fact they managed to remove some of the features (perhaps bugs) that my client had come to use quite frequently. The toolbar comes to mind. In the older version of Quick-book Pro the toolbar had about 15 or twenty buttons with icons. It could be moved all around the screen and even disabled if needed. The best part was the ability to add almost any report to it. The owner and bookkeeper of the company had become very used to opening the pending sales report from the toolbar. The new version changed that, you could no longer add reports to the toolbar. You where even limited to less spaces in the toolbar than the older version! After spending a few more minutes working with the newer version I discovered quite a few bugs that where still present. This was definitely not an improvement.
I think this outlines one of the basic problems that programers have in relation to their users. What is obvious to the programer or even the power user is not obvious to the end user. For programer the task up dialing up is as simple as finding the ppp program and telling it to dial. For the end user this logical progression of steps isn't so obvious. Why do they need to know what a dialer is? Why not have the system just work as expected. I find it hard to come up with concrete examples of this problem because most every system I work with is logically laid out. For the client that I work with it is not. He is a mechanic and what is logical for me isn't logical for him.
In my most humble of opinions apple has made great progress in this regard. They have tried to keep their interface consistent across many changes in the underlying operating system. Even when they made drastic changes to their system as in the case of OS-X the user interface was still quite the same. However small things did change. Once again from a computer users perspective moving the status icon for the dialer to the upper right hand corner isn't a big deal. But for my client it is just one more annoying thing he is going to have to relearn.
Computers are tools. I feel that the industry sometimes forgets that with every change we make in the name of progress. I for one love having a updated system and latest technology but for my mechanic friend a simple consistent system is the most valuable asset.
He doesn't know what he wants. He didn't cite one specific gripe or even a trend. All he said was "new software sucks", simply because he was used to the old stuff. May as well say "change sucks". Some reputable theories of the universe say that change is the only constant.
That aside, yes, there's a personality/approach gap between those making the software and those using it. Most frustrating are the multitudes whose approach is so crippled that to their questions I deliver the pithy universal advice "try it and see".
Start Running Better Polls
I don't care if they hate me.. so long as they fear me...
I'd take the Apple II for word processing if it spell-checked and printed to a laser.
No fan and they run for decades.
I know of some K-12s that use them for 1-3 keyboarding and little games and the computers have run since the day they were installed. Expect when the janitors unplug them without turning them off in the summer when it comes time to clean the rooms.
If I buy a P4 Dell tomarrow and plug it in, will it be running in 2013?
An Apple II or a 386 AST will run non-stop for 10, 15, 20 years.
I get pretty sick of these stories. I certainly understand that there's a lot of bad software and user interfaces out there, but I'm aware of it, and I put a huge amount of effort into designing interfaces to be intuitive to whoever's going to use the system.
However, here's how my projects go: we get a contract in mid-January to write a custom software application. It has to be completed by, say, May 1st, because that's what our sales dept. sold them. They never asked an engineer how long it would take, they just promised the moon to get the contract. Then, we write a functional specification, and give it to the customer for review. We need to get it reviewed and signed before we can move forward, but for some reason, my contact with the customer doesn't have the authority to sign anything. Not only that, it goes through countless revisions as the customer finally realizes they don't actually want what we sold them. Of course, the deadline of May 1st never changes, so by the time the functional spec is approved, it's April 25th, we've had to start writing the application without a fully approved functional spec, and we've got a week to finish writing, testing, and debuging the application, so no matter what, we're going to deliver late and overbudget.
That's when your boss comes by, shows you the budget numbers for the project and says, "We can't afford any more time on this project, so just do whatever it takes to make it work." Making it work does not mean spending hours designing and revising user interfaces to make them intuitive. I hate it, but that's why software interfaces aren't intuitive.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Stop the whining and learn to use the god damn things... To quote one of my users... "If I wanted to LEARN how to do this why did I buy a really expensive software app to do it for me?" Me, i was dumbfounded by such an honest explanation of what it means to be a user. If you make a big mistake with our program via GIGO and no one in your company catches it...stuff can literally blow up. Obviously it's not worth the user's time to learn to use the tool.
In Office XP, the software installs YOU.
... people could actually just say what they mean! Seriously, people, this isn't rocket-science; if you can't communicate clearly, what use are you to anyone?
I once worked for a project manager whose favorite saying was "but that's what I said", when, in fact, what he had said was often the exact opposite.
In my experience of working with users, developers, and computer upgrades, there are several points of failure.
The first comes from the worst written specs by the marketing boys. They know people want features and they even have a nifty little list. Unfortunately, they have no concept about how these features work together and less about how those changes will affect the underlying structure.
The second comes from a general lack of documentation by programmers. I lost count of the number of times I've heard "I'm a programmer. I don't write documentation." It's frustrating because believe it or not, from generation one to generation two of a program, usually at least 50% of the core people have moved on. Lack of documentation means that messages and features are ignored, and out pop the strangest of messages later on, which result in even more time taken up by QA, if QA even exists.
Then there's all the fun of the usability testing people who don't seem to understand that they should weight their results according to how many people will be upgrading versus how many people will be coming new to the system. I've found that new users of a program have less difficulty with new versions than those upgrading, primarily because the usability people are assuming clueless users. Having a clue, it seems, is not good for new versions, unless those new versions still hold old features which no one included documentation for in the new version. (Case in point - old DOS commands worked much better than the GUI for SO many file utilities in Win 98, but MS didn't provide end users with such documentation.)
Anyway, if someone needs help on understanding this stuff for their project, I'm free for consulting. I could use the money, being unemployed and all.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Do you know why a toaster has, like, two buttons? Because it toasts things and that's it.
Think about it.
I don't consider myself a normal techie. I am outgoing, lots of friends, can code when I need to, but I am a BA. It is my observation that no matter how much I try to pull from users with screen mockups, process flowcharts, prototyps, etc., meetings, roleplays, whatever...always, always something gets missed.
Well you might say then: Hey you didn't do a good job gathering requirements then, good requirements gathering will always pull out everything that's needed. Really...How many of you have ever delivered a product of sufficient complexity to an internal customer who was hostile to begin with that totally met the clients "internalized" objectives. I'm not talking about what you wrote in your requirements, I'm talking about what you delivered and the impression your internal client was that you are a god because you helped them so much. My thought is maybe a handful of people on here which gets me to my point.
Why is it so difficult to articulate what you want. Why is it so hard to say this should happen and this should happen. I can deal with execs and grandiose visions of what business process will be changed and revolutionized, however, I have issues with people that can't explain what they do on a day-to-day basis. A happens, then B occurs, and you should do C when B happens. Is that so incredibly difficult to answer?
Don't get me started on when they out and out just don't tell you something purposefully until right when you deliver the product based on the users expectations. Oh BTW, in order to calculate A you have to have X but we didn't tell you that because we didn't feel you needed to know coming from the person who you begged and pleaded with to get any information out of and wouldn't cooperate.
Yes, I am bitter right now.
My email's still down.
/ I'm not starting a flame war. Some users need to be shot. The following is personal and the way I do business. Take, leave it, ignore it, it's just my opinion / I'm a developer. I'm also an end user of systems I didn't develop. I don't work for IT but the engineering group in a medical manufacturing plant. I used to be a med tech and am a chemist by training. I've been (and am still) the victim of bad design. I pledge to my users I'll give them what they want so they can actually do work. The author is bang on. It's not about specs, it's not about stupid users. It's about a gap in language and understanding. It's not about techies vs the unwashed. It's about finance people using one word to describe something they do that sounds like a regular old word to the designer but has a completly different meaning to the finance person. These kinds of misunderstandings lead me down a lot of dead ends until I figured out I really REALLY had to listen and UNDERSTAND what people were saying. Sit with them for a day. Watch what they DO for a living. Find the pain in their work life and ask them how they might want the problem fixed. It's about including the right set of people on the design team. It's about being willing to listen to, no ask for, complaints about the design. If they're not complaining, they don't care and have given up on the app and you can bet it is a piece of garbage. If an app isn't used, or is used badly, it's the designers fault, not the end user. You want to see crappy design? Just look at what some cash register systems, with all the cool gui's and flashy colors, make the user go through to enter an order. BAD DESIGN not stupid users. The poster suggesting the game model is also dead on track. You have to learn to see the world, on the tube, from the user's standpoint. It's not a database table or view, it's a form or a document, or some other construct that makes sense to the user. The user's not stupid, YOU don't understand and need to learn what the user's world is all about. The artilce is NOT about Word. It's about financial systems, inventory systems, newpaper editing systems (which usually are more closely aligned to CAD/CAM systems than word processors), it's about CAD systems. Anybody actually try and use Oracle business systems? It sucks and you need some techie in a back room to find the right tool for the thing you're trying to do. Heck, with Oracle Discoverer, you can generate reports that are wrong if you just happen to pick a field with the right name from the wrong table (even though the table sounds right). Does that make any sense? Should you have to have a degree in SQL to figure out a business problem? Listen to your users, give them what they want, make sure it does what they need, and you will be a god in their eyes. If you keep blaming the stupid user for being stupid, well, IT can be outsourced...
..idea, version change wizards. Say ya got "work from the office" version some number, the software company "upgrades" it. When you boot up, there's an obvious button that will walk the luser through what it USED to look like and what it did back then, THEN it goes on to the "new and improved" version. At least that would give the luser a point of familiar reference for each feature change that occurred.
Users aren't the only ones that face this. It can be said of almost all software, including languages and OSs.
I'll grant that C was a true improvement over assembler, and that Java is the cream of the crop of the family that includes things like Visual Basic and Perl and C# (no, I'm not trolling the Java fans - none of those are appropriate for an ethernet card driver) but will we really be unable to live without Java++ or C++++ or whatever .NET is going to morph into next? Of course not, if only because that's all the latest wave of low-cost developer resources fresh out of college are being taught. They sure don't seem to know a lick of C or x86 assembler these days.
"Advances" such as C# are not technical advances, they're market-domination techniques. Keep that in mind when your favorite new language of today starts to phase out five years from now and is replaced by something that has the ultimate goal of producing essentially the same machine instructions that C did ten years ago.
The unwavering constant in my world of IT consultation work is the assured shittiness of the Customer's line-of-business application. Either it's an off-the-shelf app. that they're pushing beyond its functional limitations, or it's some home-grown bag of dung that coddles their entrenched antique business processes and reeks of inconsistent user interface, poor or completely lacking forethought in design, and lamentable "technologies" (everybody say "toolbars of icons with no tooltips and no menus", "two digit decimal date fields" and "shared file database"). In the end, it really doesn't matter how they've chosen their IT fate, it always ends in everybody bitching about how bad it all is!
The idea of defining requirements and selecting off-the-shelf packages based on those requirements seems to be completely foreign to non-technical users ("I have three (3) kids and a dog-- I think that two-seater little red convertible sportscar will make a good family car!"). Of course, software marketing would have you believe that their products will allow you to travel backwards in time and transmute gold from pocket lint, as long as you keep up on your "maintenance agreement".
On the "internally developed" side, the failings I see almost always involve an inability for a development group to shut the fuck up about their fucking "technology" and learn about the users' BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS! They users aren't going to get any benefit from your buzzword-fortified J2EE-compliant mobile wireless XML fibre-channel attached pneumatic Bluetooth ass-rampager if they never USE the damned thing because it doesn't satisfy any of their business requirements.
We don't have the fucking computers in the business because we just want to have computers! We are here to make fucking money, and the computers are tools to help us.
Doesn't really matter much to me, though... They'll all still need switches, routers, and infrastructure gear, whether they ever get it together or not... *smile*
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Sounds like a problem of misapplied technology, not technology itself. When purchasing new gear, always - ALWAYS - ask yourself why. "Because it's cool" can work as an answer, if it will be sufficiently cool to everyone you expect to use what you buy, especially if you intend to be the sole user of your copy. But a corporate purchaser or a manager has a duty to think of the real needs and desires of the employees who will be using the system. If the new software will not wind up boosting productivity significantly, it's probably not worth purchasing at any price. (And if it really was boosting productivity significantly, the employees would notice their jobs get significantly easier. Since they don't, we can conclude that the software is not accomplishing this function, and therefore probably should not have been purchased.)
That said, it's really too bad that IP laws, perceived market pressures, and the still primitive (compared to what they could be with a lot more development) state of search engines make it usually more worthwhile, from a view of legal risk (first two factors) and time (third factor), to rebuild things from scratch than to improve on what others have built. (Open source being an
exception for the legal risk part, though finding exactly the widget you need, if it's not an extremely popular widget, can take longer than to write it yourself even if all such widgets are clearly in the public domain once you find them.)
Or maybe the problem is with increasingly lazy (or just spending too much energy on politics and/or on gaining and guarding the fruits of their corruption) "managers" who fail to gather clear requirements that accurately represent the users' needs and desires - often including, but left unstated and untested except by the users (and then only after the system is released), that the system allow users to accomplish their tasks quickly and efficiently.
Or maybe the problem is with an increasingly lower expected mental effort from users, mirroring the decline in American education noted over the past few decades. What serious company, back in the era of Rosie the Riveter, would dare allow their senior marketing folk to spout "math is haaard" (implication: too hard to even usefully attempt the basics of) as if it were true, to say nothing of sincerely believe it? (As opposed to, say, "I'm not the sharpest at maths, but if I have to add two plus two, then by gum, I'll learn how to add two plus two".*) Add to this the increasing amount of things that computers have been expected to do since then (for instance, a 53 page manual to document what would have taken 100 devices, and thus 100 * 2 page manuals).
Or maybe this has all been said too many times before.
*...just noticed something. Some people define humanity, as opposed to the qualities possessed by all non-human living things, in part as the ability to think and learn, at least at a much higher level. (A very bright ape can slowly learn sign language. We can sing - badly, sometimes; write poems; discuss abstract theories; and even pun.) If the very act of learning is, itself, defined as something the majority of human beings no longer wish to do, does that confer on them a certain inhumanity? At what point do they dumb themselves down to mere beasts, no morally different than a wild boar that may be shot for inconveniencing a farmer?
I'm not sure if I like where that thought is headed. And yet, if one considers why animals are treated as animals while humans deserve more humane treatment, it seems to make sense....
Once upon a time there was twm. Once I'd learned how to configure it, they brought out fvwm. Great! Even more customization features! Then there was the wretched mess called fvwm2, with its Windows95 wannabe look-and-feel, followed shortly thereafter with Enlightenment. Wasn't E so cool? You could pixmap everything, and rxvt could do transparent backgrounds. Far out! Only trouble of course was that it was a CPU killer and ground my box to a halt. So I switched to Afterstep. Nice and clean and minimalist. Then WindowMaker (still my favourite), with the clip, and easy keybindings for jumping straight to the virtual desktop of your choice. Then E made a short-lived comeback, only to be boondoggled by sawmill. Or was it sawfish? By then I was so window-manager punch drunk that in a fit of insanity I went back to twm, and then WMaker again. Wait! what's this? metacity? (Somebody please explain to me how I can force new Mozilla instances to appear on workspace 3 and new Evolution instances on wsp 4-- oops, did I just mention two more products that were total rewrites over previously functional products?).
Every new window manager claims lightweight!, from scratch! with new uber-cool foo-controls and bar-widgets (not to mention antialiased wysiwyg thingys).
Now, don't get me wrong, only hardcore l33t h4x0rs still use twm, but clearly the commercial software industry isn't the only place that suffers from reinventing the wheel and forcing the user to learn about its fancy new gearshift.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
I wonder if user experience is damaged by too many features (to sell more software) and rewriting software methods (to evade copyright descriptions).
If people were just allowed to make helpful software if they wanted to, as they wanted to would this change/improve?
I think its probably the biggest challenge for programming. Is there a best approach from the end users perspective?
Bo
You know why users hate the products? Because the wrong people code the wrong things.
Java and ASP.NET and all those other shitty RAD environments are paying the most (for some strange reason), when that's work that can be done by any highschool kid.
What we really need is a COMMON LOOK AND FEEL! That way, kids not intelligent enough to get into Comp Sci at a University level, could still take a college-level course on the implementation. That would free up the real math-savvy PROGRAMMERS to actually code the backends, network protocols, etc.
Until this happens, software development isn't an industry worth getting in to. I was coding for 8 years before I even went to University, and achieved a lot of skill. I enjoyed the problem-solving aspect of it. However, at University, I was met by hundreds of kids who were "in it for the money" and who had literally never coded in anything deeper than VB.
You know, I haven't had Windows on my computer for a year. BUT they have that common look and feel. Interface designers have been telling us this for years.
a bad attitude like the one in the article would get you replaced. Living is all about how you deal with change. Gone are the days that you can get thru 40 years in the same job without learning any new skills. If you resent that, and dream of spending the rest of your life growing old doing exactly the same meaningless thing, then 1. go work for the US government, 2. Go work in Accounts Payable for Kaiser Permanente, 3. retire already or 4. just fucking die and stop wasting the air the rest of us need to breathe.
I agree that there is poorly designed software available. I will stipulate that I have no knowledge of the particular software system that Mr. Fisher has been required to use. But his "oh poor me, I can't learn to use this tool" plea for sympathy falls on deaf ears (blind foveae?). If Marc (he's probably french, which explains his sissy whine) resents the actual design or the functionality of the software he has to use, he could have gotten involved with the team at his company that either designs requirements or selects a particular system after one of the PREVIOUS FOUR TIMES this has happened. But no, he has been content to sit on his fat cheese-eating ass and gripe about it after the fact.
If I were on the other side of this relationship, I, too, would find enormous joy in seeing the arrogant reduced to carping simpletons.
I think this puts his attitude into perspective- this isn't about the software, it's about power. Marc resents that someone, somewhere, had the power to shake his tiny world a little bit without asking his permission first. And _that_ is a very very American attitude.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Sigh, yet another rant at "techies", and yet another reenforcement of the stupid stereotype of the short fat nerd who cannot speak two words without stammering and blushing. When will people understand that we are *people* just like them?
I (a techie) was once told I could not possibly understand what the people in company 'H' were doing, because I was 'a techie'. The fact that I had just finished writing major company-supporting software for that company, and could have made a bloody good stab at *any* of the work done in that company, didn't matter - I was a techie, and therefore incapable of human interaction or understanding *anything* outside computers.
And guess what? It pisses me off, just like it would piss any of these bright, extrovert, soft, sensitive, interactive, 'normal' people off!
I'd be the first to admit that software is often over-complicated. This journalist is complaining about computer training; I would hazard a guess he is using some sort of word processing or possibly DTP software. If it is as I suspect, before going off on his ranting, he might have considered that his department definitely had the option of buying a very cheap, very simple word processor. You do not need Office XP to write an article or two - notepad suffices! So are the techies really to blame? Or does the fault lie with the person or group who decided to buy the wrong software?
As for his attitude towards those poor people trying to teach him something useful: if people treat me as hostile as he describes, I go back to my office and tell my boss to send somebody else. That's because I'm totally sick of being called socially inapt *because* I understand computers.
Seems like upgrading for the sake of upgrading. At my college, right now all the old PII class machines are being replaced with brand-spanking-new PIV machines. Why? I don't know. The old PII's all have Windows 2000/Office 2000, and do pretty much do everything that's demanded of them without hassle.
Now they are being replaced with PIV machines with Win XP and Office XP. Not only is this a huge waste of money as I see it - the old computers are more than adaquate (even if dated), they cripple the systems so you can't tweak them. And they also leave XP in the default ugly-as-sin fruity color scheme - and I can't change it. Ugh.
On the other hand, I'd sure like to get my hands on their "trash". I could put those PII machines to good use!
We live in a society that results from three generations of teaching that the entire class must move at the pace of the slowest person. I say to hell with the idiots. You need to know how to use the software to get your job done? Tough, learn how to use or make way for someone motivated to figure it out. McDonalds is always hiring.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
This isn't just limited to software but in fact to all consumer goods.
Consumers these days are swayed by a combination of price and how "new" something is. Quality and service have long since been forgotten by too many people.
At the moment there are still companies out there that really try to create well refined quality products but because they'll never sell as many you have to pay the extra. (Maglight, Apple, Mercedes...)
The problem is somewhat amplified with software in that it won't wear out over time so instead they slap a new user interface and a bunch of features on every 18 months and expect you to pay again or they'll be out of business.
This doesn't really apply to free software which has it's own set of problems in that users often don't know what they are missing with gradual incremental versions.
A combination of free software with regular automatic updates would perhaps be a great start.
[)amien
There's nothing left to do in our society, work is done by machines, roads exist, medical care exists, communication is fast and cheap. Instead of relaxing and making our planet a great place to live, we choose to cling to antique concepts of money and value (which really don't mean anything anymore), so the only way to create jobs and keep that money moving is to invent false needs and re-invent solutions that exist already.
Have fun guys!
I'm staying on welfare and waiting for all this shit to collapse all around you!
Techies (we) are going to have to learn to "appreciate the difference between what people say and what they mean."
... binary ... 0,1,? Osmosis here I come!!!
Damn, I knew it was our fault when we didn't develop the if;then;maybe clause. Let's see
As somebody who knows how to program, I suffer even more from the stupidity of many commercial software products. Granted, I also know that time is often too short to implement every nice-to-have intuitive feature, but on the other hand I often encounter stupid solutions that would have been trivial to solve in a better way. That kind of stupidity tends to drive me absolutely mad (I don't like that trait of mine, but still).
I pity the normal users who tend to think that it's their fault if the computer is not intuitive. Let's face it, most commercial software products are bad...
I have to say I am dubious that the systems of today are slower than those of yesteryear (especially those of 20 yrs ago).
Never the less the author has a point in that system seem to have gotten ridiculously compicated to use. Users hate them and frankly developers have no idea why anyone would want half the feature asked for any way.
The issue is simple communication. business analysts simply don't match up to the role they are suppoed to play in interpretting user requirements in to technical detail.
Either way I'm dubious that the authors system that could be explained in two pages would be any where near as funtional as the 53 page version
Ahmer
sh,csh,tcsh,bash,zsh,msh,ksh...
vi,emacs,pico,vim,xemacs,lucid-emacs...
mail,pine,elm,mutt...
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
The largest problem is that there is no time or budget to review and improve the human experience on software products. In the "Skate or Die" world of software development, finishing touches are always set aside for the next version of the product.
Software companies aren't profiting on the fact that their programs were the easiest to use. They make money buy selling their products with shinier chrome and more options than the other guys. Even worse, companies will try to glue on new shiny bits and pieces of bought-out software onto their product and hoping to get it to work. And if they get it out first, they'll get all of the customers who might need those features (and drag in those who were happy with the old one but need to upgrade because the new formats are no longer compatible).
Selling the support contracts makes companies a pretty penny too.
There is VERY little incentive to improve user interfaces or simplifying tasks. Apple has been able to tap into this market from the beginning, but even now is derided by those "in the know" as more toy than tool.
Software engineers are a problem too. The "cool" and "sexy" obscure features of a product appeal to most programmers while the rather mundane problems of fixing bugs and ease of use fall to the wayside.
Even customers are a problem. Management wants to be able to keep tabs and increase production by having new and different reports created and all information tracked. And they are willing to buy software from a different company (with an imcompatible format) to get that information. Plus demands for customization increases the level of task obscurity. Oh, and if they don't spend the money for the upgrade, they lose the money in next year's budget.
It's insanity.
"I may be Love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
If no one wants to read the "large handbooks" then here you go, learn the following commands:
ADD
JMP
NOP
MOV
Ok, that should get you started, 12 characters, with definitions, it would take up at least a whole paragraph.
The main reason instruction books get so complicated is people get dumber and more reliant on "user friendly" interfaces.
If some people would just take the chance to "experiment" perhaps they wouldn't need to specify in the instruction manual how to "exit the application".
C'mon. It's virtually always, File->Quit.
Sorry bout the diatribe, but people are dumb.
The author got it almost exactly right. When you study the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) for techies you find that they are made up almost entirely of 4 types INTP, INTJ, ISTP, and ISTJ. nearly all the core software that runs the Internet was written by INTP and INTJ people. (In general INTs are more likely to like python or lisp while ISTs are more likely to like Perl.) NTs are concept oriented with STs are detail oriented.
INT*s make up about 2% of the population and IST*s make up about 10% of the population. The key is the IT in the type. "I" stands for Introverted and "T" stands for Thinking. The ITs make up only 12% of the population. The opposite types, the EF Extroverted Feeling folks, make up 36% of the population. The EF folks like to talk to people and make friends. The IT people like to learn things and make systems that work.
The result is that the people writing the code have a point of view that is shared by only a small minority of the population. While the largest subgroup of the population has a point of view that is exactly opposite of the techies.
Obviously the techies can not design for the "feelies". And, the "feelies" will not take the time to communicate with the techies. They write us off as "geeks" and "nerds" and belittle us every chance they get. While we tend to call them "air heads" and ignore them.
There really are two cultures. Until people on both sides of the divide understand that the divide exists and work to bridge it, we will keep seeing articles like this one.
Stonewolf
Regarding point C... You are dead on. Most of the current generation of "working adults" haven't been using computers their whole (or most) of their lives. So you have to start small: This is an "OS", an application, a folder, etc. This eliminates alot of the fear that "I might break it" and gives people fundamentals to build on. After that dropping down a menu to access some function becomes a comprehensible task. The problem that I have found with this in small business IT: training money is scarce at best (okay so my company has never trained a damn person, including me). Starting from scratch costs a lot more in employee wages, lost productivity during training, etc. than your basic sit em down, spew some acronyms and pat the on the back. Perhaps my workplace is particularly ignorant as to the benefits of adequate training but... how much do others find organization-wide strategies result in the type of training that makes end users hate techs so much.
Computer training has become the living hell of the American workplace, a loathsome ritual that highlights the mounting battle between the computer cognoscenti and us mere mortals.
Guess what starts this battle? You won't read the manual. I get calls every five minutes complaining that you don't know how to do something. I open your manual. The manual written by someone who speaks your language. I point to the exact text of what you didn't read but what solves your problem. You look at me sheepishly. You go behind my back. You write this column. I hate you.
It takes much longer to turn on your machine in the morning now than it did 20 years ago.
My foot! Since I have to work with twenty year old machines on a regular basis (because "the budget can be applied elsewhere"), I'll tell you right now that not only does your new machine start up faster today it also does more.
The reaction of the clueless masses is to grumble and crack wise and then meekly accept the commands of our techie masters.
Absolutely. Bow to me you wimpering, pubescent wretch. This is the revenge of the nerds and you're on the receiving end.
If I were on the other side of this relationship, I, too, would find enormous joy in seeing the arrogant reduced to carping simpletons.
Unfortunately, natural selection did not see fit to endow you with an intellect.
One of my most intellectually keen colleagues was reduced during this latest round of training to incoherent babbling on the screen, culminating in a pathetic plea to be allowed outside for recess. With each advance in technology, I believe I have lost some significant chunk of my personality, some measurable portion of my soul.
Oh for Heaven's Sake. CUT AND PASTE. IT'S CALLED CUT AND PASTE. IS IT REALLY SO HARD?
Yesterday, I was handed a 53-page binder.
And just how thick is the Associated Press Style Rules book? I bet that one's pretty damn rough, too.
The tech folks who tried to explain this latest triumph of programming yesterday were heroic in their attempts not to cackle at our thickheaded responses.
An utterly noble feat on the scale of Ghandi and Mother Teresa, I'm sure.
But in this instance, the research is nothing short of revelatory: To overcome this cultural gap between techies and computer users, Mann concludes, tech folk "would need both technical and interpersonal skills."
Because, in the dearth that is the technical know-how of the average "end-user", anyone who does the reverse (ie: actually becoming conversant in technical jargon) is thereby a "techie" themself, thus isolating them from the group they were previously trying to assist and to whom they previously claimed membership.
There's more: Other studies focus on personality differences between techies (introverted, analytical) and computer users (extroverted, intuitive).
Way to generalize, Mr. Jung.
That is a laudable goal. I would like to help. This is what I say: Give me back my old computer stuff. And this is what I mean: I'd really like to have the system before that.
If I may, sir, I'd like to extend an olive leaf:
RTFM.
I always try to achieve on goal when writing any program. I try to build systems that never have to be touched. It takes alot of hard work to build a system like that but the rewards are huge. If I build a system I should be able to start it up and walk away for a year and forget that it is even running.
Got Code?
...to make it easier on IT to manage user's systems. Thousands of
ugraded Dell PCs with OS's upgraded to XP.
Let em upgrade as they will. I stopped caring when they took the
SparcStations off of engineering's desks and gave us all Win98. I
don't care anymore. I edit all text in emacs and then copy and paste
the result into the appropriate Companywide Enterprise Solution (Lotus
Notes, Word, etc.).
"Its not that I don't want to learn the new stuff Bob, it's that I
just don't care."
Users don't just hate the programmers; they hate everyone in the chain who brought in this stupid program in the first place.
Fifth time in how many years? According to a biography I google'd up, "Fisher, 37, has worked at The Post since 1987." So, once every three years or so, he has to change software systems. I know of people who change cars more often. That's not too bad, especially if you consider that users don't usually have more than a small piece of the puzzle. Most users don't get/have to use or know each part of the whole system to do their jobs. Also, he didn't mention if this was the fifth system change for whatever duty this software is for, or fifth system change in all of the software on his desktop.
It's not entirely the user's fault. It's not entirely the programmer's fault. The onus lies more on everyone in between who hammers out features, layout of the window and menus, and demands changes be made without figuring how this would affect current users.
How often does the average user go to training? Once when they're hired, and once, maybe twice when a new system is introduced. User training is always less complex than administrator training, and administrators are lucky if they get any formal training, from my experience.
Designing an application's look and feel is not a trivial task, and much has been done to try to simplify menus, taskbars, and the like in the last 16 years. Should we roll back the clock, so that everyone has to use green-screen terminals connected to the mainframe to do their work? Should we un-write the history of Microsoft? Apple? Linux? Should we remove the internet? Block all port 80's so that these newfangled things can't confuse you?
Of course not. But work-flow analysis needs to be done for major systems (and I don't refer just to the software/hardware/computer systems when I say systems). Incremental upgrades should keep some backwards compatabilities --and in the case of the MS OS + Office Suite, it has happened to some extent. Many people get caught up in how 'different' the new version of Windows/Office/etc. is, without looking at how similar it is to the last version they used.
Only 5 upgrades in 16 years? DOS, 3.1, 95, NT, ME, 2k, XP. That's 7, just in Windows versions, and off the top of my head. Most propeller-heads are also fluent in other OS's... Linux, *BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, SCO, Mac OS, etc. How many changes in those have we seen in the last 5 years, much less the laast 16? How many employed IT people have only 5 business systems in their heads?
It takes a lot more brainpower for the IT group to support the complaining users than it does for the users to learn a new system. Users do not understand what goes into implementing a new computer system. Maybe if the users knew more about the hours that it takes to implement a new system, and how their management (not IT, in most cases) pushed for this newfangled thing, they'd think twice before getting on their soapboxes.[*]
Users take IT for granted, like most people take dialtone for granted. The only time IT gets any attention is when something breaks. We're a service industry, and we serve the customers, but it's hard to work your 40, 50, 60 hours a week supporting customers, when all you hear is whiners like this guy. "I don't like this, that changes too much. I have to learn something new?"
Yeah, Joe User, and so does your IT group. They have to learn that system inside out and upside down, so that they can support you. They have to figure out how to get the data from your old system into the new one. How to back up and restore the new system. How the new system will work with your other software, on the desktop, and on the network. If there are conflicts, IT has to resolve them. It's not as easy as "plug it in and it goes", like your phone, or your cable box.
IT people work damn hard to make your job easier. Every now and again, you have to learn something new. We try to make it as painless as possible, but you have to remember this: IT doesn't drive the business. IT is driven by the business. IT projects that are user-impacting are driven by users, managers, directors, VP's, and CEO's. These are the people who make the decisions on the new computer system. These are the people you should complain about.
[*] I know, people will complain about anything, but it's a nice dream, isn't it?
I have more rant, but I get easily tired of screaming into the storm. Getting off the soapbox....
It's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable. It's a lot wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.
Maybe a number two laddie and a legal pad.
-
First, studying software takes time. A lot of it. I've just lost an hour of time to a software config problem that I could have spent on design. Computer professionals enjoy studying software and get paid to do a lot of it; most people don't and don't.
-
Computers make us all feel stupid--including us sometime pros. Professionals tolerate the feeling better, is all, I think. (And this may be partly because so many of us have spent a lot of childhood feeling really dumb.)
For solutions to these problems, and there has been some good stuff done, I refer all concerned to the Marc Weiser articles on ubiquitous computing, and Tognazzini's Tog on Interface. What satisfied me as a professional does not now satisfy me as a user; the needs of the groups are different.Of course, many people see academia as a vast exercise in restating the obvious. But in this instance, the research is nothing short of revelatory: To overcome this cultural gap between techies and computer users, Mann concludes, tech folk "would need both technical and interpersonal skills."
First of all, the research is not relevatory: Office professionals need technical and interpersonal skills. Tech folk are office professionals. Therefore tech folk need technical and interpersonal skills. Duh.
In other words, the "techies" aren't the only ones that need both. But this article tries to put the onus on them rather than admitting that end users share some responsibility. Furthermore, most of the coders I've met have had interpersonal skills that were just fine.
If you know you're smart, then you know you can learn how to use your company's new email system, for example, which works almost exactly like the old one did and features online help anyway. So put in the effort to learn and stop whining about how hard it is.
J2EE-compliant mobile wireless XML fibre-channel attached pneumatic Bluetooth ass-rampager
Damn, I'd love one of those. Does it come with 802.11g support? Where can I get one?
If it's hard to write it should goddamn be hard to use! ;)
from the article...
It takes much longer to turn on your machine in the morning now than it did 20 years ago.
Your bosses let you turn off your computer? How can you do any work with it turned off?
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
The problem is that people are not using standardized tools. An ASCII file I write on my computer can still be read by a 10 year old computer. If you have used 1 visual editor, you can pretty much use any of them (with the exception of people freakin' out at VI). Try and do the same with MS word for example. It's not a standard. Their document format and editor changes more often than most *nix geeks underwear, yet that is what people are basing their office systems on. Use a simple system that does what is needed without a gig's worth of bells and whistles, and people won't have a hard time figuring it out.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
I think the problem is in the nature of vertical apps. Software sold to horizontal markets (e.g. CivIII) may cost millions to develop and test for useability but you SELL tens of thousands of licenses and recoup the cost in short order. Every year you can refine the product. Vertical apps take millions to develop and then years to recover development cost. Each license is hundreds of thousands so the customer hesitates to buy anew. By the time there is a budget for another version everything that has langushed for years is shoved in and useability gets short shrift.
So what's the answer? Component technology. Make small, plug & play componenents and it won't be impossible to keep up. Teams developing components to a contractual API don't need to understand the whole system and can take on concepts like efficiency and useability.
BUT. What large, vertical software vendor is going to open up their software API's and allow the client list to go picking best-of-breed. They'd rather keep the client over a barrel, and complex training & conversion binds the customer ever tighter.
Microsoft drives me nuts too, but they've got nothing on the descendents of Prince Machiavelli that I see at vertical software vendors.
Most of the life insurance industry (my thang) is still running on COBOL or MVS Assembler. Non-disclosure prevents me from naming the company that bought us and shelved a Java/XML annuity system that threatened the 90 plus percent market share of an old COBOL system they owned. But hey, when you charge by the hour for customization Java is coffee, components are parts of a stereo, and API is Another Prohibited Idea.
... and anyone who designs is The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. Software design is just the latest "engineering" to miss the target on the delivered goods.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
everything is proceeding according to plan!
must... stay... awake...
There's a reason why people who work at companies get crap hoisted on them, and Paul Graham explained it quite well. It's because managers who pick software are used to making other managerial decisions where they can use "industry best practice".
If Marc Fisher's boss makes him use Windows and Word, it's not because he's tried every platform and thinks Word is the best. It's because everybody else is using Word, so if the shit hits the fan, he's doing "industry best practice".
(If Word eats your report, well, everybody is using Word, and they know that happens. It's Word's fault. If he picked brand-Y and it eats your report, why the hell did you go with brand-Y? Everybody else is using Word. No wonder it failed!)
So even in technology, the one area where a company should be forward-thinking and leading-edge, you end up being completely average. The very people who should be in charge of innovating don't want innovation. I see it every day.
Although I agree with the underlying sentiment that computers are still too difficult to use, here's a sample of what can happen if users drive the show.
I worked for a few years doing performance tests for a large telco. One of the applications that had been around for years was a total dog's breakfast. The backend was written in COBOL, and wrote to a "database" comprising zillions of ISAM files running on a Unix server.
This Unix server was ENORMOUSLY configured considering the relatively small amount of work it actually did; for some reason, it performed like an absolute dog even with loads of CPUs and memory. Unfortunately, that particular Unix vendor was no longer around, so none of the performance tools we were using supported this 10-year old orphan piece of hardware. We basically had to rely on top and sar to get performance data from this system; OK for measuring how performance is at any point in time, but not great for isolating problems and identifying problems such as long-running locks on ISAM files...
The user interface was a strange mix of an ancient proprietary GUI and Java applets - as a result, some screens were only accessible via a browser, while other screens needed this extremely fat client to be used. The proprietary GUI interface was very strange; in some cases, you'd click on "buttons" and they'd turn into drop down menus, or you'd click into a text field, but you'd then have to hit prior to typing anything in that field.
Using this interface to create repeatable business transactions for performance testing was simply hilarious - I eventually resorted to writing down details of every mouse click and keystroke I had to make, because otherwise I could never perform the same task in the same way twice.
For any given business transaction, there might be up to 10 totally different ways to enter in the information - different screens, different sequences of screens, and so on.
How had this app ever gotten to this state?
Apparently it had been fairly leading edge when it was first installed in the mid-80s. In those days, there was no standard Web browser interface, and ISAM files were regarded as faster and at least as robust as databases at that time. Furthermore, ISAM functionality came free with the OS, but you had to pay for databases licences... Then the users started asking for new features to be added to cope with the changing business requirements. Each request had bypassed the internal IT department as a matter of policy for this application (no idea why), so there was no sanity or quality checking done along the way - the vendor simply implemented every strange request from the user base exactly as documented.
Over time, the initial expert users of the application left, and were replaced by newcomers. These new users were faced with a system that wasn't particularly intuitive, and sometimes couldn't figure out how to do business process X. No problem - they just submitted a request for "new" functionality to be added. Meanwhile, the original developers of the application had also left, and been replaced by newbies as well. These newbies looked at the request for "new" functionality, couldn't figure out how to do it with the existing interface, so they built a totally new interface to do the same job and bolted it on to the application.
Now, the new user who requested the change might not have been that clear on the how that business process occurred in real life, so maybe they got the original request slightly wrong. No problem - they just submitted a change to the interface, describing how it should work. This time, the request went to a different developer (did I mention there was no centralised bug tracking for this app?), who might build a totally new interface and bolt that on - he didn't know the "new" interface existed, so he just built a "new new" interface.
If any of these changes required "database changes", no problem. The app just uses ISAM files, and any centralised diagram of how all these ISAM files hung together had presumably been lost. If the developers couldn't find the relevant group of ISAM files they needed, then they'd just create some more and get the users to populate them with data. Over time, there would be one group of users maintaining data in one set of ISAM files, and another different set of users
maintaining exactly the same data in a different set of ISAM files for the same instance of the application.
The Java interfaces came about because a manager at the customer site decreed that Java was the way of the future some time in the mid 90s, and made a blanket decision that all new user interface work would be done using Java applets. It was deemed too costly to rewrite the existing interface using Java, but over time the whole user interface would migrate to Java so there wouldn't be a problem... This situation stayed in place for a few years, but eventually this manager moved on and his replacement decreed that Java applets would no longer be used and a new interface would be chosen. An extensive review of user interface tools was conducted, before it was decided that the cheapest option was to go back to the original proprietary user interface - after all, the users already knew it so there was no training required... Once again, it was deemed too expensive to migrate the existing Java applet interface code to the proprietary interface, and again it was assumed that the Java interface would disappear over time as requirements changed and the replacement screens would be implemented in the proprietary GUI again.
When I finally got to look at this app, it had more downtime than all other host-based applications combined (and telcos use a LOT of different applications, so that's a pretty big statement). As I said earlier, the hardware requirements of this app were unbelievably high given the number of users it supported and what it actually did, so it ran on two extremely expensive Unix systems from a deceased vendor. A pilot had been done to investigate migrating off this hardware, but it had been killed off when it was found that the proprietary GUI wasn't supported on any current hardware - it too was deceased.
As far as I know, this app is still in use today. I regard it as a great study in what happens if you let the users run IT...
"Computer training has become the living hell of the American workplace"
Right, and it has squat to do with the systems themselves. It's the idiots who think they have the ability to train users causing the mass hysteria that ensues whenever a user sits down at a desktop.
I've yet to find a training program that was worth anything. Many home training courses are slowly getting there, but without an experienced person on hand to answer questions, they'll never be 'great'.
Most corporate training programs just plain suck ass. You've got one clueless preaching months worth of material to a large group of clueless, all in the span of two hours.
They're going to learn anything? Right.
Damnit, why hasn't this been modded to hell yet?
That was, until we went to a GUI from our venerable VMS and OS/390 systems. Productivity fell so fast it whistled.
Now, I walk around those call centers, and I hear typing and
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I am become root, destroyer of users.
..I suppose that would make tech support people the Ethos.
Now for more geeky fun!
Users = Lambs
Admins = Abel
Boxxen = Solaris
Bwahahahaha.
Oh, shit, I love my PS2's backwards compatability.
..not a developer here, just a luser. I switched to open source for my desktop. Why? Because I think the industry mode of having full time work on "new and improved" for 100% of the profit you need to live on is a bad idea and causes what you are referring to, "breaking what ain't broke". It's because of money. We all need money, that's a gimme, and we all need a job, but some jobs become advanced busywork projects. Like professional government grant sponsored "art" and half the "research" that goes on. Expensive busywork in a way.
As just a software consumer, I'd rather see stability over new and improved that creates a never ending stream of alpha and beta ware. And then when it's finally not beta,finally when it's fixed and debuggified- it get's trashed,abandoned, orphaned, and another new and improved version conmes out, that starts back at square one alpha stage! Nuts! And even in open source/sorta "free" software I can see this happening now that it's taking off more. I think once a niche product is made, new releases should just fix security bugs and functionality bugs. Keep the "brand new completely" releases to a much slower schedule, years, not months or even a single year. research well, code well, in advance. If more money is needed, then custom writing for enterprise customers, or another job doing something else. from a company to an individual coder. A lot of the planet does more than one job to bring home the bacon, and that job might be very physically demanding and not pay verywell at all, so no hard and fast rule that sitting in front of an editor is the only way to "make money"..
I don't know if this is possible, or what you were asking, but I hope I was clear enough.
That SNL skit resonated because it's true. Hey, they don't call 'em "geeks" for nothing -- many technical people *are* socially retarded.
I too see a lot of this on Slashdot -- a lot of one-dimensional thinking, and serious immaturity.
You should've worked for Hitler's propaganda arm, you certainly missed your calling. I'm still playing a 1995 game on today's OS, with no problems. Blows your BS out of the water.
Oh that "high price"? I bought an OEM version, cheap. No official support, but then again, I don't need it. And guess what, NO ACTIVATION NEEDED!!!!
Oh, that next major release, I don't have to buy it (and I probably won't). Check the lawbooks, you will see that I am not required to. Please stop stop the FUD.
Life is sweet when you actually have intelligence.
Hygine
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
For singling out commercial software is that, well, you pay for it. If you give me something for free, be it a physical good or a software program, I have little poition to bitch if it is not what I want. However if I pay for something based on promises made about it, and it then doesn't perform, I get mad.
For example, a friend gave me a DAC (digital analogue converter, of the audio kind) because he didn't need it. Well it really wasn't what I wanted. It didn't have the kind of sound the specs would imply (it had one or more damaged components). Well I wasn't mad at him or anything, it's not like he made me a specific promise and not like I lost anything. However, I would have been pissed if when I purchased my professional soundcard it had failed to perform as advertised. I shelled out cash for it, it better do what they say it does.
Not that your average user would be happier with a OSS alternative, but they have a right to bitch if commercial software does not live up to its promises.
Those users who complain are forgetting that the software is a means to an end. There's a task to be done and they should note how the software streamlines it. It's also possible for software developers, documenters and instructors to forget the purpose. This creates more grief for the end user. We accomplish tasks much more efficiently whe we focus on the end. For example, if you want a crash course in ice skating, play hockey. This also goes for ice skate designers, documenters, instructors.
The article says:
"Techies, professors conclude, must act more like psychoanalysts; they must learn to 'appreciate the difference between what people say and what they mean.'"
I say: Why not train people to say what they mean? This business skill would come in handy for a number of other problems beyong just talking to techies.
Even with all of the greatest and latest developments in software, the issue of the differing perspectives between developer, user and the "bridge" between them has not been properly addressed. Each of these three parties has a different perspective and is motivated by drastically different forms of stimulation. The developer is coding to specifications or engaged in a challenge to craft a polished product. The user is primarily interested in effectively using "the tool" to expedite his job tasks. I realize this sounds like simplistic rhetoric ... I guess an anecdotal reference will better illustrate:
Back in the 80's, I worked for a major U.S. steel manufacturing company. I developed and supported software that scheduled the mill and tracked quality and production. Cutbacks eliminated the "user requirements" (or substitute whatever "analyst" position du jour in there ...) group so it was necessary for the developer to perform this role. What I quickly discovered was that there was a huge disparity between what the folks representing the users clamored for and what the users actually wished for, and more importantly, what they really needed. I learned by sitting with an end user and observing him perform his job's daily tasks. And it was astonishing to find that things that they thought were impossible were simple changes that made life easier by an exponential factor. Like eliminating the need to flip through four screen panels with one simple "fill in and hit enter" deal. Other issues where what the user thought was trivial but was incredibly complex were solved by sharing information on how a desired function or operation could be easily attained with an unused command or software feature.
What I'm trying to get at is that what many analysts believe the user needs and wants is often entirely different that the real actual user needs, and often at odds with the dictated words from the users themselves. There's no substitute for a developer to sit next to a user and observe them using the software. No, I'm not talking about focus groups or any other marketing magical mumbo jumbo, just for the developer to simply witness someone tinkering with his creation or adaptation.
But in this day and age, all of these functions are supposed to be "compartmentalized", meaning that analyst meets with user, hands off some requirements to a developer who then draws up an architecture plan. Then a set of specifications is handed to an external team which possibly may be working offshore or even if in physical proximity, have no intimate contact or contact is limited to a few individuals who's perspective on matters is not totally consistent.
In my estimation, it's another black check mark against the "architect/build" paradigm that unfortunately still clung to.
AZspot
I think that the increasing complexity and 'function-holism' of software actually is detrimental to efficient computing. Just finding a simple virus scanning program is near-impossible these days. Every piece of software wants to embed itself into the registry (assuming a win setup for average-joe users) and the quick launch bar, to remain in memory, hog ressources, and generally be a nuissance. All I want is to click a button, scan for malicious code and remove it, and close the program when I'm done. That's why I think F-Prot is actually a superior product than some huge, bloated Norton-style suite.
I just want straight-forward programs that don't fsck with me. I *still* use command-line archiving tools (pkzip, etc) over the proper Win versions because I find the latter too greedy and invasive. I use them for the same reasons I use Google as a search engine: clean, efficient, and not evil. But every new version of any given program is compelled to add new 'features' to justify its existence.
I can't pretend to speak for the average officer user. I have mid-range knowledge of computers and run Win at home by choice (availibity of music-production software was a major consideration). But for what it's worth I think that contemporary software design is getting top-heavy. I prefer clean and simple minimalist design-- the Google or F-Prot aesthetic.
iopha
He's whinning about getting a new system at very short intervals. That ain't ITs fault. It's the boss' fault. In fact, the boss probably came across the vendor's website while surfing one night and dropped a $100,000 on it without doing any research.
"This is what we need!"
IT never does what it wants. It can't. IT only does what it is told, which, the vast majority of the time, is counter to common sense. Management never trusts its IT. But it has no problem trusting some slick looking "consultant" or some $5/hr third-world programmer.
The author of this article only sees the product from his point of view. A programmer must see the product from all users point of view. (for example) The author fails to see that this product completely eliminates the ten people who run the finished paper up to the presses. Who can now be eliminated, saving the company money, and allowing the author to maintain his hefty salary. Or the three people who are responsible for formatting text to go on the website. Or the fact that Betsy in accounting can now directly authorize payments to freelance authors without having to send a payment request to the editors. The author lacks the vision to see the entirety of the new product. It's sad that the developers did not spend more time usability testing, but in reality, when deadlines loom, usability testing in particular goes by the wayside. Whether or not the product makes life easier for the author might not even have been one of the goals of the product. The CIO or CTO might have made the decision that he didn't care whether Joe Reporter had to spend 10 extra minutes using this product every day, because the product eliminated 10 jobs from the payroll.
Well he should try dealing with PHB's who have some vague idea of what they want but can't explain it. Then when the project is 90% complete turn around and say "Thats nothing like what I wanted" even though it matches the original specs to the letter.
I think mr Journalist had better have a talk to his IT procurement committee before he goes off half cocked. Usually these committees are staffed, not by end-users and techs, but by middle management types whos closest interaction with a computer is getting their arse kicked on any number of first person shooters.
While I sympathise with end users of shitty software (I too am forced to use Windows now and then), I take offence when they start blaming the techs themselves for the problems of an entire package. Its like blaming the carpenter because the building committee decided to only use styro-foam in the foundations of the building.
Firstly, education. This semester I am doing a basic database course that revolves around a bunch of ER modelling. Pretty simple data modelling stuff. At my Uni (which seems to be pretty typical of most Australian Universities - can't speak for any other countries) more advanced database courses delve more into the nuts and bolts of the system, and further away from the actual user interface. Our professor basically led us to believe that the user interface was basically something that someone would wack on top once everything else was finished.
In my experience, this is all backwards. The most awesomely genius ER model in the world isn't worth spit if the UI is crap and 50000 employees curse its clumsiness every day. All the CS courses I have taken teach from the machine perspective. While this is certainly very important, I believe that more should be taught from the person/user perspective. Balance is important here.
Secondly, I think many problems arise not because accurate specifications aren't delivered to development teams, but because the users themselves are not able to outline what makes an application 'good'. Much more effort needs to be put into understanding the psychology of people who use technology and what their needs and expectations are.
Come to think of it, if you've never used word processing software before, there would be a bit to learn. Once you've used one peice of word processing software then all you need to know is the details for the next.
One user I've seen that was very pissed off with computers had forgotten her username. It was her first name, and three letters long. She had been using computers for six years in secretarial jobs. Her response when I politely told her what was wrong was "I don't know much about computers". I'm sure she was good at some aspect of her job, but anything involving computers is seen as "hard". I don't know how to change this peception, she had thrown away the post-it note on her screen which said "As asked, I've upgraded application_name_here you'll need to log in again as three_letter_username_here_in_inverted_commas!!! when you get back from lunch."
One co-worker described this sort of problem as "arse-elbow connectivity".
We've just got to realize that there are many people that do not pay attention to details and can still do their jobs effectively enough to keep the cash flowing and keep us employed.
Here is how the company I work for runs. The featured is requested on Mon., if it is not finished by Wed. we go out of business on Fri. So we slam out some code by thur., that half works, and we are saved for Fri. But we never get it fixed because we have another feature to add the next Mon.
The above is not worth reading.
Quote:
No, offense, but I have interpersonal skills. What I lack is patience for attitudes like these, where "it's all your fault". Half the answer is that techies need to be more empathetic. The other half of the answer (missing from the article) is that users need to meet techies halfway, and at least try to understand what the computer does. Not mind you how to create animated transitions with sound for their power point slides, but the basics of computer usage, like we used to get in 8th grade computer literacy. Directories, commands, arguments, files, etc...
When I run across a user who actually tries, I am willing to do a lot more explaining than for the marketing guy who seems unable to use his docking station...
If you think you can hurt me again, you're wrong. I left my heart in my other pants.
The main problem I see with typical end users is that they don't realize that the computer is a tool they are required to use to do their job. They are extremely reluctant to learn anything. The funny thing is, when they interview for jobs, they say "Oh, yes, I love computers, I have one at home, it's great." Then when they get on the job and don't want to make an effort, they call support and laugh, saying "heh, I'm computer-illiterate".
Would you go to a mechanic who held up a wrench and said "heh, I'm wrench-dumb, these crazy things." ????
Users need to understand that they CAN read the screen and actually THINK about what it says before panicking and calling support. They need to realize that they must know how to use the tools that are required for their jobs. Or, they need to find another job.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I'm an attorney at a law office with about 16 computers. We are still using WordPerfect for Windows 6.1. Why?
Because EVERY new release since then, of both WordPerfect and Word, hasn't given me (I make the IT decisions) a sufficiently good enough reason to ask the staff to learn how to use a new system.
Contrary to those bashing Microsoft, this isn't MS's fault, and it's not a case where people using Macs just don't have this problem. It's really simple - Once you get used to a system, you don't want to change, as long as the system you know does what you want.
We've gone though multiple changes in software - WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 was much easier to use than WordPerfect 5.1, ACT! has improved over time, and we've more or less kept upgrading Windows whenever Bill Gates wanted more money. Except for ME, each windows upgrade was worth it, from a usability and reliability standpoint.
But we still use WP6.1, even though it has 8.3 filenames and an automated template system that's crippled (and was finally finally fixed in WP10). Not only is this program reliable and does what we need it to do, it's faster than any of its successors because it was written for computers running 80386's.
Also, I have to say that the WP6.1 file dialogue boxes, are just plain better than anything I've seen since. Who in the hell thought that a sideways scrolling file-open dialogue box filled with useless icons was a good idea, especially when you can have really long filenames that take up half the screen?
Before I upgrade our software, there's got to be a reason better than "there's a new version out". The new software has to fill a need that isn't filled by the old software, or it has to solve serious reliability problems.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
I want my PC Jr.
It had basic in the rom, and a twenty line program was enough to really impress people.
Steven Covey wrote a book a couple/few years ago titled "The Inmates are Running the Asylum". In it, he makes a compelling case the modern software development is divided into four areas:
1. Management, which sets requirements and determines resources.
2. Developers, who, uh, develop the code.
3. QA
4. Support.
His premise is that what is lacking is a fifth group whose purpose is to design the usuability features. In my software development group, we've got all four of the above mentioned groups and what we end up with is a powerful, feature rich, stable tool that is the devil to learn. The developers do their best to design UIs that are intuitive, but what's intuitive to us is often backwards to our end users.
Covey states that developers fear ceding control over their work. It is this fear that was the basis for the resistance of the initial creation of QA departments. Apprarently, back when dirt was new, developers tested their own code and resented QA encroaching on their turf. It took a bit, but now QA is more or less entrenched and developers rely quite heavily on QA (I know I do). Covey argues that the UI design work that is currently left to these same developers should similarly be farmed out to teams of UI designers. Granted, it just so happens that he happens to run one, but I still think his point is valid.
Developers have no place designing how a user inteacts with the back end processes. Asking us to do so, or, more likely, not asking anyone to do so results in software that is a PITA to learn.
If we are talking about mainframe frontends, they are even MORE insane. Most programers (while not the best UI designers) have made it much easier than using a VT100 term emu. for using the mainframe.
Wake up stupid! This guy has been using computers for 22 years to get his job done. He misses the mainframe. It's not that he hates learning, it's that he hates relearning 5 freaking times for programs that do less for him. You also say:
What computer program do any of you use that you had to be trained to use? Microsoft Office? Umm, *most* people have no use for any of the apps other than Word. ... I was able to sufficiently use Access and Excel in 30 mins or less.
Get a clue dork, Word does not do what he needs and he has NO use for a freaking database or spreadsheet. He's a reporter! All he needs is a spell checker and a tool that will get his text off to his editors for review and his typesetter for publication. The other shit is in his way. He does not need auto correction, drawing tools or the rest of it. You have helped make things SO BAD that he wishes he had his VT100 back.
I can't even imagine how hoplessly screwed up his work place is to have replaced the very simple tools he needs five times in the last 22 years. Oh no, actually I can. He mentioned enough stuff for me to conclude that he's working in an M$ shop. He complains of machines that take a long time to boot up. That's a sure sign of an M$ shop as real OS don't need to be turned off. I'll bet four of those last five changes happened in the last seven years. It's the intentional waste of the upgrade train and it's costs have outstripped the cost of mainframes many times over by now.
You conclude with:
Stop the whining and learn to use the god damn things...
Ha! Someone is going to show this guy a real operating system one day and you will be fired.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Users want all the bells and whistles, but none of the complexity. Come on! I've been working on this one product for over a year. Today it doesn't look anything like its prototype design - tons of user-requested features were added during the course of its production, which means more training for the users. And today it's not unusual that we hear of users feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of the visual displays and user options. I think we started out with only a dozen options, but then the users wanted more (we now have over 80)! Well, if you want more, expect to spend more time to learn more features! You can't have the cake and eat it too.
I miss the simplicity of the older applications. For some applications that I use I still hang on to older versions (paintshop is a good example, I still use version 4, before they put all that crap in there). I try to keep the software I develop simple and clean, but when you have a boss and tons of users, all with different ideas and talking at the same time, forget about it.
They wish they were smart or well educated enough to use computers effectively, but they aren't. So, they indulge in the favorite American pastime of looking for scapegoats for their own failures and poor choices. No one told them to waste their time in HS or college, they chose that route themselves.
I am not a professional programmer. I am, however, making a living with programming at this point (and for the past year). I know some will say that means I'm a professional developer. I'm starting a business and, if I could, I'd pay someone to create the system I need. During startup, I could not afford a programmer, so I dug back to the 2 or so programming courses I've had over a decade ago, and learned Perl. Now I deal with clients asking for this feature and that feature. I give it to them -- they're paying my rent and other bills, so I do all I can to give them what they want. I can't tell them it works better another way or that something isn't possible. If I do that, I have to drop cable so I can pay for dinner.
My experience, in asking for help online, and dealing with other developers and computer people, is that there are a lot of helpful and nice people in computers. There are also more than a fair share of people who think they're always right because they're so goddamn gifted "I'm in Mensa, so I know what I'm talking about" -- yes, I've seen that attitude and been told things close to that.
I've seen a big problem with developers who have an attitude that they are so smart they know what's best. To be blunt, people all think and learn differently. When I've said that online before, I always get hit with "stop your stupid psychobabble." The point is it's true. In my experience developpers are logical and just can't see or understand that most people think in an entirely different way. It isn't a good way or bad way, it's just different. It's also so foreign a way of thinking to many developers that it is difficult for them to understand and see. So it's easy for the short tempered and vocal minority to say, "It works. This is good. It's easy. If you can't use it it's your problem."
That's what, IMHO, it boils down to. The vocal minority in denial and unable to listen to the end user with the idea that they just might have a point -- they're too busy being right to listen to anyone else.
And it's a damn shame that those few who can't deal with different learning and thinking styles ruin the end users' perception of a group of people who have given us so much.
It boils down to the old saying, "It takes all kinds of people." And it takes users and developers understanding that fact to make it work.
Software apps are changed to increase production. People that get screwed by the small changes get screwed because they didnt understand it in the first place.
If all you know how to do is 2+2+2+2 and now the program does multiplication 2*4 instead, thats how screwed users are when they sit down at windows xp from windows 95 norm.
I think that the only changes that piss people off are the ones that are visible through use. Autocorrect in Word is a godsend, changing teh to the is great, but clippy popping up and telling me that Im writing a letter and eating my keystrokes is a pain in the ass.
So do ignorant computer users.
If the average user would spend half as much time trying to learn about the stuff as they do complaining about it, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Most (yes, I realize there are exceptions) products that the average end user has to use are not so difficult that they can't be figured out by someone who has a bit of common sense and is willing to invest the energy in learning.
if apple made an os X for pc, they could trash m$ in just a couple of years
I don't understand why people believe this to be the case. The main problem is not that the mass market wants x86 hardware. It's that Microsoft has used its infinite resources to completely obfiscate the advantages of non-Windows platforms. If the collective consciouness of computeruserdom undestood that you shouldn't have to put up with all of the problems that Microsoft throws at you, I think we'd see a substantial exodus to Mac OS X.
Moving Mac OS X to generic x86 hardward partially solves the problem of initial cost, but you're still feeding into the mindset that computers can be easy to use if they're based on such on architecture. There's absolutely no way a user can expect to consistently have a good experience when their particular computer is but one instance in a sea of configurations of varying quality.
In other words: the hardware/software integration is a core component of why Mac OS X is so good.
And regardless of the state of software/hardware compatibility, the biggest issue is and will continue to be that Microsoft has made things so confusing that it has scared people into thinking Microsoft is their only option.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
It's a little dated, but it still applies.
Are Users Stupid?
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Thinki about it there are only two industries that have users. Computer Industry and well the Drug Industry.
Isn't one called a cartel?
Something to think about.
Ive said this time and time again to people.
When they ask me "Oh, you're a computer science major, do I need to upgrade my computer?"
After supressing the urge to repeat my 'comp sci != IT != retail' rant, I ask them what they do with thier computer. The fact is unless you are compiling, doing a lot of graphics work (3-d modeling, not pics from you digital camera), or running the hottest bad king shit FPS uberGame of the week, YOU DONT NEED A TOP OF THE LINE SYSTEM.
Proof by example:
My uncle/aunt. Living in a rural part of ohio, they have phones and power, but no sewer or cable. The got a dirt cheap 450mhz generic wintel. They use it to type letters, send email, and do some banking all via *cringe* AOL. I would utterly slaughter that computer, but for them they simply dont need anything faster, and wont for at least another decade.
The author of this article. As a journalist he would need a word processor, the internet (for research), and an interface to the article submission system (assuming they even use one).
My parents. A little more savvy than most people their age, but still the only upgrades that they have needed to thier 500mhz Gateway were peripherals, a good scanner, a digital camera, and a fax/copier/scanner. In a year or so I can see them needing a new hard disk and/or a CD-R because of the massive amount of data that theyve collected that could stand to be backed up and/or moved off site (documents, picutres, finances,etc)
Me. I do some programming on my own machine, some graphics editing (photo retouches in photoshop, mostly practice for my day job at the photo lab), and the occasional FPS or RPG gaming session. My recent video and sound upgrades were only done becuase I was offered a good deal on a trickle down upgrade (friend got latest and greatest, i got something better than what i had).
Im hesitant to push this idea because if it wasn't for the 'ooh new shiny and fast' attitude that pushed people like this to make sales, I would be paying a lot more for my next hardware upgrade. Dont blame us grunts, we don't like working to give you worthless upgrades any more than you like to have to constantly learn new things.
While it's true that some techies are poor in the "user friendly" department, the majority of bad system design comes from the management.
I've worked on a number of systems where what would have been a nice design has been sabotaged by management decisions. Almost always by management that doesn't actually use the system in question.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
It's nice to hear this guy whine about not being able to use the new systems. Try being a developer and keeping up with the changing technology that keeps getting thrown at you every 12 months because of the marketing departments of MS and company. He seems to think that it's the technical staff vs. the users. Sorry buddy, but I am a developer and from my perspective it's the techie's vs management; but the users get the fallout (crap product). The clueless are not the users as far as I am concerned. Anybody ever work for a tech help line? Can you BLAME the customers for being pissed? These companies just want your money...period.
I can't even count the number of times that the dev team has tried to convince management that we, (the dev team) should be allowed to help with creating specs for systems (I preume they feel it would undermine their authority). Companies unleash the sales guys, who don't know their assholes from a hole in the ground, who promise stuff that WE can't deliver. And then the client wonders why it's not in the system or just plain crap.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The ENTIRE High tech industry needs a reality check. Starting with management. It isn't possible to be a good manager of the high tech department without having some sort of background in the project your managing.
Fear not users, every techie I know wants to build you a good product(do you like the idea of your work being respected? So do we), but the MBA's from above know ALL.........;)
I think this was answered above somewhere -- basically, the people "using" game software are the purchasers of it - VERY rarely the case with business software.
There are all kinds of differences between dealing with something you got yourself into and something that was mandated - frequently mandated by someone very unfamiliar with the requirements of the "worker bee's" position. And as a (usually) technical person purchasing the business software, they will understandably purchase based on how they assess things - analytically and on technical merits (or ok, features, which are not necessarily related).
This habit (purchasing based on a quantitative basis) is likely strengthened by its self-supporting characteristics when the ol' CYA game comes into play - "But I spec'd out the BEST software, it does way more than that other one!"
I just went to the doctor the other day. I explained what was wrong with me. He ordered test for something else entirely. I know it isn't that. I told him what it was.
But i guess he doesn't mind spending $4000 on tests that prove nothing.
Not really. He's fucking stupid. And believe me, putting together human beings is less difficult than putting together a new web system.
Plus, you screw up and bury your mistakes. I have to explain to the board why I pissed away their money.
You screw up, you kill the patient and you still get paid.
And then you have the balls to tell us how important your job is.
Fuck you, you stupid quack.
In corporate environments, end users don't buy software. Other people, with divergent interests, sign developer paychecks and software contracts and thus decide what software gets developed and purchased.
End user satisfaction becomes just one of many competing goals. And of course it's very easy to trade it off against the others, especially out-of-pocket cost.
There's nothing sinister about this; it's just the product of the matrix of incentives that people face.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
I never understood why all the computers near me, which were right under my Network Neighborhood on NT, moved two folder levels down on 2000. So I have to double-click a lot more these days; what is the advantage I got out of that ? I've long wondered.
The menu & options in Word and Excel are so complicated that most office workers I know never learn to do very much with them anyway, so, why not let Microsoft keep moving stuff around ? Maybe they'll come up with something that makes sense some day, and then we'll be better off. Genetic annealing applied to UIs :)
Having read the article, I feel insulted. I'm an "IT person" and the fact of the matter is that the end users are not some kind of "extroverted and intuitive" person that I just need to listen to more. If they were extroverted and intuitive then maybe their explanations of what they did to their computer would make sense.
I pride myself on being a good listener and handholding users through change that they are often ill-equipped to handle, but the author of the article implies that I need to become more proficient at understanding things like "when I clicked on it it wouldn't do anything, and then all my icons were gone, ever since you replaced my screen". I may be analytical but I'm not a mind reader.
It is true that computers started up faster twenty years ago, but I have never met a user that wasn't happy to get a new computer ("It's so much faster!"). I also meet many users wondering when we'll be upgrading to this that or the other thing because new software does more. There isn't some vast majority of users saying "bring back DOS, take away my mouse, why do I have to use IE5.5 rather than Netscape Navigator Gold?".
These brilliant journalists that are reduced to babbling because they don't understand software most likely also cannot program a VCR, set presets on their radio, or master even the most basic of computer concepts like single-click versus double-click versus right-click. The computer would have to be HAL-9000 to be able to figure out what they wanted it to do.
XeoMage
Want to know why computers get ever more bloated and hard to use? End user demands get ever more ridiculous and endless. Imagine what a stapler would look like if it were designed based on typical user requirements.. Dessert topping, floor wax.
That's why I do one-on-one training with every professor when change them over from mac OS9 to OSX. Yes, it kills 30 minutes per user out of my day, but I have found that my tech support calls have plummeted. The phone is rining every 30 minutes. Now, if I get 3 calls per day it is a bad day.
Why is the author so ticked off about receiving training? If you give someone training they're better equipped to handle the new equipment/software and they don't need to call IT as often to have their hand held. Yes, software evolves. Get over it. Be glad that your employer thinks enough that they provide training, many don't.
I thik the author of the article needs to go to the clue line and get a clue.
Exactly. Why can't users figure out things on their own, like we do? Its all there in the User Docs. The ones with all the screen shots and pretty pictures. Oh wait, we didnt make any User docs.
at my school, a kid needed to copy a file home. ok, email yourself. after *finally* getting to aol's (ugh) web-based new mail, i was asked who to send it to? umm...to yourself. he types "to myself" and isn't making a joke.
yeah, it's all our faults.
n/t
Why this is so easy for me to do while all my peers struggle with, say, trying to cut video footage into smaller clips, is beyond me. It's not like I'm some sort of super genius to whom anything and everything comes easy. I can make guesses - through my observation, I have noticed that I keep helping people get through the same trivial tasks day after day with something like FCP; maybe if I don't hold their hands, they will motivate themselves to learn something. However, I haven't helped people a lot in things like Photoshop, and they still don't really seem to use or understand any of the more advanced features of Photoshop, like paths and masks.
The only other conclusion I can draw is that people can't be made to care about how to do something when they can get away with something less polished and have someone they can whine at whenever they can't figure even the most trivial thing out. I guess they have more important things to do, like gossip about whose boyfriend cheated on who or something equally banal (they are almost invariably girls, I guess the guys are too self-reliant to ask questions or something), but then again, maybe this is just my misanthropic side showing again, proving the thesis proposed in the article. However, if this is a true observation, then I can only say that if people are unwilling to learn, the most intuitive goddamn UI in the world will not save them.
--sdem
What drivel.
So I'm working happily away, using some software tool. Suddenly I'm told I need to retrain because the latest update of my old faithful tool has all the controls in a different layout. Even though my original version just needed some bugs fixed.
Wtf?
Retraining on tools should be limited to those times when the nature of the primary task changes. Anything else is just self-absorbed ignorance on the part of the IT team and software developers.
My work isn't your work.
since I still can't figure out how to use AOL.
My firm, which deals with police and military applications, is revisiting development systems that produce DOS-like (text- and keyboard-only, no mouse) applications that run across most available platforms. In the period since those development tools have become supposedly defunct, their developers have moved them to open-source platforms.
For example, the former Clipper (Dbase, Foxpro) languages have spawned (competing!) freeware versions named Harbour and xHarbour which are compatible with their predecessors and which run on DOS, Windows, UNIX and Linux. The user interface (originally developed for Clipper) is reproduced 100% by both these open-source systems. Development is astonishingly simple; using programs is also.
And what I really, really mean: I'd like the old system before that, but with all the features that the new system has, but in the old system.
*THUD*
Here's the Visual Studio installation CDs and the 30 manuals from Microsoft Press.
He sees the UI of the system which is designed by non-techies atleast in all the projects that I worked on.
And those designers tend to be those kinda people with brain function impaired by too much partying.
Yet the people of similar nature (end users with brain function impaired by too much partying) find it so convenient to blame the techies who work hard and long hours.
I strive to build a well balanced and optimized backend system but does that author of the article give a shit about that?
Can somebody tell him real techies do not design UIs?
Give him a clue.
This is outright hostility, not mere feature bloat.
Every American that I know wants and uses two digit years, and a date format that I find nearly impossible to parse -- 02-02-06 I think is today! -- so why be surprised that the software uses these insane dates -- it is what the users want!
three words for you
file maker pro
the sickest database program on the market. You should see our FMP database at tekserve. that's some shit that will turn you white.
I'm still a student and thus largely insulated from this sort of thing. Still, I think that people are looking at the wrong issues here.
First it's more likely that people are simply pissed off. They're not the head jock anymore, they're drone #2817-G and noone gives a fuck who they dated in high school. Even worse the people they used to pick on back then matter now. They're doing something and rather than spend the minimal ammount of time required to understand how to use something they'd rather get pissed about it. "That damn geek expects me to learn this shit? I've got better things to do than read a manual writen by some science club loser."
Second is that these training classes don't seem entirely necessary. Indeed there's a lot of bloatware out there with obscure and pointless features that are a pain in the ass to get at. Still, you don't need to spend 8 hours having some idiot try to teach you how to use them. In some highly technical applications it may be necessary and useful to spend some time in training, but you probably don't need it for the next version of Word. Seriously. My school teaches 8 week courses on how to use Word and Netscape and they're unnnecessary crap. Back in high school there was a "Technology Literacy" class that would spend a day explaining the basics elements of the Windows UI, one day was spent almost entirely on right-click context menus, another on signing up for a Hotmail account and e-mailing someone. Not the theory behind any of this, just the practical ability to do it. People will try to teach anything whether it's necessary or not.
Any system that a cat can handle has got to be intuitive.
Most systems are badly designed, when they're not just thrown together without a thought to the poor schmuck who's got to use it.
We keep finding new ways to screw up and the user gets to pay us and bite the bullet.
Ain't modern technology grand?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
As opposed to open source software where the wheel is reinvented again and again just for the hell of it? Where perfectly useable commercial products are cloned feature-by-feature and even screen-by-screen because it's an offense against nature to just pay for and use the existing product. Where the spit and polish of a commercial product is deemed unnecessary since you can just "look at the code" if you don't understand it. Where the most common response to a user feature request is "it's open source, so you can add it yourself".
I don't want to sound too negative, since open source has been irrefutably proven to work for the difficult and technical: protocol stacks, OS kernels, web servers, compilers, etc. Commercial software, however, still has the edge in creating attractive and useable human computer interfaces. Why? Because it's not about "learning" and "sharing" and "culture" - it's about grabbing people by the balls and making them want to use the product.
This is true of nearly every product in our wonderfully chaotic system of global capitalism. Why should software be any different?
You compare: ipfw -> ipchains -> iptables with the M$ upgrade train's effect on normal computer users? Give me a break. How can you compare free software that still works and has improved to non-free crap? The changes to M$ Word, etc, added no real features and wrecked the users old work, which cost more than the outrageous price of the software itself. The free programs you mention all still work and might even be used on the same box at the same time. Oh yeah, durring the same time period all the major editors remained the same. I've got a 1986 Emacs manual that does a reasonable job of describing the current editor's behavior. Had this reporter learned Emacs instead of Word, he would not be forced to learn anything new today. I don't know iptables either, but I would not consider learning it a waste of time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's these forced choices that piss off the users.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Dont make the upgrade today. Say that its not worth it. We can survive for a bit, the incremental difference is not worth the cost. Talk to me in a year when you come out with another major version.
The choice is not this crap or that crap. You can also choose not to buy any crap at all!
If non-techies think the current crop of techies are hard to relate to, in just a few years they will have nothing but a phone to a techie with a thick, foreign accent to deal with.
Actually, If you are allowed to spend enough time with the user, then good products can result. It is goofy deadlines or last-minute requirements that often muck up a decent interface approach. Thus, I blame it on the PHB's and marketeers (of course).
Table-ized A.I.
Would you post a screenshot with the WP file dialogs please. Everyday is a good day to learn something :)
You poor sod. You've blundered onto why software sucks and you don't even know it.
You bet your sweet little tush that users don't think like developers. Here's what they think: Developers are supposed to be off writing software that does what they want it to do, not what developers think they want it to do. Just because you think something has a "good interface" doesn't mean the bloody thing is easy to use. Did you spend time with your customers watching and learning what they do? Can you do it? Did you sit for a week with potential users to see if what they really do is the same as what they told you they do? Maybe you built them an interface to things they don't do.
If you write-- or buy -- code that "they just can't figure out", it's your problem, not their's.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
You know what I do when my gaming machine gets doggy as hell, and crashes a lot? I format the hard drive and re-install a fresh copy of windows 2000. Seems to fix the problem every time. Screw upgrading to XP, or windows 2004 in a year, I will stick with this more stable 3 year old service pack 3 OS. It runs well on my very outdated 1ghz machine.
I don't blame the OS as much as the ENDLESS DAMNED SPAM AND AUTOMATIC SPYWARE INSTALLS. Shit, there is always company x that wants to embed itself into the browser and log every page I go to. And this damned 'save' app that will not die.
I don't think it's so much a lack of original ideas to make software more usable as the fact that these original ideas require programmers to make these ideas into reality. The people with the original ideas are usually not programmers, and usually have to spend so much time doing research in fields like cognitive psychology and human computer interaction that they don't have time learn how to code.
An idea can only happen if it gets turned into code, so that pretty much makes programmers the gatekeepers of technical change. If the programmers don't want change, you won't have it.
And this is the situation we are in today. There are so many good ideas out there for making computers better, but they'll never get anywhere because there are hardly any businesses out there willing to assign programmers to turn these ideas into code.
It's at this point one would think that Open Source could provide a solution for this problem because there seems to be a great abundance of open source programmers working on tens of thousands of different projects and who don't care whether their project will be a great commerical success. But of all the programmers out there, Open Source programmers are typically the most hostile towards people in the field of UI design and towards fresh, new, innovative ideas that are meant to improve the user experience.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I work for a government agency whose IT department is run by a bunch of ex-hippie Mac freaks. Anyone who isn't part of their inner circle (or ever says anything bad about Macs) is looked down upon as a technophobe. Now, I don't consider myself a geek, but I'm not ignorant either. The IT bad boys all have dual-processor g4s with Jaguar and cinema displays, and the folks in the trenches are stuck with 233mhz g3s with barely enough RAM to run the OS without crashing (until last year we were using 7500s with 32Mb of RAM).
Of course they need all that processing power to remotely install non-functioning software that crashes our computers due to low memory, email us 4 times a day that the server is down, remotely reset all our memory allocations to the absolute minimum so that opening a 300k text file crashes the machine, and monitor our keystrokes.
Maybe the Mac slogan should be "Don't worry your pretty little head about it".
But they only thing I fear is that they will make the price much higher because they can justify to managers with marketing material stating how "flexible" it is and it is for "advanced developers" or some other bullshit; meanwhile they've mostly taken stuff out and bundled the things that should come with it but you download anyway from sysinternals or MSDN.
I could live with that, if I wasn't paying for it.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
\devmap blah-blah
\god on
\give all
\addbot xaero 5 "Dead Guy"
\say "Sssshhh... be very very quiet, I'm huntin' wabbits!"
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
They would be kissing my engineer ass, people do not understand just how abstracted computers are. I know I have heard from my technical writing professors, remember only 5% of people will understand what you are doing so make reports as simplistic as possible. They are complaing about programs crashing obviously they have not written 50,000 lines of code chock full of pointers and dynamic memory shananagans, running on an OS unable to recover from some small leaks. Learn about computers or at least how to operate them properly before complaining.
My experience (as a geek-ing person living in the world) is there no clear distinction between catagories of people ('Myers Briggs Type Indicator' or no). The only major contributions to socialization is experience.
People who socialize more tend to be more social. For example: if someone (a geek) starts to mimic the behavior of the 'Extroverted Feeling' people and at least be open and friendly to people (or if that isn't possible attempt to appear so), they will tend to be more social (and the socialization becomes more routine and less act). Social tendency develops dynamically with use and (in my experience *IANASociologist) cannot be accurately represented by categorical systems like the MBTI.
Previous post: This is exactly the kind of divisive attitude that is NOT needed and claiming "two cultures" that need to be bridged just enforces that division. People are people. As long as you deal with a Person as a *person*, like yourself, it doesn't matter if the the person is a 'EF' or 'IT'.
The main problem I see is with the geek-ing community not treating other people with the respect normally allocated to human beings (I do not claim to be immune to this). Geeks tend to treat eachother like human beings, but demonstrate a lack of basic respect toward others. In short, treat everyone like they have some value....
......until proven otherwise......
Users don't want software that wipes their ass, they want software that doesn't kick it.
You can't make software idiot proof because the first idiot brought into the design process is usually the idiot programmer who doesn't want to learn about how to design usable interfaces. People of such limited intelligence and industry should be chained inside a server closet where they can do no more damage.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
why dont you be a worker be you arrogant prick
i have forgotten more 'apps' then youve ever seen in your life. and after a certain point you begint o realize you are wasting most of your time learning things. of course its 'not hard'. of course it doesnt take much work. but it still takes a finite amount of time, and ya know what? if any idiot can use something, well, fine, but only a true idiot would spend half their time switching back and forth between new programs and learning completely new interfaces: all to do basically the sme hting. its called 'wasting time' and since time = money, its also wasting money, which is also called 'stupid' , that would be the opposite of 'smart', which is what you seem to think of yourself for being able to pick things up 'oh so quickly'.
---We are here to make fucking money
If you're here to make "Fucking money" go be a pimp. There's plenty of us nerds to handle computer systems.
Ok... I got a 486 33 with 8MB of RAM and 245 MB HDD under my desk being used a DNS server right now... I will be glad to trade it for your current desktop.
If you don't have a desktop I think I can find my old Pentium 133 compaq armada somewhere... You know the one with all the extra batteries and comes close to 20 lbs. I will be glad to trade it to you for any current laptop. To make the deal even better for you I will even pay for shipping...
Those skits are called "Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy" or something very close to that. There are about four of them. They are hilarious.
I remember when I first started to use a WIMP system (Acorn Archimedes). I had not the slightest clue what I was doing.
Since then, I have found that what I have learned is not just how to do things, but 50% of it is how to deal with unexpected/confusing circumstances.
I think sometimes thats the real reason I can use one - I'm not scared out of my wits about what is going on. I know it, its my environment, and I understand the (in)significance of various popups/error messages, actions, etc.
I suppose I really went on a steep learning curve because the software wasn't aimed at any specific user type; rather, it is aimed at everyone, specifically those with prior experience.
But there seems to be less Training given in the basics of operating a computer (filing, security, etc), than there are in using a computer to perform a small set of tasks (MS Office XP course, anyone?).
I have also noticed that once new user has worked out only what they want to do (not what they *can do), they will in general stick to that small range of skills but not branch out any further - wether that be through fear or laziness. A lot of the training for applications is quite mollycoddling in that way - the trainers know the users limitations - and they just want to show them how to use "mail merge" and get out of there, rather than increase the user's confidence in using a computer, overall.
*That*, ultimately, is why it is so hard for people to use new Software. Most of the time, it's not the software - it's that the users are pissed off that they have to relearn everything, for the same tasks they could do before. (as I said, its a heck of a lot easier with prior experience of a variety of other apps)
Of course manufacturers could remedy this by having every tool look and operate the same way (albeit near impossibly), but in the long run it would make more sense to teach people how to explore and deal with their overall environment. Its only natural that this ability and confidence spreads into the other areas.
<B>note to self:</B> <I>post as html</I>
...after watching this cycle repeat itself over 25+ years, it comes down to this:
When users choose and buy their own software, things work. When IT departments assume control of the computers and the software acquisitions, things go downhill.
In the mid-70's, I worked in a Computer-Aided Design department that had been built on department-purchased minicomputers (PDP-8's and -11's) and was moving onto the corporate 3x0 mainframes for performance. The transition was a disaster, and we were saved by the availability of mid-size systems (Prime's and VAX's) the department could acquire and control itself.
In the early 80's, the availability of workstations (Apollo's and their ilk) created new opportunities in the computer-aided engineering space, driven by the demands of the departments doing the real work.
A few years later, people started to buy PC's (and the software available for them) on their own dime (and later on their department's budget) because they ran software that enabled them to solve problems and get their work done. Once PC's had established themselves on corporate desktops through the back door, the IT departments moved in and took over.
More importantly, the vendors of the software once selected by individual users (Lotus, in my personal experience) started to realize that they had to sell their product to IT managers, not end users, and that started to drive the further evolution of the products (to their detriment, IMHO).
The PDA market exploded when they were purchased by individuals, and that marketplace has stagnated since they became an "enterprise product" selected by IT departments.
Apple still sells the Mac to end users, and Linux was driven by the needs and motivations of individuals. This is where the real action is today, and I hope and trust that there will always be a corner of the computing business where real people decide what they need for themselves.
But most software "upgrades" I've encountered seem to have been done for one of two reasons. Either the software company wanted to sell more units so they wedged in a few more obscure gadgets and trinkets, slapped a "NEW AND IMPROVED" sticker on the box and rammed them the market's throat. Or the pasty code-gophers that write the software found some technically correct - but invisible to most users - way to improve the software.
In other words, the new version was made to sell more crap and make the buyers think they actually got something, or because the coders wanted to strut and flex for each other.
While I do not have time to propose better alternatives, I will point out two problems. Wizards? Wizards are crap. They are a lousy, time-wasting intimidating, patronizing quick fix. If the GUI was well designed and intuitive users would be able to find the settings without being led by the nose by sneering questions or inane cartoons.
And lusers? if you're so 'leet why didn't you spell it |_u53rZ or something like it? That "luser" is probably a professional like a doctor, a legal assistant, an architect, whose job involves many skills and a lot of knowledge that has nothing to do with computers. To them, computers are just one of a wide selection of tools. On their behalf I say "fuck off, dork."
You can't set your own broken metacarpal? You can't cite precedent to defend yourself? You can't convince a client with a sketch on a bar napkin to up your project's budget by a million bucks? Well then fuck you, loser. And get a real job while you're at it.
Honestly now, who of you who write accounting software have actually spent a day with some accountants? Or CAD software guys, do you ever talk to engineers (ME or Civil, EEs don't count), architects, industrial designers and toolmakers? And whoever keeps writing the crap bundled with digital cameras, have you ever actually used anything besides maybe a Kodak disposable?
Come on people, programmers aren't writing programs only for other programmers any more. Meet the rest of us halfway, wouldya?
Crap. I can't believe I even responded.
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle
You're absolutely right. Software companies felt that it was less important to design a good user experience and more important to sell support, features, etc. They felt there was impunity from the consequences bad design. They said "we can make the interface as bad as we want, and we won't ever get punished for it." And they were dead wrong.
Eventually, end-users who are made miserable by their computers will revolt. They will get wise to the fact that the Intel commercials showing shiny, happy, end users getting so much done now that they have a processor four times as fast as their old one are complete bullshit. They will get wise to the fact that the greeting-card software they bought at Wal-mart that claimed to be "intuitive" and "easy-to-use" cost them 10 times as many weekends pulling out hair than if they grabbed their kid's crayola set and did it by hand.
But the end-users are slowly learning. And they are very, very pissed off. They start saying "I hate computers. I want to do as little with them as possible. The computers I use at work completely treat me like crap. Why do I want the exact same experience at home? I'm just going to keep it to web surfing and e-mail, thank you very much!"
And guess what happens when all of a sudden you have an entire economy spring up that is built around people wanting to do so much more with their computers than merely surfing the web and writing e-mails?
What goes around comes around. There will always be punishment for bad design that makes users frustrated and unproductive, it's just that it takes a while to manifest and it's directed at whole entire categories of products, not just at one specific offending brand. The end users got pissed off at the way they were being treated and collectively punished the entire high tech industry. And that's what really caused the tech crash.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I own an iMac so I can say this...
It's not cut and dry as it seems... You'll looking at quite some limations, it's own flavor of bugs and issues, and your going to shell out quite a bit more than you would for your PC counter part...
But otherwise... I love my Final Cut Pro and DVD authoring software... Oh lord it's sweet. Had to sell my first born...
But I still have 3 intels for windows apps for gaming, file sharing, and hell if I know what this 3rd pc is for... But I think the PCs teach puzzle solving while the macs just let you do what you need to do... Without puzzle solving you don't lear... I don't need tech support! I am tech support!
Otherwise... I like macs because they make my job easier fixing issues with internet connections at my job...
Even if a high quality software is produced I don't think there is a good chance it will be adopted by the masses.
Take my favorite editing program, EditPlus. It was recommended by a friend and I found it to be perfect for what it is supposed to do: edit files. It beats the crap out of Notepad and Kate for KDE is just a broken reflection in comparison. But nobody has heard of the program and no one uses it.
If there is a Linux equivalent I haven't heard of it and I don't think there is any way I could. Currently there is no way that the highest quality software can be brought to the market. If users could go and easily try out and aquire different programs for their regular tasks then I'm sure the quality of software would appear to increase dramatically.
Unfortunately we are stuck with the defaults and the status quo (notepad.exe).
ICQ was an exception to this theory, great software when it came out, sadly useless now. Trillian is a case for the theory, better (I think) than ICQ, but not that many people seem to have heard of it or use it.
Mars
Zenogias.....
I love my PS2's backwards compatibility AND its ability to run Linux.
My two favorite common features are undo/redo and cut/copy/paste. In fact I believe that if either of them was to dissapear from the face of computing tommorrow, I'd commit suicide. Yet most of the end users I know don't use either. Ever. Is it really that complicated? Do people really enjoy typing so much that they'd rather not use these features? No, I doubt it. I think maybe we're right.
I also enjoy the way I can learn what an app does by poking at menu options. I figure if an app can do something but it isn't obvious from either the menu or some simple sub-dialog or something, then I don't care if it does it. I think maybe we're right.
I think there are two kinds of people in the world: those who see something and try it, and those who don't notice anything until they're told what it is, what it does, how to use it, why they should try it, and what to do if they have a question. I don't think the latter type understands the former, and I know for sure that I don't understand the former. But I think maybe we're right.
We think the way to write good software is to make it intuitive, consistant within itself, and consistant within a group of similar programs (use common keys for cut/copy/paste, for example), but I don't think it much matters. Alot of people would look at a program with one menu option that says "Click here to see a funny joke", get glossy-eyed, and ask "what does it do?" They don't even know how to find the online help. It might as well be hidden right in the middle of a menu labeled "Help". Could it be we're right?
Maybe end users really are dimmer than bozo.
At least he got one thing right: All these stupid techies think that improving software means adding more garbage graphics and TRASH that nobody needs or wants, that take up 101% of processor cycles, making everything slow, contorted and crash prone. If the only improvement you can think to make to a piece of software is to add more junk graphics and sounds, then the software is "finished" and needs not be modified except to repair the occasional bug.
Your 2-seater-as-family-car example reminds me of when I was living in an 18-foot travel trailer, and a sales guy tried to convince me that a grand piano would not be a problem for my limited floor space. (No, I am not kidding!!)
It sounds absurd when translated to realworld items like a car or piano, but it's much like what variously IT or management try to sell to or force upon end users all the time.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
click a radio button (male female -- who cares)
a date 19xx
Zip code? the example they give works, why should I give them mine?
The school should do a better job teaching the basics of computers. I don't mean programming, although some simple exercise with Python or Basic could teach a lot about the nature of software. I mean the concepts which are behind every computer design in the last 25 years (because, marketing hype aside, computers aren't changed that much).
Once youngs are trained on the concepts, when they become adult they will have little difficulty in adapting to the 'GUI of the year'.
One-week requalification courses for middle-age empoyees which are forced to learn abut computers can hardly acomplish much more than reducing the fear or the hatred they feel for the 'beast'.
Ciao
----
FB
I've earned my living in IT for over 30 years, and I sympathise with much of what the Washington Post's columnist is saying. Putting in time to learn and master complex and powerful tools when these are essential for your work is a part of the job. Being expected to waste time becoming familiar with the idiosyncracies of yet another poorly designed and implemented tool for doing a simple task is another matter entirely. Examples I've encountered in the last year:
- New networked printers rolled out, do I want to join a 1-hour course to learn how to use them? Pardon me: these are printers. You hit "print" in a desktop app, point and click to select the printer and what you want it to do. If you go to collect your output and there's a paper jam, you consult the cookbook for which doors to open and which levers to move to free the obstruction. What more is needed? Well, it turned out that the cookbooks were incomplete, so everyone had to waste an hour - charged to their projects, by the way - because the logistics organisation goofed up.
- Or, how about a "how to use the in-house phone system" course? Excuse me while I go ballistic for a moment: the system was installed 6 years ago, why the fsck hasn't logistics yet produced a simple summary of which of the functions that the vendor's equipment can provide are actually available here and under which {mis-|un-}labelled function buttons? Jeeze...
- Why doesn't the new time-reporting system allow people to book half-days off sick? Or does the company prefer us to lie about illness?
- A powerful search engine that indexes documents published on the company intranet is a poor substitute for intelligent structuring, naming, and navigation, even if it's cheaper and easier to provide than making the effort to do the job properly. But if you're going to rely on a search engine, at least try to select and tune it so that it doesn't produce 50 different versions of the same document as its top 50 search responses.
- Oh hi, listing the PCs and workstations again, are we? Look, just a suggestion, but wouldn't it be a good idea to try to work out how the records have got so screwed up, again, in less than 6 months? It's not as if we can get new equipment or dispose of old stuff without going through 3 levels of approval and signoff, after all. Or am I some sort of bad team player for suggesting this?
What all these SNAFUs had in common is an inability - or in some cases a simple disinclination - on the part of the "vendor" to attempt to see things from the point of view of the end user. In some cases, like the time reporting system, it was blatantly obvious that the people who produced the new system had made no attempt to check the workings of the one it was replacing to guard against overlooking something. And there's also an evident tendency to regard the deployment phase as the final target, and not to budget for maintainance, corrections, and incremental improvements in the light of experience.Yeah, it's my lunch hour, how did you guess.
I couldn't agree more. These days, you can do very complex things with computers, BUT: at the same time, it becomes increasingly difficult to do really simple things.
Shouldn't more powerful systems besides giving you more possibilities, also make simple things even more simple or easy? They should! But they don't.
I think it's really a fundamental problem with today's Operating Systems. For instance, to create a simple 'Hello World' program, you need an ever bigger set of development tools. Logical? No!
On any old homecomputer, it looks really simple:
10 PRINT "Hello World"
And to execute it: RUN
Why is it more difficult to do that on today's systems? Because, the "Hello World" program has to support all the added features of today's system. And that's the fundamental flaw. It should be the other way round, where the "Hello World" progam would still look the same, and such extra features would be supported another way. That's what an improved OS should do.
I found a project on the web recently that makes a serious attempt to find a solution to this:
the TUNES project
What this guy is really saying is that he doesn't
want anything to change, ever.
Do you really think his company made all those
system changes just for the hell of it?
Just as soon as he gets his ZX81 back, with his
single feature program that takes 20 minutes
to load then he's start screaming again.
Change in software development is driven by
the marketplace
that your users defined suicide as uttering such heresy!
At least within your hearing. Or the hearing of anyone who wants to be in your good graces. Or anywhere near a hidden tape recorder. Or anywhere near your rumored mind-reading devices...
Cheers,
Ben
Instead, we hear that kind of thing about software developed in-house. I believe the "hatred" is a combination of the user never (or rarely) getting what they really want, and frustration when they realize part of the blame rests with them, and IT can't wave a wand and make it easier for them.
The unfortunate part is it's a double-edged sword, because IT often works very hard to give the user what they ASKED for... but what they requested isn't what they WANT. This is not a new problem (and all the CMMing, SixSigmaing, UPMing, RUPing and other process crap in the world isn't helping -- sorry, pet peeve). Being non-technical, the user doesn't know how to ask for the right things. They don't know how to think critically about a design they firmly insisted upon in the early phases of the project, which then turns out to be cumbersome and hard to use. They don't understand how non-technical people like themselves respond to user interface issues, so they demand weird features, and surprise, nobody can figure out how it works when it's deployed. They can't identify bottlenecks in the processing flow, but by god they WANT that flow, and then the bottleneck is IT's fault.
Indeed, my current employer relies heavily on legacy systems, some pieces of which are 30 years old... there are plenty of cases where we're asked to reengineer something, but the business users really aren't even sure how that part of the business actually works! Sometimes the best information we get is, "Then we go to green screen XYZ and put an 'R' in this field, and we don't know what happens next". Then it's up to us to track down how it actually works, backtrack WHY it's done that way, and figure out what WE need to do in the new app... all within the original deadline. Very often in medium and large companies, users have the *final* word when it comes to in-house applications, and very headstrong non-technical people end up making those decisions, so whatever those people want GOES -- and IT gets the blame if those people don't guess correctly. I've seen it at several large companies -- as far as I can tell, it's just The Way.
On the flip side, IT is to blame (sort of) because we are often in the position of having to deny requests, reduce functionality, or take other shortcuts just so we can meet immutable deadlines and budgets. The real world often does nasty things to Dream Projects, and IT is usually the ones who have to deliver the bad news. Time to wake up, your dream is over, and your budget isn't big enough to buy what you've requested.
Finally, there is a nasty bit of hidden overhead that users rarely take into account. When it comes to writing custom in-house software, IT must wear two hats. We need an intimate undestanding of programming, databases, networks, and more esoteric things like good UI design, various levels and types of architecture, the available frameworks and libraries, OOP theory, and so on... but then on top of that, we have to learn the user's job, too. In fact, since our "work product" has to CORRECTLY support, improve, emulate, and/or reproduce their "work product", we often have to learn their job BETTER than they know it. Little details they can ignore, or track down when it becomes an issue -- all must be accounted for UP FRONT before you can safely build a new system to do that job. This requires serious effort, no small amount of brains, dedication, and talent, and often receives no recognition whatsoever. The user thinks IT overstates the difficulty of our jobs (because after all, THEY do their job every day, and "all" we have to do is what they do every day), and consequently their opinion of us goes down at every turn.
This reminds me of my current project. I asked the users how they wanted the software to handle a rare but financially serious condition which I discovered was a possible case given a certain series of inputs. The user was baffled. "But that almost never happens," was the best reply I could get for several *weeks*. They had a very difficult time understanding that we still had to account for these rare cases. I could have taken the easy way out and just thrown up a warning (or some equivalent shortcut), which in this case would have caused a minor disaster at some point in the future -- but instead we eventually (slowly) tracked down the right way to handle the condition, and now it's a documented process which the application addresses transparently. Yet the user's frustration with IT inched up another notch in the process, and somehow, it's *our* fault.
I believe *this* is the kind of scenario that lead to the newspaper article we are discussing, not the occasional MS Office update.
Microsoft's Nathan Myrrhvold made a hilarious statement in an interview recently. When asked for details about Microsoft's processes for changing features in Office, he replied, "Software sucks because users demand it."
It's sad, but true.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Prototype
Unfortunately, Management decisions often mean that there IS no prototype, becasue there is not enough time to do the proto, redo after feedback, repeat.
You don't even need a computer. Pad of graph paper. Sketch it out. Pad of lined paper, list the common tasks, frequent tasks and the occasional tasks (rare tasks should be made available from the command line, if they are rarely used, and the GUI is already busy).
Then just mock-up the UI with the right windows, menus and dialogues.
It doesn't have to work (and can be better if it doesn't actually do anything, since the prototype will remain an abstract). Then give the prototype to the coders (or yourself) to implement. There will be some compromises, since the operation of the UI may be more difficult in practice than thought, and the easier path is to change the UI.
Working on a television program I had to get a fairly valuable and unique item collected from the states and brought to.uk.
...This repeated three times as I'm tranferred to or ring different branches of the Courier Empire...
Obviously, I wanted to track this parcel. There's an ongoing problem in that I'm in London, but our head office is in the north, which means that they insist on transferring me (when they will - sometimes they want me to call direct) to an office several hundred miles away. This is (of course) because the database that stores the shipping and billing information isn't national but per-office.
Now in this case I hadn't got a standard tracking number (either through an oversight of the person I booked the collection with, or because they don't use them for international work). This made the sequence run something like this:
Me: Hi, I'd like to track an international parcel, please - the reference I was give is CAR9873930
Courier: Who gave you that? What is it? Who did you book the collection with?
Me: Errr, well can you look it up by my account number? That's 908474.
Courier: No, I'm afraid we need the consignment number, but your account comes up as from a different depot - I'll tranfer you. (Or indeed: "this is their number - I'm not allowed to transfer you").
Eventually, I reach the office I booked the collection with in the first place (there desn't seem to be a reliable way to get to a particular department directly).
And lo, after only about 35 minutes of wasted time for a one-minute query, the original tracking number works!
I feel very sorry for those that work for the courier company - their job of providing straightforward customer service is hampered at every turn by their IT infrastructure's inability to talk to other systems in the company, or to display data based on any key but the one tracking number it was designed to expect.
Steff
Most of the work done in offices today used to be carried out in a much simpler way. There ain't no good reason why email, web stuff, word processing and other mundane stuff ought to be as onerous as it has become. It is unrealistic to expect rank and file workers to cope with such a ponderous mess.
As for the Windows vs. Mac quarrel, I say this. I watched someone with little experience get confortable with a Mac quickly. They became a happy camper. I don't know many inexperienced Winders users who are happy. I think that speaks volumes. Sure, Macs aren't a panecea. But they suck less.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I already do "appreciate the difference between what people say and what they mean." The only time I ever do precisely what a user asks me to do is when they've really annoyed me and I want revenge.
I gripe and complain along with my co-workers about crappy software (microstation V8 and MS Office mainly) and then shuffle back to my desk to keep using them. The main difference is that I know (by way of /. et al) that there is a better way. I want to scream when our IT guy says that yeah, he would upgrade our pathetic old fileserver but the company won't pay for the licensing (or something like that). And I know from setting up a Samba server on a junker box at home that our needs could be met affordably - but I can't get it through to the IT guy or the anyone else.
Just like you said, "luser" was the red cape to my bullheadedness, and I went off. Please do not let my short fuse affect your opinion of software developers: I am not one of them. My coding abilities extend not much beyond putting the paragraph separators and the occasional link in this text.
sincerely yours, frAme57
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
I have to agree on at least some of his points, and also have to point out that user interfaces have, IMHO, gotten worse. The real problem is (apparantly) a rush to make users think 'hey cool, I'm using a computer!' rather than to make it actually easy to do things.
For example. Progress Bars. Progress Bars are very neat and useful. However, Progress Bars that do not rise at a constant real-time rate are useless to the user. What do they care that your program is 75% through the list of necessary operations, when the ones done so far took 5 seconds but the last one might take 2 hours? This is combined with the stupidity of the progress bar at 100% - you should NEVER SEE that, as when the progess is 100% the task is done and the progress bar should disappear. And yet one of the worst culprits for both of these is InstallShield, which has been around for years and puts this stupid convention onto almost EVERY PIECE OF COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE.
Another one is the abuse of words in user interfaces. Having an "OK" button is fine, if you're asking me for settings or to confirm an operation. But "This application has failed and will close." errors should not have an OK button on them, because the user should not be requied to indicate than this sort of thing is OK - it isn't! Yea, I know, any techie will tell you that it's 'just a convention' but why use that convention? Why not use the totally neutral "Dismiss", as used by UNIX? Likewise, in just about every application, pressing the "Help" key actually causes information, rather than help, to appear - so why not call the button "Info"?
Even worse is the responsibility shifting. Get a bluescreen on WinME and hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, and you get: "The system is busy waiting for the Close Programs dialog box to be displayed." That sounds a bit like me saying "I'm waiting for my leg to move." What, other than "the system", is going to display the dialog - the CRT fairies?
When this sort of thing is sorted out, then we can start talking about apps being user friendly. Until then, I'll be doubtful.
Then ask yourself why the result of "right click on Network Neighborhood" changed from windows NT to windows 2000. Any good reason? Anyone?
There is this thing called a treadmill. The big boys want to keep the little boys on one. That way, they keep us more docile and easily manageable.
I relate vey strongly to your question. I used to do a fair amount of tech support for an small ISP. I had a picture of W95 dial up networking in my head. I could tell people what to click and what they should be seeing from memory.
W95 was the last version of windows that I used for myself before moving to linux.Making changes for increased functionality is probably OK. Making changes for "increased productivity" might just barely be ok. Making changes in most cases is treadmill thinking in action.
If we invalidate your skills, we can make you pay us again for training and certification - to do the same job as before mind you. For those of us who dont pay for training and don't get certified, we still pay with our time.
This is also part of the plan. Keep the little guys forever learning the same things and they can never have enough time left over to learn the things they need to get ahead and perhaps pose a threat to the big boys positions.
I think this same process plays out with products that are obsolete or break down before they should. And don't start with how credit cards are used to keep that old treadmill powered up and generating desired results.
N.B. It does not take a conspiricy for this to play out, just the big boys looking for what is in their short term best interests.
Any Mac heads know how to release and renew a DHCP provided IP address in OS9? Without a reboot?
Heh, I like these:
:)
"...tech folk 'would need both technical and interpersonal skills.'"
and
"Techies, professors conclude, must act more like psychoanalysts; they must learn to 'appreciate the difference between what people say and what they mean.'"
Notice how the only people who need to change are the techies? Now, while those may be valid points, I submit that if non-techies were less lazy and tried using their brains as well, many of these issues would be resolved.
That's why I prefer middle/back-end development anyway - my customers are other programmers
I really have to say they're some of the easiest to use software, well designed, simple to use and fairly powerful. itunes/imovie/idvd are good examples of how an application should function. No crazy wizards, you just open the application and start working. You can get some nice polished results when done.
Applications are just tools, and the less you have to think about the application the more you can concentrate on using the tool to create. Sometimes as programmers we forget that those using the software aren't thinking the same way as we are.
I'd mod you up and the parent post down. Really, I'd love to rant a little more, but you've pretty much said everything I wanted to say.
It's funny -- most of the replies in this topic basically prove what the article said -- that IT people have poor people skills and can't understand that different people think and work in different ways. Most of the replies are people pissing and moaning that users are stupid.
Amen. IT people are amongst the most arrogant and, paradoxically, insecure people in the world. When users are faced with increasingly complex systems and the only support to which they are pointed is a conceited jerk who can't understand why they don't get it and isn't shy about saying so, is it any wonder that IT departments are being disbanded in droves and the work is being outsourced? Generally speaking, the consultants who get paid more can work as a consultant at least in part because they -- shock, horror -- understand how to relate to people in a positive manner.
And part of relating to people in a positive manner -- bigger shock, horror -- means making software easier to use and ultimately more useful and productive for the end-user at which it is aimed. The people who fail to realize this are the same people who will also fail to understand that they're being laid off because the rest of the company is tired of dealing with prima donna brats.
I don't know. Being lavaliered to 8.3 file names would be enough for me to change. I personally could not live without the mail merge function of Word especially when it comes to databases.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Yep :w
Ahhhh.... The blame game. May I play too?
Blame managers that sqish production scehdules, don't listen to their "techies" about debug and test time and demand a new upgrade every six months.
Blame the consumers that accept crappy software and BUY it if it's "new and improved" even if it isn't really.
Blame the marketing Mayhem that is Microsoft for getting us used to the constant upgrade cycle, nee without MS to help us our current upgrade mania would have been considered insane a few short years ago.
Blame the teachers who haven't used the system for more than 20 minutes before they start teaching it.
There is plenty of "blame" to go around
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
This is a constant dilemma for a developer, because no matter how much you dumb it down, along comes a dumber user. I manage a password-required web site, and I get users who call because they can't log in, and it usually boils down to they can't type their password correctly. The most hostile exclaim "Why is this system so hard?" or "Why is this happening?" and I restrain myself from replying "because you didn't type your credentials in correctly." NO, that's "blame the user" which they don't want to hear, yet I feel vindicated when I ask them to enter a new password twice and then they say "it says 'you didn't enter the same password twice'" - after hearing from them "of course I'm typing the same password that used to work!" Ok, enough venting and back to work...
The author writes:
/. I rest my case.
Give me back my old computer stuff. And this is what I mean: I'd really like to have the system before that.
The funny thing here is that the "hard-core techies" this guy is complaining about would say the same thing! Reference all the PDP-8 / Amiga / VMS / Commodore / Apple ][ nostalgia that we are regularly subjected to here on
I do believe that software advances have left many a user out in the cold because of the inability to have their desire to learn a new tool match the speed at which the tools are revamped. I can't help but think, however, that the level of support currently provided for users allows them to get by without putting in any real individual effort. I would argue that support people do too much for their users. Technology may have moved too quickly for the average user, but it has provided a larger subset of support professionals who don't aren't represented by SNL-parodied stereotypes. I think all of us who do tech-support have tried to explain an underlying logic behind a process only to be told, 'just do it, I'll be getting coffee'.
And the vast majority of Open-source software is more usable?
Next time someone says - 'Oh, just recompile that and you problem is fixed', I'll thank my lucky stars that it is OSS and not a commercial product...
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
I'm seeing a lot of comments about how Linux or OS X or whatever is easier to use than Windows. That's not relevant! No one really "uses an OS" in the sense of getting work done. In an office, most people are running one application all day, whether it be Freehand or a front-end to a database. Or they switch between a few applications, but they still don't spend the day futzing about in a desktop explorer thingy. So we're talking about how well applications are designed, not OS interfaces.
(As an aside, I think that 90% of the people promoting "Linux" are actually promoting a window manager or desktop environment, and it makes very little difference what's running beneath it.)
What? While this might be a good line for an "A" paper in Mrs. Johnson's Creative Writing class, what the hell is the point? What is he trying to convey? If it has any meaning at all it may be that he has a persecution complex: Those IT guys are doing it to me again.
Then he laments that he was "I was handed a 53-page binder." 53 pages of reference for the primary tool he uses to do his job! Woha, now I understand . . . it doesn't get much more soul-crushing than 53 pages of documentation.
I say make this fuck-hole ink-stain his fingers on an old-fashioned typewriter and carry his copy around the building. Spell-check? Here's your new Webster's desk set.
Posting this story here is just flamebait.
If I had had to summarize it into two pieces of advice, I would say:
But we still use WP6.1, even though it has 8.3 filenames and an automated template system that's crippled (and was finally finally fixed in WP10).
..
... there are many more excellent reasons why upgrading from such ancient software would be a very good idea, number one being increased productivity. And you don't do it because you're phobic about asking people to spend maybe a half-day getting up to speed? It's not like the INTERFACE changes so radically with upgrades that it requires a week of seminars to be able to use it for everything you already use it for.
Before I upgrade our software, there's got to be a reason better than "there's a new version out". The new software has to fill a need that isn't filled by the old software, or it has to solve serious reliability problems.
Uh.. didn't you just provide a couple of better reasons than "there's a new version out"? Alot alot has changed in word processing since WP6.1; long filenames and working templates are only the tip of the iceberg too
Try this exercise....
Pick ten of your friends or relatives and visit their homes. Make it a mix of people who are techno-savvy and not techno-savvy.
1. Use their phone to make a phone call from their house.
2. Turn on their television, tune to a local channel, and get sound and audio.
Now total up the time that you needed to perform those tasks and ask yourself how much longer it took today than it would have taken 30 years ago. Even the most technically astute of us usually have to pause to find the right button to enable "Talk" on a telephone or input the broadcast or cable signal to a television that is not our own.
Amazing that while we have a lot more capability in our telephones and televisions, the most simple things have become more difficult because of the "bloatware" we've added.
First rule of software and all types of engineering should be: Don't make the user feel stupid.
JoAnn
Thus speaketh the pundits:
"Techies, professors conclude, must act more like psychoanalysts; they must learn to "appreciate the difference between what people say and what they mean."
and...
"tech folk "would need both technical and interpersonal skills."
Over and over I hear end users whining about how difficult it is to understand computers, when the apparent total extent of their computer knowledge revolves around the top four commands on the file menu. Try to show them something new (i.e., Copy/Paste), and you're rewarded with a lengthy lecture on how things used to be, and how much better it was when ignorance was bliss. While that may have once been true, the age of Internet-everything demands at least some form of end user intellectual responsibility, or something or someone gets seriously hosed.
And it's not as if this stuff is difficult. The last time I looked, ALL of the computer manuals and help files in my office were written in bloody ENGLISH! What, in the name of Christ, is so difficult about reading?!?
I think its high time end users changed their attitudes and took a few steps towards learning how to deal with technical staff.
Geeks are continually being fed lines similar to those above at just about every stage of their careers, yet there is very little being said to end users about their attitudes to "techies". Part of the problem, as I see it, is that most end users are unwilling to take on any extra knowledge that doesn't directly apply to their defined job function. As a result, anything a "techie" offers in the way of improvement is viewed with either outright distrust, or cagey cynicism.
For many, it is far easier to marginalize technical staff ("Oh look, the techie's talking again. Isn't he cute?") than to make an attempt to approach them at a personal level ("Hey Bob, can you explain to me why a DDoS attack is a 'bad thing'?). Geeks, on the other hand, are constantly reduced to deconstructing just about every aspect of a computer's functionality down to terms that border on Seuss-ian simplicity. What the end users seem to be unwilling to grasp is the fact that, ultimately, there is really only so much dumbing down a geek can do. New technology requires a new vocabulary.
BTW. In the field where I work, "techies" are referred to as "Computer Responsible Persons" or "CRPs" for short. Anyone care to venture a guess on how THAT acronym gets pronounced?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
I am a vendoer, they hire my company to do the work. But i see what you mean.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Sure IT people have problems. Some are their fault, many are the fault of management or marketdroids or someone else. But when it comes right down to it, it is impossible to design software that is easy to use by all who need to use it. It's that simple.
Let's start with a real world example. Many people drive cars. Most consider cars easy to use. They go as far as to compare them to software and say "it should be simple, just like turning a key and it goes!"
Cars are NOT easy to use. You have to take many classes to learn how to use them and log many hours of driving before you're even allowed to use them unsupervised. It takes years to get proficient at it (inexperienced drivers get in lots of accidents). They aren't a "turnkey solution", they require a very complicated set of actions to get it from one place to another, and the actions vary significantly each time depending on conditions, traffic etc. But since people do it every day, and are willing to learn, and practice and work hard in order to have the priveledge, they THINK it's easy.
Cars only are good for one task really - driving from place to place. On the other hand, computers perform HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of tasks. Most of the time, those tasks require the exact same steps each time you do them. But people are unwilling to set aside time to learn, and just complain. They ask for changes, but won't articulate what they'd like it to be like. They just want it to be "better" or "easier" or "more like [some invalid analogy]".
No matter how easy you make the software, people will still be unwilling to learn it, and will remain confused because of their own stubbornness. An example to prove my point:
We recently installed some new shipping software. We had to because it needed to interface properly with the company doing the shipping. It isn't the greatest software in the world, but there weren't a significant number of end-user changes, and all of them were good changes, mostly small ones. Of course, right away we get a call from an employee who is utterly confused. They were so confused in fact, that they shut down the computer and were afraid to turn it back on.
They had entered some orders, and with each a dialog appears asking for shipping information. There is a certain checkbox that they check for almost every order. After entering several orders, a dialog box popped up that says roughly "I see that you've checked [that checkbox] for the last four orders. Would you like me to check it automatically in the future to save you time?" It had two buttons, "yes" and "no".
Now, I would argue, that the course of action in this situation should be COMPLETELY intuitive, and any idiot should be able to decide which they'd prefer. But apparently that's not the case. This is almost an exact transcript of the conversation. No, I'm not joking.
Employee: "It came up with this box, I've never seen it before!"
IT: "I'll take a look at it." [brings it up on the computer] "Oh, it's just asking you if you want it to automatically check that box for you in the future."
Employee: "But it's never come up with that before! Why is it coming up with it now? What should I do?"
IT: "Well, it's probably part of the new software. It sees that you always check that check box and wants to save you time."
Employee: "But it's never come up before! I don't know what to do."
IT: "Well, do you want it to check that box for you automatically when you enter orders?"
Employee: "I don't know. I don't want to do the wrong thing."
IT: "It will just check the box automatically. If you have an order that doesn't need that, you can uncheck it."
Employee: "So which should I click."
IT: "It DOESN'T MATTER. WHAT DO YOU WANT IT TO DO?"
Employee: "I'm not very computer-literate."
IT: "Just click yes."
Employee: "Ooookaaay. I just don't know. It's never come up with that before."
IT: "Yes, you mentioned that."
You can see that the person didn't even want to try to learn what the thing does. They went as far as refusing to let the English language of the box into their brain for fear of being contaminated with thought. It goes way beyond being unwilling to learn complicated instructions or cryptic commands. They were unwilling to not be a robot. If a task involving computers requires any sort of independant thought, logical processing or even READING of direct, onscreen instructions, many users are completely unable to accept the idea of them performing the task themselves.
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
Are they using wp 5.1, or word 97? Both of these products work better and quicekr than currnt MSoffice bloatware products, and would probably be just as fast on a 486. We have one 98 machine still running office 97, and they can take it from our cold dead fingers. It runs better and quicker than office xp.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Attorney?
I've always heard lawyers correct me and be very VERY specific about the fact that a lawyer is a profession : e.g. "I work as a lawyer." or "I am a lawyer." and that an attorney is only a lawyer that's been hired to represent someone : e.g. "I am his attorney" or "My attorney is raping me with hourly costs".
Are you the exception? Or just not a lawyer?
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Whenever you see a "Dummies" book for sale for a piece of software you've written, it should be a reminder that your software and documentation are so unusable that users need to go to third parties to get the simplest instructions.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
Attorney:
one who is legally appointed to transact business on another's behalf; specifically : a legal agent qualified to act for suitors and defendants in legal proceedings
Synonyms lawyer, attorney-at-law
Lawyer:
one whose profession is to conduct lawsuits for clients or to advise as to legal rights and obligations in other matters
Synonyms attorney, attorney-at-law; pettifogger
(both from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary & theosauros)
IAAPettifogger? I guess.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
In your case Word's mail merge function is enough to make you upgrade. That's fine, for you. For me, it isn't enough, yet, and I shouldn't have to drag sixteen attorneys and staff members though an upgrade they don't want just for something we don't need.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
And so after a nice test-drive we knuckle-walked off into the sunset. But I understand end-users of software much better now.
And, for the record, I was going from this definition :
attorney : A person legally appointed by another to act as his or her agent in the transaction of business, specifically one qualified and licensed to act for plaintiffs and defendants in legal proceedings.
lawyer : One whose profession is to give legal advice and assistance to clients and represent them in court or in other legal matters.
Both are from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company
So, a lawyer is a person of profession, and an attorney is a legal appointee.
Not to get all nitpicky, but Christ, man, you're a pettifogger!!
:)
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
In alot of software products, marketing demand new feature be added for each release. This causes bloated software. It isn't just Microsoft that does this. I like Windows XP, not for the reasons given in the TV commercials, I like it because it doesn't crash. Users like software that doesn't crash. Good user interface design takes time, something that is not often available. Good user interfaces are not necessarily pretty or 'cool'. The article confuses support and development people. Some support people are arogant, often as a cover for lack of knowledge. Most users are of average intelligence. This statement should be self evident. Some are however lazy. Many are resentful of having to learn to use software that they had no choice in selecting. I don't like develpers being characterised as having 'poor inter-personal skills'. Frankly that is an offensive stereotype. On the other hand terms like Lusers are equally offensive.
Since the first Mac came out, nearly 20 years ago, I don't think there has been that much progress in making computers more usable. Every application works differently, I still have to navigate through menus, and/or remember all sorts of odd key combinations. I would have thought that, by now, computer interfaces would be way past that.
I don't consider this a user vs. developer issue. I have worked in IT over 20 years, but it takes me as long to learn a new application as it would take non-technical person.
I don't consider it an open-source vs. proprietary issue either. The same administration tasks are done differently from the Mandrake GUI vs. the RedHat GUI.
Frankly, I find that in the long run, it's easiest to learn the most primitive interface, and stick with that. I prefer to use *NIX systems from the command line, rather than learn a new GUI every month. I also find it easier to in the long run to edit HTML with a text editor, rather than trying to learn new WSIWIG HTML editors.
When will we be able to just tell the computer what we want, and let the computer handle the details?
This is why we should all read The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin. This is exactally what he talks about. Computers today are becoming so ass backwards that it's becoming increasingly difficult to type a simple document. ALL developers need to read this book and adhere as much as possible to these well-researched interface designs.
- Danny
Why Users Hate IT Products and Developers
...since when do we care about what do these lower forms of life think (if they indeed do)? So we don't only have to let them have the privilege of using our masterpieces, but we also must hear and take into account their uninformed and ignorant comments? Come on!
Well I think the reason why people do not like IT people is a follows. We are at fault for it. We as tech people will go around telling them that since they don't understand computers that are stupid. The other day at my LUG group the people were calling the general public a bunch of stupid idiots. Look at it this way, why work with and respect someone who just going to call you stupid. I know many very very intelligent people that have never used a computer.
I have at my church gotten linux used on 2 computers, soon to be 3. The reason the people were open to the idea, was not because I went in and started badmouthing what they were using, I went in and said this how we can make what you do more efficient. I have set up a network and installed a samba server and a linux firewall (this also allowed the church to save on internet connectivity, instead of 3 isp at 20 for the different users, one dsl at 40 a month a savings of $20 a month.) When you go to people remember that they may not know computers, but that does not diminish them, and does not mean that they are idiots.
Mr. Fisher,
;o)
Your column was linked to on www.slashdot.org. I read it with great interest, as I am an IT professional.
While I sympathize with you and 'end users' everywhere, I have to say that it would do the average computer user a great deal of good to walk a mile in the shoes of IT.
As a responsible programmer, I'm all too painfully aware of the bevy of outright HORRIBLE applications out there. In fact, my primary job is enhancing just such an application by creating software tools that allow my co-workers to AVOID using the really bad parts of it.
The real problem, however, lies in that the only reason we have it in the first place is the decision to purchase it for the princely sum of $300,000 was made by the CEO, CFO, upper management, and our former CIO. The reason he's our former CIO is that he's an incompetent buffoon and the rest of management, who hired him, are not qualified to hire IT personnel, just as they are not qualified to work in IT. Should the IT staff be required to interview their own potential boss??
These horrific applications would never be allowed to exist if natural selection were given a chance to take its course. Unfortunately, in the business world, IT purchasing and hiring decisions are often made by purchasing and human resources, not IT.
As for our perceived arrogance, you would not believe the things we hear on a daily basis. To say we are jaded would be a gross understatement. Users report errors without bothering to remember or write down the actual message. They tell us in great and comically incorrect detail what to do for them instead of simply describing their needs and allowing us to understand what they really want to accomplish. They say things like 'I bought this. Can you install it for me?' instead of 'I need a scanner.' and then wonder why it won't do what they wanted it to. They install every insidious cutesy internet spyware screensaver application they can get their grubby mitts on against every guideline we give them and then come whining to us about the 'sudden increase in spam'.
I could go on for pages with examples, but you have a new system to learn
Allow me to close with these thoughts. Something about a computer seems, in the eyes of IT, to make grown educated adults unable to reason or even READ PLAIN ENGLISH. Those same people, when given a tool that is there to make them more able to do their jobs efficiently, will not be bothered to attempt to understand it beyond the barest functional necessity.
We are IT. That's how we see it from over here in our shoes.
I'm tired of it. Why? Because the job description for every position in the company specifically requires knowledge of Windows and Office. When somebody starts their new job and doesn't even know how to use a mouse, should I have any sympathy? No, it is part of the skillset they were required to have to get the job!
One or more of those "extroverted, intuitive" VP's must have approved the IT project that this guy is complaining about. What were they thinking when they gave the go-ahead to spend their money and everyone's time on this hated upgrade?
Why does this fellow pick solely upon the techies, and gloss over the decision-making business folks that (in their infinite wisdom, for which they are paid accordingly) made it possible for this terrible chain of events to begin?
Techies certainly have their moments; but, techies almost never get the chance to impose their will on all of the poor users by fiat. Somewhere, some officer who should know better got all hot and bothered... why don't they share the blame?
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
you are obligated to find books on UI, read and understand them. There are several good books out there. Once you understand the fundimentals, you can include them with your intial design so you don't have to go back and do them in some sort of "UI" phase of development.
In Other Words, RTFM!
And here is a wild thought, design thein such a away you can reuse them. I know, its a crazy thought.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Blame the testers, too.
Management in most shops is deathly afraid of anyone in their particular department being seen making waves. Especially if a rival department (e.g. IT) is involved. So what happens when IT asks a manager to choose people to help test new software?
Management will choose the person or persons least likely to complain. While the corporate software testing phase needs the 'end user from hell' instead it winds up getting a bunch of cheerleaders.
Perkiness levels surrounding such testing have been shown to be dangerous to diabetics as well as curmudgeons.
The users I call "prey." =)
Oh, how I'd like to work for a company with such an enlightened IT department. Besides mandating equipment, most IT departments of my acquaintance mandate software on both server and client, and prohibit (or obstruct) use of anything else, making it difficult for progficient users from selecting their own tools and novices from discovering what works best for them.
> Here's a bit of common junk science from the article:
> In a study of 8,000 tech projects in businesses, only 16 percent of the new systems were deemed successes
>
> What, exactly, is a "tech project"? Define "new systems". What criteria is applied to conclude whether things may be
> "deem successes" and by whom?
This figure doesn't sound that far out of line to me. In another study quoted in the IEEE _Computer Magazine_, 2 out of 3 MAJOR projects (e.g., with budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars), are never completed. And in this instance, this figure referred to software installs or upgrades -- e.g., installing or upgrading an Oracle database, migrating from one mail system to MS Outlook, etc.
(FWIW, smaller projects had a much higher rate of success -- IIRC, somewhere in the 70-80% range.)
And if you added to that miserable 66% failure rate all of the projects that were completed, but later rolled back, abandoned, or judged to have been a disaster, an 84% failure rate is believable. In the last few years, I saw a previous employer -- a telco -- give up on migrating its billing system to a new system, I watched the city I live in lose millions of dollars in revenue in trying to upgrade its billing system for water & sewer charges. These were completed projects that couldn't be accurately called ``successes".
> I could pick this apart in my sleep.
Probably. But the fact that many organizations would be much better off adopting an ``if it isn't broke, don't fix it" attitude towards their technology is damning enough about our industry.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
because they are wretched.
People simply will not pay the top dollar needed for GOOD user interface.
Plus.. if you've ever seen the difference between eneginner & marketing for any given product.. you'd see in a jiffy why things are so messed up. What you often end up with as a final product is the engineers great work, kludged up to be something like what the marketroids told everyone it would be... the end result being not really a good version of either.
We also worship complexity in Computer Science. The more complex it is, the more: (a) bugs may exist, and (b) confusion may be cast upon the consumer.
Both (a) and (b) require us to turn out more revisions!
Sara, the "users are morons" poster above, represents a lot of developers, but not all of us.
Some of us have learned to recognize that talent comes in many forms, only a few of which care about computer technology.
My background is hardcore technical, but I look at cognitive psych as a technical discipline, and I try to pay attention to its findings.
There are ways of designing functionality that minimize cognitive load without sacrificing power. Unfortunately, most developers are so ignorant of the field of cog-sci, and so arrogant about their cognitive load-lifting prowess, that their designs are seriously suboptimal.
Even more unfortunate, when you point out the absurdities in their designs ("this is a lot harder than it needs to be") their inevitable response is something like, "I don't know what you're talking about. It's not hard for ME." The obvious implication being that anyone who complains about the poor design must just not be very intelligent.
What a bunch of clowns we developers can be sometimes!
Rest assured, though, that there are in fact quite a few developers who are aware of these phenomena. Ironically, one reason that it's so hard to clean up our act is because developers themselves *strongly* resist learning new things!
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I can't believe no one has mentioned Lotus Notes yet!
What a piece of overbloated cruft!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Developers' ignorance of another technical field, cognitive pychology, is one of the roots of this problem. Another is their insecurity: "you don't know as much about my specialty as I do so (regardless of the fact that I know nothing about yours) I'm smarter than you are."
;-)
So let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose someone remapped your little vi/emacs key bindings and removed the ability to put them back. Of course they'll give you a manual describing where the new keys are. That should be good enough, right, smart guys? RTFM, right?
Any complaints? Is it causing you big trouble? Well, then you're probably just not very smart....
[And, yes, I'm a professional developer, but one who respects the phenomena of cog-psy as they relate to both users *and* to us developers]
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Several posters have discussed the problem when a system built to spec doesn't meet the user's needs and how that is somehow the user's fault. The whole process of setting specs and building an app has been giving me heartburn for a while and I think I finally found an analogy that works to put the problem in perspective. I build custom golf clubs. I'm going to build a set for you based on your specs. I need the following information with your signature approving initiation of the build. List of clubs required. For each club: Head style Head weight Center of gravity Weighting preference Surface area Loft Lie Bounce Offset Groove style Face pattern Parallel or taper shaft Ferrule or not Club length Swingweight or moment of inertia Preferred method to adjust sw or moi if required Shaft vendor Shaft material Bend point DFSI Label alignment preference I also need you to define grip: Vendor Material Style Weight Over/undersize amount I'll give you a quote and build the clubs. Now, once you've gotten your shiny new clubs, it's not going to be a surprise if you tell me they're not what you want. Why? Probably because you don't understand the relationship between all of the specs and the performace of the final club. More importantly what you REALLY wanted was to loose 6 strokes on your game and unless I go on the golf course with you and watch you hit real balls on real grass you'll get the wrong set of clubs, but hey - I built 'em to your spec so stop whining and learn to play golf. Now here's a great idea. If you want to improve your game, get an instructor or at least read Golf for Idiots. Change the nouns to computer related stuff and it's the same problem. Go. Live with the end user for a while. See what's keeping them at work for more than their alloted 8 hours and design something that get's them home on time. Be a hero. Great thread. Dogu
I think the deal is, as many have said, that a lot of users are idiots. Not all, probably not even most. I work at a university helpdesk, supporting faculty and students, and you would no believe the stupid crap I get asked by people that have PH.D's for christ's sake.
Here is a conversation I just had with a user:
Me:Hello
Him: Hi, I need an ip to connect to the school
Me: All of our ip addresses are asigned automatically through DHCP. Are you setting up a connection on campus?
Him: No I already have a cable connection, I just need the ip to connect to PSU.
Me: Ummm, what is it that you are trying to do.
Him: Connect to PSU
Me: Connect to what, your email, grades, etc.?
Him: Well I used to have a dialup connection and I could do it just fine, so I just need the ip.
Me: Dude, what are you trying to do? Forget the ip, what are you trying to do?
Him: (Finally get him to tell me he wants to connect to one of the library databases, which requires settin up a proxy server)
Me: Alright sir, you just need to go to our website helpdesk.pdx.edu
Him:Wait, wait, helpdesk, dot what
Me: (in head: JESUS ASSHOLE, it's only the same suffix used for every other university related website, you think you could remember that) dot pdx dot edu And then click on the FAQ, then on Library.
Him: Ok
2 minutes later he calls back
Him:Uhhh, I don't see the ip on here anywhere.
Me: Uhhhh, what?
Him: It doesn't tell me what ip to put in.
Me: What are you talking about, you need to go to our website, click on FAQ then Library and it explains it.
Him:Click, click, ohh, I see it now, I wasn't following your directions carefully.
And there you have it folks, user who call for help and then don't listen to you. I also love the people who call up for help ro to ask a specific question and then when I tell them the answer say "Oh hold on, I gotta grap some paper, ok, could you repeat that"
There are just some people wh don't fucking get it. I've seen techies on slashdot make the analogy of computers to cars, that we are like mechanics and that computers and cars are just hard to do. Bullshit, I am a self taught computer expert and a self taught mechanic, the shit is simple, just sit down and do it rather than calling someone and bitching. Are there support lines to call for cars where you say "I keep turning this bolt but nothing happens, I'm sure it's a defective bolt can you send someone to fix it?" Hell no, you figure out how to fix the bolt your goddamne d self or pay someone to do it for you.
I could throttle whoever at Microsoft did this. Do you think that I could create directories docs\project1 under My Documents? No! Microsoft plops you back in My Documents -- My Documents is supposed to be this big freakin flat-file folder to hold every text document you ever work with. It is kind of like Microsoft wants tree-structure directories to go away, and be a good kid and put your documents in My Documents, put your .bmp files in My Pictures . . . I could scream!
Perhaps in smaller software development shops, they don't have product managers and UI designers, but most of the examples you are citing are from large consumer-based software applications that are built by very large engineering teams. A lot of thought and decision making goes into what features get added or removed from an application before the engineers write a single line of code.
Product managers like to load up the product with tons of features so that the software fits the needs of the many. End-users may use 20% of the functionality provided to them, but the 20% that they use may not be the same from user to user. To them, the goal is simple; sell more product by offering a do-it-all, 5000-in-one, Swiss Army Knife of an application.
So I ask you, why does everyone blame the software engineers who simply build what is asked of them? I guess it's because we are easy targets. I mean, we're not the ones with the MBAs or the people skills so it's easy to fault us for difficult to use bloatware. Wrong, not every software engineer lacks in interpersonal skills, but at the end of a long chain of decision-making, the engineer's opinion is often neglected because by that time, it's too late as the feature has already been promised to customers.
If the author is looking to point fingers at degrading usability of technological systems, he should look at the MBA-types, with the people skills who actually put together the product requirements that the engineers follow.
Both sides have vilid points:
First, the "It people" do treat users like dirt... but it's part of who we are. If we wanted to get inside of the heads of the average user, we would be shrinks, not IT people.
But in fairness... our attitude also partially comes from people who are unwilling to learn anything at all. (I'd say about 80%)
These people act so stupid it's easy to treat everyone like you have to treat them. I've taken the time to try to teach things to users only to have them completely forget everything I've said by a week later. I'm not the best teacher, but I know I'm not THAT bad at imparting information to others. A lot of people are unwilling or unable to learn, and the only way to deal with this en masse is to treat people like they're stupid.
That's just my opinion.
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it!
However, on the other side of the relationship, we also have eager beaver managers rolling out new version after new version with (I would guess) little benefit analysis being done. MS Office hasn't changed fundamentally since version 95 (with some exceptions), and yet almost every client site I'm on has Office 2000 or XP (although my current site is still 97).
Would you ever buy a toaster that didn't behave almost exactly like your last one? Can you say the same thing for software?
Microsoft greatly encourages this practice. Their site licensing makes you upgrade every couple of years to get the best pricing. Another thing they do is it either impossible or very expensive to get copies of their older software.
The users also encourage the upgrading. I've seen executive VPs ask why the IT department is still installing Office '97 and Windows 2000 on the desktop PCs. The implication is our company is behind the times and needs to "get with it". Mind you this is the same sort of person who will call the helpdesk at least 2 times every day with some sort of trivial question and complains to no end whenever anything on his desktop or the network changes.
Basicly you can't win. The vendors try to force upgrades for the sake of upgrades. If you manage to pressure from your vendors you get it from your users. The users compain if forced to use "outdated" software and they complian if anything ever changes. Management wants the company to be buzzword compliant but doesn't want to pay for training or any of the other costs of constant upgrades.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Shut up already.
Could you identify this study and how one might get hold of it? Thanks!
i think that flat file systems are the wave of the future. those pesky hierarchical systems take too much thought to navigate. i mean, all that time sitting around looking into two or three folders, why its much better spent on calling a tech support guy and saying that my files are broken.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
* dpkg hands stu a huge glass of vbeer ;)
* Joey takes the beer from stu, you're too young
* Cylord takes the beer from Joey, you're too drunk.
* Cylord gives the beer to muggles.
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