On Situated Software - Designing For The Few?

janbjurstrom writes "Clay Shirky has published a thought-provoking (and long) essay discussing the concept of 'situated software', musing on changes in software development, from general systems catering to thousands towards applications 'form-fitted' to small, specific groups and particular social contexts. A lot of interesting observations about the differences." Shirky argues: "Most software built for large numbers of users or designed to last indefinitely fails at both goals anyway. Situated software is a way of saying 'Most software gets only a few users for a short period; why not take advantage of designing with that in mind?'"

Comments

Other advantages

[f8ejf]

I own/maintain several very specialized programs.
One of them, CWirc, has a known target of maybe 15 people, and another 50 occasional users. And everybody who uses the program seems to like it a lot, because:

It caters to their specific, specialized desire

I have time to implement or improve things by request, to fit someone's wish almost to a tee (meaning, I don't have to make compromises)

The project is so low-bandwidth and simple that I can make it evolve exactly like I, and the few users, want, at the pace I want

So, while big projects with wide audiences are good, small (and also very small) ones with a very small audience have their place too. That's what makes open-source / free software work, because Microsoft and the likes don't have time or money for smaller projects, and big generic ones often don't do what people want.

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