The Digital|Vita system was designed by a team of masters students in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. It allows users to manage biographical information, output this information into several commonly used formats (e.g. NIH biosketches), and assemble research teams through expertise location and a social network. The system is currently in the prototype stage. See video of the prototype (8 min): http://www.dental.pitt.edu/informatics/orc/
"users are idiots" I think this is a very arrogant statement. Being an enduser of many software products as well as a developer dealing with endusers, I more often utter the opposite "developers are idiots."
Your car analogy is flawed because when the first cars came up, owners probably said exactly the same about cars "users think that their cars should be simple" and "Cars are complex objects." However, mainstream manufacturing has shown that operating a car can be simplified.
Blaming the user is easy and takes away from the burden which you as developer have. I just participated in a heuristic evaluation of verious software packages for practice management and it turned out that many of the long-time known usability guidelines were violated. I would submit that this applies to many software packages beyond the scope of our study. Clearly the developers' fault.
Today's software seems to be designed by engineers who are not designers. The design is driven by having technical limitations in mind and the need to be backwards compatible. Thus, you see such "leapfrog" innovations when it comes to the new software by, for instance, Microsoft. Some people call this progress, I would rather describe it as rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic.
CU
Heiko
Slashdot Mirror
The Digital|Vita system was designed by a team of masters students in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. It allows users to manage biographical information, output this information into several commonly used formats (e.g. NIH biosketches), and assemble research teams through expertise location and a social network. The system is currently in the prototype stage. See video of the prototype (8 min): http://www.dental.pitt.edu/informatics/orc/
"users are idiots" I think this is a very arrogant statement. Being an enduser of many software products as well as a developer dealing with endusers, I more often utter the opposite "developers are idiots." Your car analogy is flawed because when the first cars came up, owners probably said exactly the same about cars "users think that their cars should be simple" and "Cars are complex objects." However, mainstream manufacturing has shown that operating a car can be simplified. Blaming the user is easy and takes away from the burden which you as developer have. I just participated in a heuristic evaluation of verious software packages for practice management and it turned out that many of the long-time known usability guidelines were violated. I would submit that this applies to many software packages beyond the scope of our study. Clearly the developers' fault. Today's software seems to be designed by engineers who are not designers. The design is driven by having technical limitations in mind and the need to be backwards compatible. Thus, you see such "leapfrog" innovations when it comes to the new software by, for instance, Microsoft. Some people call this progress, I would rather describe it as rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic. CU Heiko
Now, we have to pay $49/y for something which fixes shortcomings in their hideous operating system? Heiko