Just What We Need
All great products have one thing in common: They seem to be designed just for you.
Successful products appeal to the hearts and minds of the men and women who use them, and most consumer products are developed through a process of testing and evaluation that keeps the focus on humans. The software development process is very different.
Typically, software developers bring just two concerns to the process—the business requirements and the technology needed to execute them. Many executives and software developers are convinced that if technicians can write the code to satisfy the business requirements, then the human beings who use the systems will fall in line and adapt their behavior to suit the software.
It’s true that managers can accomplish great things on a large scale by persuading (or ordering) large numbers of workers to behave in a certain way. In theory, if you post identical information on a thousand computer screens in your organization, you can teach a thousand workers to consistently respond to that information in the same way. But in reality this is not going to happen, because it’s just too easy for human beings to do otherwise. When the act of performing a task is as intimate as an individual sitting in front of a computer screen, with a private view of that screen, that individual has choices. He or she can choose to work quickly or slowly, to try something or not, and to be effective or ineffective. And this is where the absence of design—the inattention to human needs—becomes most noticeable and creates the greatest risk to a business investment in technology.
Whenever software systems create obstacles—technical jargon, ambiguous messages, illogical sequences, or visual clutter—the people who use these systems will respond in a variety of ways.
Building software that doesn’t make it possible for its users to follow a clear, straight path is like forcing drivers to navigate a succession of cloverleaf intersections and unmarked detours in order to continue along an expressway leading due north. The results will be similar: Just as some drivers will lose their way and others will cut across the median strip to retrace their paths or to seek an alternate route, those who use unsympathetic software will disobey commands whenever possible and try to find a more direct approach by navigating around the barriers. All of them will feel badly every mile of the journey, and they’ll be weary and frazzled by the time they reach their destination, if they arrive at all.
Part of the process of developing software should be to identify the most appropriate route from the perspective of the user, within the constraints imposed by business and technology. It’s not always possible to build highways exactly where we want them to go, and software developers often discover a conflict between what’s best for a business, what best serves its customers, and what’s best for the employees who will use the system. However, it’s possible to find a good compromise, one that utilizes the best available technology in a finished product that people consider to be not only valuable and but also practical and easy to use.
Many successful consumer products that are part of our everyday experience are almost irresistible because they appear to be just what we need. If products as mundane as a wristwatch or as technologically complex as a digital music player can bring us satisfaction and pleasure because of the way they work, the way they look, and the way they make us feel, surely we should expect the same results from the software we use every day.
Technology alone cannot satisfy our need for more effective, more satisfying software systems. The secret of developing software that communicates clearly is the traditional process of product design that balances business and technical requirements with the needs of the men and women who use these products.
We want technology that fulfills every business and technical requirement, but our best software products also seem intuitive. This doesn’t happen by accident; it represents a commitment to specify, test, and evaluate the quality of the users’ experience with that product every step of the way. This is an astute business decision, because the quality of the experience a product offers will determine how well it succeeds.
— Excerpted from Wrench in the System: What’s sabotaging your business software and how you can release the power to innovate . by Harold Hambrose (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York). Order your copy of this book.
