Comments on: User Centric IT http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/07/user-centric-it/ Sam's musings on technology in the zany nonprofit world Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:54:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: schenkin http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/07/user-centric-it/comment-page-1/#comment-40 schenkin Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:54:02 +0000 http://blog.schenkin.com/?p=76#comment-40 It's all about your audience. Excel and Photoshop get away with it because their users have a level of sophistication. And for entry level users, it tends to hide the complicated stuff away behind menus and shortcuts. With that said, I'm not really interested in debating the merits of complicated software -- find a UX person for that :). I want to explore how you can take these lessons from software development and apply them to the Information System as a whole. It’s all about your audience. Excel and Photoshop get away with it because their users have a level of sophistication. And for entry level users, it tends to hide the complicated stuff away behind menus and shortcuts.

With that said, I’m not really interested in debating the merits of complicated software — find a UX person for that :) . I want to explore how you can take these lessons from software development and apply them to the Information System as a whole.

]]> By: John Misczak http://blog.schenkin.com/2009/07/user-centric-it/comment-page-1/#comment-39 John Misczak Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:46:04 +0000 http://blog.schenkin.com/?p=76#comment-39 The problem is that far too often, "intuitive" means "familiar" to users. It's a bias problem really. For someone who has used traditional corporate mail their entire lives, such as Outlook or Lotus, Hotmail will be a more intuitive system than Gmail because the folder interface is more familiar to what they already know. Never mind the fact that Gmail is far more flexible with its labels and archiving features (and objectively speaking, more intuitive to a technological neophyte). A lot of times, "minimizing" the amount of knowledge a system requires a user to know doesn't remove that much information at all. Powerful pieces of software, such as Excel, Photoshop, Final Cut, etc. are powerful because they require a commitment to learn them. Sure, it's easier for a user to pick up Windows Movie Maker or Paint, but they won't be given nearly as many features to utilize in order to perform their job. I would say it's not the minimizing that's important - it's the art of providing enough of a reward for the commitment a user makes at all parts of the user spectrum. The problem is that far too often, “intuitive” means “familiar” to users. It’s a bias problem really. For someone who has used traditional corporate mail their entire lives, such as Outlook or Lotus, Hotmail will be a more intuitive system than Gmail because the folder interface is more familiar to what they already know. Never mind the fact that Gmail is far more flexible with its labels and archiving features (and objectively speaking, more intuitive to a technological neophyte).

A lot of times, “minimizing” the amount of knowledge a system requires a user to know doesn’t remove that much information at all. Powerful pieces of software, such as Excel, Photoshop, Final Cut, etc. are powerful because they require a commitment to learn them. Sure, it’s easier for a user to pick up Windows Movie Maker or Paint, but they won’t be given nearly as many features to utilize in order to perform their job. I would say it’s not the minimizing that’s important – it’s the art of providing enough of a reward for the commitment a user makes at all parts of the user spectrum.

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