I am happy to hear that! :-) In the land of Firefox development, we have a cohort of very vocal users who complain very aggressively every time something is removed, arguing that we should just...
It informed one of the areas of software development that I've never considered before, as far as reasoning through it.
I am happy to hear that! :-)
In the land of Firefox development, we have a cohort of very vocal users who complain very aggressively every time something is removed, arguing that we should just leave it in as an about:config option. Hopefully readers of this piece will have a better understanding of why it is just not feasible to do that every time.
A great example of software with poor options UX is Git. Git is a tool with a simple clear conceptual core that's been absolutely wrecked by uncritical thinking around the design of the options.
I notice this in a lot of IT procurement too. It's impossible to have a clear, simple tool to do anything because everyone has some janky business process that they refuse to let go of and insist...
I notice this in a lot of IT procurement too. It's impossible to have a clear, simple tool to do anything because everyone has some janky business process that they refuse to let go of and insist that any new tool be able to accommodate. They are just unwilling to rethink existing business processes to take advantage of or work well with the tools they have.
One time, I had a person come through wanting to buy a software package that would convert hand-filled PDFs into word documents with the handwriting converted to text. They then needed the software to ingest the word document into an Excel spreadsheet so that a person could manually input the rows in the excel spreadsheet into a sharepoint page. The best part is, the user in the waiting room was supposed to select the PDF that they were going to print off from a tablet they were given. They were going to fill out the PDF by hand, then scan it back into the system with a scanner for this whole byzantine process to work.
I suggested that if they already have a tablet, why not just give them a web form on the tablet to directly input the information to the Sharepoint page? You can have the tool validate the inputs and even put a step in where someone personally reviews entries before they're approved to be fed into the backend.
No can do. Had to fill out the form by hand because reasons. Had to do 3 separate conversions because reasons. A lot of this comes from people who want to use software to automate away a specific job rather than automating away the need to perform a task. There's no consideration for how the job fits into the big picture.
Yeah, I run into that a lot. It's pretty infuriating. It's also sad because you could be saving these companies real money, but they're too caught up in their own idea to let you do it.
Yeah, I run into that a lot. It's pretty infuriating. It's also sad because you could be saving these companies real money, but they're too caught up in their own idea to let you do it.
The thing with mid-level or line managers is that their incentive is actually to maximize their budgets. This is especially true in the Federal government (where most of my clients are) because...
The thing with mid-level or line managers is that their incentive is actually to maximize their budgets. This is especially true in the Federal government (where most of my clients are) because saving money is taken as evidence that you didn't need it in the first place and used to justify slashing your budget next year. It's bad enough when you save on tech, but when they make you cut headcount it's almost impossible to create or open up another slot to hire a person.
This is part of the reason nobody every gets fired and there's so much dead weight. If you ever do get rid of a person without filling the slot immediately, Congress will take away the slot entirely and leave you short-staffed forever. Better to have a dud that performs at 25% than nothing at all.
Thanks for sharing this. It informed one of the areas of software development that I've never considered before, as far as reasoning through it.
I am happy to hear that! :-)
In the land of Firefox development, we have a cohort of very vocal users who complain very aggressively every time something is removed, arguing that we should just leave it in as an
about:configoption. Hopefully readers of this piece will have a better understanding of why it is just not feasible to do that every time.Oh man, truer words were never spoken:
I notice this in a lot of IT procurement too. It's impossible to have a clear, simple tool to do anything because everyone has some janky business process that they refuse to let go of and insist that any new tool be able to accommodate. They are just unwilling to rethink existing business processes to take advantage of or work well with the tools they have.
One time, I had a person come through wanting to buy a software package that would convert hand-filled PDFs into word documents with the handwriting converted to text. They then needed the software to ingest the word document into an Excel spreadsheet so that a person could manually input the rows in the excel spreadsheet into a sharepoint page. The best part is, the user in the waiting room was supposed to select the PDF that they were going to print off from a tablet they were given. They were going to fill out the PDF by hand, then scan it back into the system with a scanner for this whole byzantine process to work.
I suggested that if they already have a tablet, why not just give them a web form on the tablet to directly input the information to the Sharepoint page? You can have the tool validate the inputs and even put a step in where someone personally reviews entries before they're approved to be fed into the backend.
No can do. Had to fill out the form by hand because reasons. Had to do 3 separate conversions because reasons. A lot of this comes from people who want to use software to automate away a specific job rather than automating away the need to perform a task. There's no consideration for how the job fits into the big picture.
Yeah, I run into that a lot. It's pretty infuriating. It's also sad because you could be saving these companies real money, but they're too caught up in their own idea to let you do it.
The thing with mid-level or line managers is that their incentive is actually to maximize their budgets. This is especially true in the Federal government (where most of my clients are) because saving money is taken as evidence that you didn't need it in the first place and used to justify slashing your budget next year. It's bad enough when you save on tech, but when they make you cut headcount it's almost impossible to create or open up another slot to hire a person.
This is part of the reason nobody every gets fired and there's so much dead weight. If you ever do get rid of a person without filling the slot immediately, Congress will take away the slot entirely and leave you short-staffed forever. Better to have a dud that performs at 25% than nothing at all.
I am lucky that we can use Mercurial at work, because while I use Git when I need to,
hg's command line experience is far superior, IMHO.I've heard good things about Mercurial, but have never been in an organization that used it, unfortunately. I'd love to try it out some day!