Re: [ba-poker] please stop using outlook and update your virus definitions

[Ed Fernandez <edf(deleted the rest)>]

I've been watching this thread evolve with some interest and amusement.

As a Software Engineering Manager, I think I can summarize it as 
follows:

Engineering complains that users are idiots.
Users complain the product is too hard to use, engineers are poor 
designers and don't know their customers, and that engineers are 
idiots.
Engineering complains that marketing guys are idiots.
Marketing complains that engineering couldn't design good software to 
save their lives, let alone ship it on time. Engineers are idiots.

I think you can see the pattern here!

Anyway, the truth is that all are correct. Engineers are horrible at 
designing software that the average user understands and that works 
well. Users ARE idiots. Hence, even more need for well designed 
software. Marketing guys are (usually) idiots as well for the same 
reasons that engineers are idiots. They don't really understand their 
customer base and how the average user relates to UI. Thats really not 
their job anyway, their job is to do surveys and find out what features 
will sell the product and look good in reviews. Whether those features 
can actually be used is back to engineering and UE.

I my years of experience in the software industry I have found it to be 
so common as to be a good first order approximation that all engineers 
think they are good UI/UE designers, when in fact almost all of them 
really suck at this. They are very smart at what they do, but they are 
very locked into their knowledge and viewpoints and its almost 
impossible for them to step down to the level of the average user and 
design from that perspective, even when they try hard.

That is why Apple still exists in the world, that is their competitive 
advantage. Apple gets (mostly) how to design for ease of use. Even they 
suck at it to some degree, but are way ahead of anyone else.

The best and most experienced engineers tend to understand their own 
weakness for UE design and have learned to rely on UE more for input. 
But even then, its an uneasy experience for them. Its kind of like 
learning to understand radio waves, in a way. They sort of get it at 
some level that they aren't good at this, but they don't really know 
why (they suspect users are just idiots), but they've learned to trust 
that feeling and let go of the design. Of course this is in direct 
conflict with the other part of the engineering brain that fancies 
themselves to be creative artists (and to be fair some are). Which 
leads to the final statement of fact:

Engineering Management complains that everyone is an idiot.

Ed

On Nov 8, 2004, at 11:54 AM, Lone Locust of the Apocalypse wrote:

> On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, David S. Heller wrote:
> > > Designing for the lowest common denominator is what got us into all
> > > sorts of crap to begin with.
> >
> > This may be true, but it is unrealistic to expect everyone to be as
> > smart as you, or as computer savvy as you.
>
> I'm not expecting that.
>
> > It is a common misconception among engineers that the user is the
> > problem.  I hear this from engineers frequently.
>
> There seems to be a subtext here concerning your opinion of engineers
> but let's gloss over that for now.
>
> > The user isn't the problem.  The problem is a lack of proper human
> > factors engineering.  The problem is that the engineer didn't design
> > the product with a realistic evaluation of the user in mind.
>
> The problem is usually that marketing has imposed on engineering a
> requirement that the product be usable by a complete idiot.  And you
> know how that bit of Murphy's Law goes.
>
> This is what gets you stuff like "Our users are too <insert adjective>
> to open attachments, let's have them execute automatically."