Communicating by Design
American businesses spend billions of dollars on electronic systems to drive every aspect of their operations, from accounts receivable to global production and delivery schedules, yet many of these systems are unwieldy or even unworkable. Business owners have become conditioned to buying this technology reluctantly, anticipating that any new system will be difficult to implement; their employees, whose individual productivity is influenced by the quality of the software they use, have come to regard each upgrade warily. Too often, instead of achieving promised gains in savings and productivity, companies confront low rates of user adoption, unexpected training costs, and maintenance and support tasks that are difficult if not impossible to perform.
The disparity between the immense power of business software and its weak performance can be resolved, but the answer can’t be found in technology: The source of the problem is a broken connection between technology and the people who use it. Executives of both business and technology cling to a flawed development process that’s limited to making an assessment of business needs, specifying what a system must do, and constructing software products with little consideration of how they will work in the hands of human beings.
Successful software development is much more than a triumph of programming. At its most effective, it’s a process similar to the design, specification, and construction of a building, a process in which an architect collaborates and communicates with both the client and the contractors. As with the creation of a building, engineering is only one set of skills required to design and develop successful software.
Specialized business expertise also is essential to the software development process, but very few business executives possess the multiplicity of skills needed to architect the electronic tools of their trade; members of other disciplines are needed to communicate with the men and women who use the software on a daily basis and to provide essential information about how they interpret visual signals, how they learn, and what they are most likely to remember.
Designers are trained to solve problems by collaborating with professionals in other disciplines. When they develop software, designers may enlist the expertise of cartographers who can map a route through a maze of data, architects who can think in three dimensions, linguists who can provide words that people easily recognize, and psychologists who can predict what will cause most people to make a mistake. When designers and technologists use this information to design software, they can forge a strong link between the product and the people who use it, and they can design something that’s just as important as the software itself: They can design the experience of using it.
Software that’s easy to use benefits everyone: It gives people the freedom to turn their attention from the task to the goal, and it gives organizations a competitive advantage by lowering training costs and raising productivity. Although the true quality of software is invisible until it’s put to use, its performance can be tested and measured like any other product, and its success can be seen in the way it speeds its users to their destinations.
There’s no reason that most business software can’t be as easy to use as driving a car. What’s needed is a development process that’s designed to serve the people who use these products—an approach that has the power to revolutionize a young industry whose greatest achievements are just ahead.
—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.
