There’s a very interesting column by Peter Coffee in this eWeek about idiot-proof systems, mostly in response to reader mail …
To set the stage: the previous column made the bold statement that software systems should be designed to “doubt.” He cited two examples from his personal experience of systems making mistakes which resulted in user disappointment. Essentially, he claimed, we need to get over the idea that technology is about the reduction of cost. Cost reduction only works in the short term, because when errors in the system waste the time of customers, the loss of good will has an impact which cannot be factored into your cost savings. In the long run, technology has to improve service to the highest level that is financially feasible.
In this week’s column, he refines this with caveats based on reader mail, and the first principle he expresses is one we’ve all had in our .sig files for years …
Systems can not be designed to be idiot-proof (at least, not at any reasonable cost) because society continually develops better idiots.
But he goes on to refine this statement in business terms, and it’s worth reading the rest of his article to understand the reasoning, but I’ll highlight the refining points here:
Systems should not be designed to be idiot-proof, because people do better work when they stay engaged in the process, and overly complex systems get in the way of this. Automatic systems need to sufficiently engage users to minimize the time required to reorient the system when something goes wrong.
Systems will not be idiot-proof as long as people are spending on business logic but are not developing process models and instrumenting the business environment. When you don’t understand how your users actually work, you can’t develop a system to helpfully automate their work.
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