On Tue, 2010-04-27 at 12:12 -0400, tedd wrote: > At 4:13 PM +0200 4/27/10, Peter Lind wrote: > >If only the world consisted of smart users ... I think, however, that > >we're generally closer to the opposite. And no, I don't hate users - > >I've just seen too many people do things that were very far removed > >from "smart". > > > >Regards > >Peter > > Peter et al: > > Smart is a relative term. I have one account where the majority of > users are PhD's -- and they indeed have the "smarts" and the > sheepskins to prove it. > > You would be surprised as to how many of those forget their logons > and insist that they did not enter their logons as they were > recorded. For example, I had one user (i.e., fictitious Mary Smith) > who said that "marysmith" was not her logon because she always uses > "msmith" for all her logons -- but that was what was recorded in the > database. > > I tried to explain to her that the database doesn't make this stuff > up, for example how would the script know to use "marysmith" for her > logon if she had not provided it? But somehow it was the script's > fault for not knowing she always uses "msmith". Keep in mind these > are people with PhD's. I have many other stories. > > As I see it, one of the problems we face as developers is confronting > user's egos. They have an image of themselves and our scripts can > threaten that image by making them feel ignorant. We have to deal > with that in a way that informs them, but doesn't demean them in any > fashion. > > Here's a real world example -- over 20 years ago a company made an > electronic hand-held chess game. > > While the game was successful, the company received a considerable > amount of repairs, way over what they had expected. They wanted to > find out why and after an investigation they found that their > software made the computer's chess-moves TOO quickly. So, they place > a time delay into the software so that it would "look" to the user > like the computer was thinking about its moves. That time-delay > solved the problem. > > Apparently, some end-users got pissed when they thought the computer > could so easily beat them. But, if the computer took more time to > beat them, then that was more acceptable and the end-users were less > inclined to throw the game into a wall. > > So with respect to software engineering, how users view what's going > on is important. > > Cheers, > > tedd > > -- > ------- > http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com > Sounds like you've got a few stories that would a lot of people happy were you to share them on the DailyWTF ;) Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
