Re: sophisticated users? (long)

[Sella Rush <sellar -at- APPTECHSYS -dot- COM>]

>In practical terms, writing is triage.

Love that line!

Rowena, your recent experience is close to my heart.  I went through the
same controversy two years ago when I joined a small company doing
high-level database stuff aimed at programmers.

I have a couple of pieces of advice:

1.  Listen to the programmers (although don't take their word as gospel).  I
discovered along the way that many of the things they told me about the
users were valid.  It was difficult to sort out common "programmer
knowledge" from knowledge specific to our product, but even that process was
useful.

2.  Fight for a usability study.  If, like me, your programmers are also
your managers, it is tough to make them see that they don't know everything
about their users, and they they are not necessarily the authority on "the
programmer".  But a usability moves the issue away from general impressions
and assumptions, and provides a solid, quantifiable base on which to make
decisions.  I wish I'd fought for it then, but I didn't.  And it has made my
job harder on all subsequent products.  It should be relatively easy to
gather some solid facts about the value of usability studying now.

You and the programmers can speculate til you drop about what is the best
direction, but the only thing that will pinpoint the truth is to study
actual users.

BTW--I think the "Load the Toolbox" idea is pretty stinko--although I agree
with Scott's solution for online help.  In a print manual, however, a cross
reference isn't necessarily a viable alternative.

Sella Rush
mailto:sellar -at- apptechsys -dot- com
Applied Technical Systems (ATS)
Bremerton, Washington
Developers of the CCM Database