On 5/3/07, Erik Hatcher <esh6h_at_virginia.edu> wrote:
> If the mission is to "satisfy your users", embracing their ever
> changing desires is by definition all there is to it.
Eric, I think you've nailed both the profound truth of how to go about
making our systems, and at the same time point out why we suck at it
(How fast are we *changing* our systems? How fast is unneeded fields
in MARC weeded out of existance? How fast are we at discarding
dependance on fielded search? How fast are we at adding stuff the
users ask for, like tags, community, comments, annotation, or, heck,
even a better-looking background-color to the search-result page ...
?)
And yes, that's all there is to it. But we're not doing it. Very annoying.
> Karen's point is starting with the user and
> working backwards is the only logical way to build ultimately
> satisfying systems.
... including, killing some of our babies in the process. I'm sure
that even if we've spent many years building systems that we think
work and they prove to be sub-par, we stick with it because of all the
intellectual and actual work that has gone in to it, and perhaps we
fear we're losing something by abandoning it. MARC is a good example
of such.
> I want to emphasize your point about users telling you what they
> don't want. Don't make me think! It's not what you add, it's what
> you take away. Simplicity is elegance. And it's effort. Here's my
> rallying cry for us to push up our sleeves and get to work :)
We definitly should get to work, but not just the grunts on the floor
and in the development areas, but the managers higher up the chain!
It's these latter folks I see desperatly missing from these
discussions and talks. My experience is that the business-owners and
managers up the chain are holding on to some idea that *they* develop
library systems for our users instead of us all developing library
systems *with* and for the users.
Anyway, we're patting eachother on the back here. Anyone else wanna
chime in and say I've got it all wrong? :)
Alex
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Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchymist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Thu May 03 2007 - 07:19:41 EDT