Training Toolkit

Pigeons can push random buttons

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 10 Oct 2003 10:50 BST

Of course, there are many reasons why the employee interfaces get so little attention. Often, things change half-way through the project, and all the resources get thrown at fixing some killer problem that threatens the whole enterprises. All those charts are torn up, tiger teams are set to work hacking away at the databases and glue logic, and a working system produced just three months late that provides 85 percent of the spec. Skin of the teeth rescues are pulled off. Who's got time to waste on fiddling with where fields appear on the screen, or what labels are attached? Who cares that logically connected aspects of tasks are split across three different screens? It works, right? The employees can soon learn how to press the buttons in the right order. How hard can it be?

Such an attitude is dangerously shortsighted. Whatever it is that staff are hired to do, it should not involve learning how to press buttons in a random order. Even pigeons won't do that unless you give them a grain of corn when they succeed. People confronted with horrible interfaces -- and no way of changing them -- are not going to be efficient people. Sure, you can learn how to make it work, but how efficient will you be? How will you be able to transfer your skills to whatever new systems appear? How will new hires, or people covering your job when you're not there, cope?

There is little point in shelling out six or seven figures on a major IT project in the name of efficiency if you never bother to find out whether the people who use it have a fighting chance of being efficient at their jobs. In the great scheme of business, everything boils down to what the employees do and how well they do it: that this never enters the design equation of IT projects is one of the great unmentioned sins of technology.