Comments on: The Inmates are Running the Asylum: review and RFE http://dubinko.info/blog/2009/06/10/inmates-review-and-rfe/ From an XML geek, a reader, a writer, a connector, a man of the people (says keep hope alive) Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:31:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Dan Sickles http://dubinko.info/blog/2009/06/10/inmates-review-and-rfe/comment-page-1/#comment-4578 Dan Sickles Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:39:02 +0000 http://dubinko.info/blog/?p=551#comment-4578 I also enjoyed Cooper's "About Face x.0" (I think the cureent edition x= 3.0). I particularly liked "Disks are a hack"... I also enjoyed Cooper’s “About Face x.0″ (I think the cureent edition x= 3.0). I particularly liked “Disks are a hack”…

]]> By: Bryan http://dubinko.info/blog/2009/06/10/inmates-review-and-rfe/comment-page-1/#comment-4577 Bryan Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:57:23 +0000 http://dubinko.info/blog/?p=551#comment-4577 "airport cab stand (75 cabs, 75 people, and it takes an hour)" how about: airport cab stand (75 cabs, 75 people, 3 dimensions, non-flying car, various logical reasons why one might not make the cab aisle infinitely wide, and it takes an hour) there are probably improvements that could be made in the cab queueing system, but the complaint is like a project manager complaining the engineers keeping saying that HTTP is asynchronous - more damning really because it's a technical complaint about the technical constraints of reality that we all experience and thus should realistically all be capable of understanding. “airport cab stand (75 cabs, 75 people, and it takes an hour)”

how about:
airport cab stand (75 cabs, 75 people, 3 dimensions, non-flying car, various logical reasons why one might not make the cab aisle infinitely wide, and it takes an hour)

there are probably improvements that could be made in the cab queueing system, but the complaint is like a project manager complaining the engineers keeping saying that HTTP is asynchronous – more damning really because it’s a technical complaint about the technical constraints of reality that we all experience and thus should realistically all be capable of understanding.

]]> By: Martin http://dubinko.info/blog/2009/06/10/inmates-review-and-rfe/comment-page-1/#comment-4576 Martin Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:30:57 +0000 http://dubinko.info/blog/?p=551#comment-4576 I think the whole thing is just an artifact of a highly specialized society with extremely advanced division of labor. While it currently shows up for many people in software or other high tech things, this is probably just because these things are relatively new and people are not used to them yet. I'm not saying crappy user interfaces are ok, but if you look at e.g. the way I have to do tax filings, this very much resembles a really crappy user interface. In many areas of life you'll run into specialist activities or topics where the specialists running the field have neither intuition nor understanding for "ordinary people" that cannot grasp what's going on. Medicin comes to mind, or car mechanics, virtually anything related to bureaucracy, and so on. I think what makes High Tech stand out more is simply that it's new. People are used to not understanding their tax filings, but with new software the surprise is bigger. I think the whole thing is just an artifact of a highly specialized society with extremely advanced division of labor. While it currently shows up for many people in software or other high tech things, this is probably just because these things are relatively new and people are not used to them yet.

I’m not saying crappy user interfaces are ok, but if you look at e.g. the way I have to do tax filings, this very much resembles a really crappy user interface. In many areas of life you’ll run into specialist activities or topics where the specialists running the field have neither intuition nor understanding for “ordinary people” that cannot grasp what’s going on. Medicin comes to mind, or car mechanics, virtually anything related to bureaucracy, and so on.

I think what makes High Tech stand out more is simply that it’s new. People are used to not understanding their tax filings, but with new software the surprise is bigger.

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