Quote demonstrating bad software design
From a paper I read recently:
Based on the observation that users did not use a number of support functions, such as the medical notes and the consultation review interface, future trials will include a short tutorial.
The authors are talking about a virtual patient system, but this probably applies to many applications. If users didn't use certain functions, in my book there can be two reasons:
- The features are not well designed, and users don't know how to access them or,
- They don't actually need the features.
Either way, the right solution is probably not to bombard users with tutorials, but rather to do some proper user tests and redesign or eliminate useless features (or even better, not bother to build them at all. Duh. Life is too short for useless code).
I'd say that's how bad software is built. What's your opinion?
Comments
Excellent observation! When I was designing the archstl.org site, there were many times when I simply decided to not implement a feature that was already there on the older revision of the website.
Instead, I waited until someone said they needed the functionality before adding it. This helped me (a) cut down on time spent developing features, (b) focus more on making the most used features really good, and (c) cut out all the cruft that was present in the old system.
Advancing the faith.
"This helped me (a) cut down on time spent developing features, (b) focus more on making the most used features really good, and (c) cut out all the cruft that was present in the old system."
Precisely: in the end, it saves so much time, energy and money !
However, I HAVE seen situations where features that were useful and not hard to find were simply not known to exist by the user.
I wrote some functionality into an inventory tracking website that I built at work to allow for a user to do a quick lookup on a serial number and do some common operations on that SN. Its not hidden, and in fact, the link is bold to try to drive traffic there. If I spend 15 seconds showing off the functionality to someone, most people like what they see and continue using it. But nobody will choose to go there on their own, even at the prompting of the other technicians.
While in one sense, you're right, if a feature was 'needed', it would have been discovered or asked about long ago. But I think human apathy can prevent a very useful and well designed feature from being used as well.
I agree that " the right solution is probably not to bombard users with tutorials"
The key is to make features in software configurable by end user. So that end users see only the features they want.
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