[Sigia-l] IA and Traditional Software

[Madhu Menon]

At 11:46 PM 02-08-02, Listera wrote:
>I have personally sat in on seminars where MS people told attendees (mostly
>consultants) how depth and complexity (read 'obfuscation') in their software
>created billable hour opportunities for 'partners', with a glee in their
>eyes.

Alas, this story holds true for more that just Microsoft. Most "enterprise" 
software applications suffer from this problem. Many a time, the company 
that develops the software also has an in-house "services" team, which 
offers exorbitant "consulting services" to help you configure it for your 
needs. There's a big conflict of interest there. If they actually made the 
software easier to use, clients might - shudder! - figure it out for 
themselves, and then how would they make all that service revenue? Of 
course, unwarranted complexity and bad software design is positioned as 
"flexibility in features". :p

I'm sure you've encountered non-MS software that had the same issues. Need 
I take names?

Regards,

Madhu
(MCS are expensive airheads!)


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Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net