[Sigia-l] Tool standardization (was about visio or not tovisio)

[Todd R.Warfel]

Costs are almost always an issue. And David brings up a couple of costs 
that need to be factored in: licensing, training, support, hiring, etc. 
While licensing is a hard costs, which is easy to factor in, the 
others, which are soft costs are often forgotten, or not figured into 
the equation of selecting a "standard set of tools."

And that is one thing that I always find frustrating about the 
corporate mandated "standard set of tools" model. More often than not, 
they're looking at hard costs and not so much at the soft costs. They 
look at soft costs from the perspective that if we just pick one thing, 
we can train everyone to use it and they'll just figure it out. What 
about giving those people some say in the matter? What about picking a 
standard tool set, but getting input from those who are actually using 
it? After all, isn't that part of what we do?

I've helped several companies set standards in the past (small to 
mid-sized, educational, government) and while it's more difficult at 
times to make the case for letting users pick or have input on their 
toolset, it typically saves a great deal of cost in the end: less 
retraining, less frustration, increased productivity. Those are things 
that the suits in the offices upstairs often neglect.

Pixel capabilities for Visio, well, that seems like a no-brainer. And 
that would go a long way to make it a more appropriate tool.

Lastly, I've heard the argument time and time again that "We use Visio, 
because 95% of the desktops are on Windows." Well, that might be true 
when you look at every industry and lump together, but we're not 
talking about every industry here, we're talking about ours. And in our 
industry it isn't 95%. I don't know the exact figures, as I don't think 
anyone's investigated it, but I'd think from what I've seen it's more 
like 40-60% of UE (including IA, Interaction Design, Visual Design, 
Usability) groups are running Macs nowadays. Even if it's less than 
40-50%, it's significantly more than the often quoted and misleading 
"5%."

Imagine if the "95% of the world runs Windows" was used in the server 
industry, audio editing industry, video editing industry, rendering, 
etc. That argument simply doesn't hold water across the board. Look at 
your industry, the costs involved, the available tools, and make your 
call.

On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, at 11:10 AM, David Heller wrote:

> When is money not an issue?
> Central issue or only issue, ok? But it is indeed an issue and in 
> larger
> organizations you have less and less control over that issue.
>
> And quite honestly it is behemoth organizations that create standards 
> (more
> so than professional organizations).
>
> Other issues:
> Training, interopability, hiring all make having a single standard 
> tool very
> easy.
>
> You know I am not satisfied w/ Visio. I think it falls way short. But
> omnigraffe cannot be an alternative solution b/c it is only on Mac. 
> Like it
> or not 95% of the world is using pc. Personally I'd love to work for a
> company that allowed Macs ...
[...]
>
> I do have one feature request for Visio though ... Pixel dimensions 
> instead
> of Inch dimensions. I am designing a screen after all. ;)

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel

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