[Sigia-l] Design by testing

[Listera]

Here's a short, completely non-technical article (Washington Post )
outlining the perils of designing software by, for example, relying on
users:

Jeff Jones, Microsoft's senior director for "trustworthy computing," said
the company was heeding user requests when XP was designed: "What customers
were demanding was network compatibility, application compatibility."

Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34978-2003Aug23.html>

Now, some may recognize that as a classic Microsoft excuse, of blaming the
user for its own shortsightedness and ineptitude, but the result is the
same. Even non-Windows users are paying for this stupidity, by the billions,
month after month:  Love Bug, Code Red, Pretty Park, Slammer, BubbleBoy,
Melissa, Nimda, Code Red II, MSBlaster, SoBig...sound familiar?

Get the software out there, test it on millions, send patches when needed,
lather, rinse and repeat.

Oh, let's ask a few users what they think of leaving port 135 open. Why?
Well, we don't have time to explain all this port stuff and there's really
no earthly reason to, but what the heck. Oh, let's get a 'usability
engineer' to see if users like the notion of becoming infected even without
any action by the user, such as clicking on an attachment. Or if it's a good
idea to automatically preview/render stuff on our email app, also known as a
virus delivery device. Yeah, let's let the user make these critical
architectural decisions for us, it's their workflow convenience we're
talking about, isn't it?

Yep, "trustworthy computing," innovation by design, design by testing, users
know best, ask them, compile and ship, that's the ticket.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba