[Sigia-l] Re: Sigia-l digest, Vol 1 #657 - 16 msgs

[Hal Taylor]

The message below was originally sent to Frank personally, but it seems that
ATT has blacklisted some server between me and them, and my message was
rather unceremoniously returned. So, I'll post it to the list, and apologize
for its length...

-Hal
---------

> Hal wrote "Be careful not to equate development process and end product" in
> response to the following remark from me: "If the digital tools we have
> available aren't good enough for us to work with, then why push them onto
> consumers?"
> 
> The point here is that the end user will necessarily interact with our product
> via digital media and equipment. If this media/equipment is so hard to use
> that an upper-level manager can't figure it out, then our efforts to produce a
> product for use on this equipment are doomed from the start. It doesn't matter
> if our development tools and our end product are unrelated -- they're all
> digital and we interact with them via computers. IF being Digital is a
> usability problem in itself, then all of our projects are doomed to failure.
> And it seems that the argument FOR analog development tools OVER their digital
> counterparts often comes close to suggesting that there is an inherent problem
> with The Digital.
>

Hi, Frank.

Sorry, I'm just not with you here. The point that I was trying to make is
that the things that are important in the development of tools (tools here
in the sense of end product of an AI) are not necessarily the same things
that are important in *using* those tools.

For instance, if a group needs to all be able to directly and immediately
participate in creating a visual representation of an organizational scheme,
Visio (and comparable available presentation/development tools) are not
great for this, because they have an interface which is designed for one
user at a time. Sure, you can project your screen onto a wall so that
everyone can *see*, but seeing is not the same level of involvement as being
able to get up and change things yourself.

So, the questions here are not, "can people use computers (in a general
sense)?" or "is digital bad/good/whatever?".

And "digital usability" is in itself *much* too broad a thing to generalize
about. In 1992, I couldn't do too much with a PC running Windows 3.1, but I
found that at the keyboard of a Mac, I was almost immediately a power user.
I don't want to get into a Mac/Windows thing (especially since the
differences these days are relatively minor, compared to then), and I'm sure
we could find hundreds of comparable examples within current applications,
or websites, or whatever.

The people who I have seen touting analog methods for brainstorming are not
saying there is anything inherently wrong with digital tools (here I use
"tools" to mean those tools which help is in development, design and/or
conceptualization of a deliverable) in theory, only that:

"The presently available digital tools, with presently available input
devices, etc., do not seem to lend themselves to certain types of
collaborative development as some simple analog tools do".

This isn't "oh my god - computers are useless - there's no hope".

Also note that the same point above (some digital tools are more usable than
others, and some tools are simply not well-suited to doing certain things in
certain ways) also applies to your hypothetical upper-level manager. The
usability of the tools you design is in your hands. All of these people (or
at least those that I've met) have basic computer skills, can write email
and use the web. They're just not necessarily power users, and are not
necessarily interested in spending their time learning new tools which they
need for no other purpose than to participate in the discussion of work that
you are doing for them.

And again, the things which the tools that you have developed are not
expected to do the same things in the same way as the tools you use to make
them.

I expect that all this will change. Over time, all of those managers will be
replaced by others who grew up with computers and are so comfortable with
them that whiteboards and post-its will seem less natural to them than a
software package. Computers will become generally easier to use at the same
time. Someone will write a collaborative version of Visio (or something
comparable) which will allow 6 people to work simultaneously on the same
document (perhaps from their own tablet computers over a wireless network).
Or perhaps the nature of input devices will change, and the whiteboard will
*become* the digital interface.

But why are so many advocates of a digital process so zealous about telling
everyone else how they should be working, and how their interaction with
their clients should function?

-Hal