[Sigia-l] Which box are u in?

[David Heller]

I feel this is semantical and not practical. It is a navel exercise.
In the end all media do something to people, not people to it, and all
existential notions aside, we are creating software for people to use.
The question is whether they want to use our software or not. My trio
was meant to be a goal standard of sorts, a lithmus test where if you
don't Engage a user, so they even want to learn, then you can never
TEACH, and thus your tools cannot innovate towards helping users
COMPLETE tasks.

The learn/teach dichotomy are two sides of the same coin. Any good
teacher is more than a facilitator. They do engage their audience, bring
them in w/ them along the way. Teaching is a very viable and important
action. Learning is what the students do. We are the teachers b/c our
tools are doing things that users (now students) have never done before.
It is our responsibility to be pro-active, engage, teach, and be sure
that our tools complete the task.

The rest is unimportant if we don't do those three things. I'm totally
in the right box ... Of course there is a lot more to this box, but the
way Paula phrased the whole thing this is what we get at this point. 

We aren't even getting into the HOW to engage, teach, complete part of
the whole thing, which is why I said these are goals (or checkpoints)
for someone doing design.

-- dave

David Heller
Sr. User Interface Designer
Documentum: The Leader in Enterprise Content Management
925.600.5636
 
david.heller at documentum.com
http://www.documentum.com/
AIM: bolinhanyc  //  Yahoo: dave_ux  //  MSN: hippiefunk at hotmail.com
 
--"If it isn't useful, it will never be usable."