Humour

Designing OtherWare

T A Balasubramanian on how programmers can develop software for users who are so unlike them

Stepping in again with his usual flair for the unorthodox approach, Dr Don Jong takes up a brand new session with Bobo Jitter, the ever-bewildered CIO of Bazooka Corporation. Nicknamed ‘The Oddfather’ because of the unusual fixes that he offers, Dr Jong has built up an enviable reputation for answering technology’s multi-faceted challenges with aplomb.

“One of the weirdest things I notice about program developers, Doc, is this great divide between the programs they design and the response they evoke. For example, my best project manager, Brooke Bond, will often create what he presumes is great software—but it is completely disregarded by the users for whom it was designed.”

“Ah, but why is it weird, Bobo?” says Dr Jong, filling up his curved pipe and lighting it.

“I mean, Bond is essentially living on a different planet from the users he is supposed to produce software for.”

“Hmm. Why do you come to that conclusion?”

“He says he dislikes most users and maybe that is what makes him produce such duds. For example, one of our products, called LifeSmart, was designed to make the tasks of an insurance agent easier. Bond, however does not like insurance agents. He told me, and I quote, ‘Every day I come to the office and build software to help insurance agents be more efficient in their ongoing efforts to annoy me.’ Now I ask you, is that any way to regard a customer?”

“Just think, my boy. There are over six billion people on the planet. Can you be equally fond of all of them? The gap between developer and user can be enormous. It is like a bottomless pit, and it takes a keen eye to notice it. It is very rarely that you will find a product that makes users go delirious with delight the moment it hits the market. It does happen, of course, with something like the iPod, but that, as you notice, is very unusual.”

“Well, why does software never satisfy users? Why is that we go through these iterations? The endless tweaking to get things to work the way they should?”

“Well, Bobo, we cannot help being tweakers, like nature, which indulges in pushing creatures on the path to gradual adaptation. When we develop something, we cannot stop tweaking it, adding this or that because we want to please as many people as possible, and it is impossible to do this since we cannot have a one-size-fits-all solution, given the diversity of the human race. So we cram in more and more useful features. The problem is that this usefulness is limited to the few who need that particular feature. Microshop’s word processor is a good example. It has become ‘bloated’ with more and more useful features, but as you and I observe, few people know what they are and fewer still actually use them.”

“Why do they keep using it, then?”

“Ah, it is a matter of perception, my boy. You do not want to be considered a dummy, do you?”

“Of course not, Doc.”

“And neither does the vast sea of humanity we call users. The masses moan endlessly about complexity, but they continue to buy products that are more complex than the last generation of already complex products. They dislike any move towards simplicity. Personally, I think this is because people do not want to be considered as dummies.”

“Well, Doc, the puzzling thing is that Bond also designs some great programs that work for him and his in-house project teams—they work well, and he gets a lot of praise. In fact, every time he makes a product that he actually uses himself, it works perfectly.”

“So, let me propose to you that there are three categories of software. There is MyWare that Bond creates and uses, but nobody else does. There is the occasional EveryWare, which Bond creates for other people to use, and Bond uses it himself. But this happens very rarely. And there is this most troublesome and common OtherWare, such as LifeSmart, that Bond creates for others, who use it, but Bond himself does not.”

“Right, Doc. That about sums it up. And for the record, I should probably mention the obvious fourth category, which is NoWare. Brooke’s self-indulgent software that nobody uses, and it goes into the great blue garbage bag of history.”

“Ah, of course. But it is the OtherWare that seems to pose the big headaches for you, eh?”

“Exactly. It is the bottomless pit that you mention.”

“So let us face it—MyWare is not very interesting. Apart from the enthusiasm in your teams, nobody is going to use it. All of your worthwhile projects are about developing software on behalf of other people. Whether your software is commercial or for free use, it’s fate must be in the hands of the users, eh? Even if Bond dislikes them intensely?”

“We will come to that, Bobo. Now, this LifeSmart, do you have any users for it now?”

“Well, it is being redesigned practically from scratch, based on the feedback from a dozen agents who said they could not figure out most of the features.”

“Ah, so it is a work in progress, right? Now let me tell you that it is common for such gaps to exist when anything is designed. All this comes from what humans have borrowed from the natural process of evolution. Take the horse, for example. At one time, they were wild and of little use to us. But now, what a complicated creature the horse has become, thanks to our tweaking it endlessly for our own use—for transportation, agriculture, war, sport, racing and so on. But in

the beginning, when we started taming horses, who would have imagined this creature so finely fit for human use?” “But, Doc, programs are different from horses. We do not have the luxury of many generations to evolve a useful product.”

“Look at Microshop’s Windoves. Can you count the generations it has taken to be where it is now?”

“Maybe we should try and make our products more natural, Doc?”

“Natural technology is an oxymoron, Bobo. Nothing about any technology is easy for a biological being to understand. ‘Natural interface’ and ‘user-friendly’ are nice marketing terms that every designer likes to use when describing his product. If you were to put a laptop computer in front of a native from the Amazon jungle who has never seen any contraption before, you might see his ‘natural’ response. Shock and awe, maybe, but that is as far away from ‘user-friendly’ as you can get.”

“So how will Bond get across this pit?”

“With footwear, Bobo.”

“Footwear? Like shoes?”

“Yes. The twisted path to the user’s side is made by walking in the user’s own borrowed footwear. The people who use your software are not like you—they are in another field, with another kind of life. Bond is a software designer, but those people are trained in bike mechanics or painting or chemistry or selling insurance. He does not know how they see the world. Understanding their perspective does not come naturally for him at all.”

“Ah, so we become, in effect, the user? But that is so painful, Doc!”

“Voila, you comprehend! Indeed, it is painful, but nobody said designing OtherWare would be painless, eh?”