Thursday, July 27, 2006
Ergo-geeks.
I'm not the first to say this.
I certainly won't be the last.
The IT world, for all its wisdom appears to be catching up with the rest of the world.
Human Factors are coming to be recognised, nay sought after lines of expertise within the technology development world.
Technology for all its wow and wonder, has repeatedly failed the citizens to which it was built for.
Why?
Like many things. "If I can't use it,.... it sucks and i'll buy the competition."
I like many many other professionals from all walks of life have found that we have a role to fill. The role to make technology products better than what they are.
There are many things I want to talk about. Most of them business related. Some of them culturally related. Some of them, just me having a blurt about something I found interesting.
Included tentatively:
- What do I have to do to get my boss / organisation to recognise that I don't just push graphics around?
- My tasks are complex, why am I the only one who sees that?
- Technology has been developed successfully without my help before, so why should they implement Human Factors Integration?
- How do I integrate Human Factors tasks into a technology development lifecycle?
- Standards? aren't they something that you write to constrain and contain the scope of developers to get 'creative' in bad ways?....(here's a hint, used correctly... NO).
and much much more.
(i'd type it, but dinners ready and its food time.)
Good night everyone.
I'm not the first to say this.
I certainly won't be the last.
The IT world, for all its wisdom appears to be catching up with the rest of the world.
Human Factors are coming to be recognised, nay sought after lines of expertise within the technology development world.
Technology for all its wow and wonder, has repeatedly failed the citizens to which it was built for.
Why?
Like many things. "If I can't use it,.... it sucks and i'll buy the competition."
I like many many other professionals from all walks of life have found that we have a role to fill. The role to make technology products better than what they are.
There are many things I want to talk about. Most of them business related. Some of them culturally related. Some of them, just me having a blurt about something I found interesting.
Included tentatively:
- What do I have to do to get my boss / organisation to recognise that I don't just push graphics around?
- My tasks are complex, why am I the only one who sees that?
- Technology has been developed successfully without my help before, so why should they implement Human Factors Integration?
- How do I integrate Human Factors tasks into a technology development lifecycle?
- Standards? aren't they something that you write to constrain and contain the scope of developers to get 'creative' in bad ways?....(here's a hint, used correctly... NO).
and much much more.
(i'd type it, but dinners ready and its food time.)
Good night everyone.
Not convinced this guy is right or wrong. I expect ill informed and perhaps a little intollerant of change.
All the same, he makes some good points, if a little inconcieved.
http://www.baddesigns.com/
Worst case... it's another opinion from someone who gives a damn.
All the same, he makes some good points, if a little inconcieved.
http://www.baddesigns.com/
Worst case... it's another opinion from someone who gives a damn.
Are we just over complicating what we do or is this for real?
Gosh, you know I was working with a Business Analyst today, who was helping me model our processes for how we implement human factors work into the development life cycle within my organisation. (Australian Government)
I though, "yeah sure, this should only take about 1 hour or so ... surely!"
so, 3 hours later, we've gone through the high level tasks and outputs of the initial planning / synthesis phase of an application development projects lifecycle.
I've covered off level one and two lo fidelity prototyping, hi fidelity prototyping, electronic test mule development for User testing, performance metrics, decision making models, risk evaluation models, treatment plan development, asset creation and management, site visits, card sorts, screen specifications, wireframes, style specifications, interaction models, patterns and pattern management techniques, hell the list just goes on and on and on and on and on and ... you get the idea.
Tomorrow we're going over the execute phase, and what tasks are involved there. Another long conversation with much posturing and pointing at documentation, spread sheets, and hand drawn sketches I expect.
So I gets to the end of a long winded email to a person who struck me as someone to keep an eye on in the future (see inspiration). And I started thinking....
" you know, I've been doing this for 10 years or so now, in government and private, and government again. And does it all boil down to the 4-5 pages of scribbles of A3? NO!!! I could have rabbitted on for another 3 hours or more if it were feasible to do so."
"so if I can rubbish on about the intricacies of user centred design practices to this BA, and actually have it make sense, there must be heaps to this"
"if that is so, am I over complicating the issue? Can't we just make screens look pretty? Don't we just make graphics and pretty coloured text and buttons? Doesn't all the hard work get done by the technology developers?"
Nah.
Its complicated. Its fiddly. Its involved and emotionally taxing.
I love it. its a hoot.
ciao colleagues.
Gosh, you know I was working with a Business Analyst today, who was helping me model our processes for how we implement human factors work into the development life cycle within my organisation. (Australian Government)
I though, "yeah sure, this should only take about 1 hour or so ... surely!"
so, 3 hours later, we've gone through the high level tasks and outputs of the initial planning / synthesis phase of an application development projects lifecycle.
I've covered off level one and two lo fidelity prototyping, hi fidelity prototyping, electronic test mule development for User testing, performance metrics, decision making models, risk evaluation models, treatment plan development, asset creation and management, site visits, card sorts, screen specifications, wireframes, style specifications, interaction models, patterns and pattern management techniques, hell the list just goes on and on and on and on and on and ... you get the idea.
Tomorrow we're going over the execute phase, and what tasks are involved there. Another long conversation with much posturing and pointing at documentation, spread sheets, and hand drawn sketches I expect.
So I gets to the end of a long winded email to a person who struck me as someone to keep an eye on in the future (see inspiration). And I started thinking....
" you know, I've been doing this for 10 years or so now, in government and private, and government again. And does it all boil down to the 4-5 pages of scribbles of A3? NO!!! I could have rabbitted on for another 3 hours or more if it were feasible to do so."
"so if I can rubbish on about the intricacies of user centred design practices to this BA, and actually have it make sense, there must be heaps to this"
"if that is so, am I over complicating the issue? Can't we just make screens look pretty? Don't we just make graphics and pretty coloured text and buttons? Doesn't all the hard work get done by the technology developers?"
Nah.
Its complicated. Its fiddly. Its involved and emotionally taxing.
I love it. its a hoot.
ciao colleagues.
Inspiration statement.
==warning!!! Warm and fuzzy stuff ensues==
I met a person the other day.
In line with this day and age, I have no idea what she looks like, or anything really about her. I do know this.
- guts.
- community / environmentally sensitive.
- starting out in IT.
- appreciates finer points of this world.
- knows people, what they do and why.
- is still figuring out her journey in the world.
Why on this green earth am I writing this?
Well. Simply. I got to speaking with her about a work related issue, and well she inspired me to actually start submitting things to this blog.
Because of that 'catalyst' I've decided to make a change also. I'm not going to pass on my knowledge in a one to one way like I used to. (not that I'm going to stop doing it, I'm going to expand on what I do). I'm going to write down and expose what I know, hoping it helps more people.
Help or confuse, I'm not sure, but anyway.
Expect more from me, more on human factors issues, my thoughts experiences, concerns for the future.
Likely expect a lot of unintelligible dribble and some astoundingly poor grammar also. Time is an issue, so some certain finer points of ... Well... The English language simply must be sacrificed for the greater good.
==warning!!! Warm and fuzzy stuff ensues==
I met a person the other day.
In line with this day and age, I have no idea what she looks like, or anything really about her. I do know this.
- guts.
- community / environmentally sensitive.
- starting out in IT.
- appreciates finer points of this world.
- knows people, what they do and why.
- is still figuring out her journey in the world.
Why on this green earth am I writing this?
Well. Simply. I got to speaking with her about a work related issue, and well she inspired me to actually start submitting things to this blog.
Because of that 'catalyst' I've decided to make a change also. I'm not going to pass on my knowledge in a one to one way like I used to. (not that I'm going to stop doing it, I'm going to expand on what I do). I'm going to write down and expose what I know, hoping it helps more people.
Help or confuse, I'm not sure, but anyway.
Expect more from me, more on human factors issues, my thoughts experiences, concerns for the future.
Likely expect a lot of unintelligible dribble and some astoundingly poor grammar also. Time is an issue, so some certain finer points of ... Well... The English language simply must be sacrificed for the greater good.
