Ugh, I should really edit my posts better ... 

 

 

 

Nope, she was great, the problem was that the team - highly experienced and talented people all of them - couldn't think like their customers when it came to interaction with their technology.

 

I see a lot of that also, but I see it from both sides.  It's rare to see a developer understand both sides of the coin (I consider myself as having that ability to bring both sides into focus).  Part of developer side of the problem is around separation of tasks ... development teams are being pushed into small groups with more specific skill sets, they don't get cross-trained/migrated into other parts of the software.  As a result they don't get exposed to end users and they don't follow the concept that "less" is "more".  Adding software feature options doesn't necessarily mean make the UI more complex ... the complexity of the UI can be tailored to an end users way of working and with "intelligent" defaults based on what most people want.

 

BUT, on the flip side of the coin, end users often don't understand or can't communicate what they really want ... they ask for things that are directly opposing and logically impossible ... what they are thinking maybe possible, but what they are communicating is impossible.  So it's really a challenge of trying to help the end user understand what it is they really want and not what it is they "think" they want.  The best way to get information out of an end user is to present ideas as "questions" ... seed the process/idea, BUT let the end user "discover" it for themselves ... this really works well, it's "their" achievement and they get on board with it which helps progress a UI faster.  And for the most part you can pretty much apply this process of managed cooperation to just about anything ... sure, there will be times when it doesn't work, and that's easy to identify early and that's when a new course of action is required and you have to work around the problem.

 

To bring this video back and sadly a very accurate reality of working in the corporate world (had many meetings like that when I used to work for BofA):

 

 

Cheers, Rob.

As a former DOS database programmer in Clipper oh, so many years ago, I kinda understand what you guys are saying.  But I was programming for specific customers and they gave me all the input I needed; inputs, outputs, and what they wanted the screen to look like.

 

When window appeared on the scene I gave it up..

 

As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

 

Noel