On 16/06/2010 12:40 p.m., Paul McNett wrote: > On 6/16/10 8:27 AM, Rick Schummer wrote: > >> Sometimes things are changed for the worse and amazingly sometimes they >> change for the better. It is true that Microsoft expends enormous amounts of >> money on user experience testing. Just because you don't like their findings >> does not make it wrong, and focusing on one minor change in the picture of >> lots of bigger positive changes makes good sense to me as well when you go >> off on a rant. Plus, you always have a choice to stay with the old stuff. >> Choice is good (or so I have heard). I am sure every single thing you have >> released in your software was perfectly accepted by your customers, and I am >> really happy you have never tried something new for them in an attempt to >> see if you can make things easier or better. >> > This is the really aggravating thing about maintaining and improving > applications. I > can think of many examples where I tried to improve a screen or menu layout > but they > wanted it back the old way because, even though they saw the improvement, the > heads-down data-entry sequence had changed, requiring the users to re-train. > > OMG, the number of required keystrokes had *gone down*, so you'd think they > would > have embraced it! > > I think we are touching on a fundamental inconsistency of human nature: we > are always > striving for improvement, but at a basic level we are horrified of change. >
I think we are horrified of *imposed* change. My experience has been that when you involve the user in the process, as in asking data-entry people for suggestions and possible shortcuts and reaching an agreement with them on which features they'd want, then the users take it in a really good manner, even enthusiastically. _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
