On May 3, 2008, at 7:49 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:
Sorry Jared, unless you cite people who've told you otherwise, I'm not buying it. I've never heard anyone in the software industry ever make the claim they makes things complicated on purpose.
Sorry to break it to you Andrei, but just because *you* haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. :-)
Before I started UIE, in the mid-80s, I first encountered this attitude at a company called Autographix, which made presentation systems (before the days of Harvard Graphics, Aldus Persuasion, and long before MS Powerpoint). They sold their software/hardware solution practically at cost and made all of their money on training and support, particularly on user certification. (Certified users could get a 20-30% salary increase because the system was so arcane.)
I was working on a small skunkworks project to produce a pc-based (DOS/ CGA) what-you-see-is-what-you-get slide editing system. It worked pretty well too. When we presented it to mgmt, we were told that the company wasn't set up to sell software that didn't require training.
After I started UIE, I ran into several clients with this perspective. In the early '90s I ran into a typesetting company that was in a similar situation. (The name is escaping me right now, but they were based out of Wakefield, MA.) They sold to magazines and newsletters and made a ton of revenue through their training and support. Their users also benefited from the certification by commanding higher salaries that non-certified page setters. Certified users produced pages faster than the best users of other systems, so the customers (newspaper owners) saw the benefit of the ecosystem too. They did everything they could to keep certification high.
At the same time, we did a set of studies for a company in Newton, MA that made fire alarm systems for large building complexes. Again, they basically gave their systems away without a profit and made all their money on support contracts and training. We actually conducted usability tests on "layman" doing typical tasks. If the layman (without support certification) could complete the tasks, we had to *change the design*.
There were many product managers at WordPerfect, Lotus, and Novell that had the if-we-make-it-too-easy-we'll-erode-our-market philosophy. I've also met groups at MS and IBM that had a similar attitude.
One that stands out in my mind (and which you may be familiar with) was MetaCreation's Kai's Power Tools and Bryce. While the designer Kai Krause was a fan of hiding complexity, the tools had a huge learning curve. There was at least one version that hid functionality from users until they proved they could master the functions already provided, then it slowly revealed new functionality, much like video game.
By the way, a lot of this comes from people who do a surface analysis on what makes games popular. In gaming, you can't have it be too easy. There is a requirement, for a successful game, for select users to have mastery that most users don't. In my experience, managers who promote the if-we-make-it-too-easy-we'll-erode-our-market philosophy often cite the success of video games as a rationale.
If I thought about it harder, I could probably come up with more folks I've run into in the last 30 years with this attitude. I've never seen the strategy work, but that doesn't keep it from emerging from people who are trying to be a little too clever (and avoiding the hard work to rethink overly complex designs).
Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
