Just over a quarter century ago, Springer-Verlag published a book I wrote titled Computer Confidence: A Human Approach to Computers. A year later, McGraw-Hill Japan published a Japanese translation.
I quickly lost interest in the McGraw-Hill version. The only text there in English was my name. And these days, it’s downright embarrassing to me to read through the Springer-Verlag version. What I wrote there is now so out-of-date.
Except for one thing, and that one thing has to do with how I’d come to write the book: I got my doctoral training in psychology at Stanford University, which is right in the midst of Silicon Valley. As desktop computer systems were being introduced into businesses, it quickly became clear that the systems lacked human engineering. People like Steve Jobs were recruiting psychologists to help move beyond a world of computerization where a major difference between hardware and software was that you could kick the hardware, but only curse at the software.
I wrote Computer Confidence as a call to action. I wanted to equip businesspeople—including retailers—with specific tactics for smoothly integrating the then-current computer system capabilities into their strategies for making and saving more money. And I wanted to equip computer system designers with specific tactics for maximizing ease of use by people who were much more interested in spending their precious time serving customers than in figuring out how quickly they had to escape the room when “Fatal Error” appeared on their terminal screen.
Which brings me to the one thing from Computer Confidence that is not at all out-of-date. We must continually strive to design our systems around the users rather than around the available technologies. As you build ecommerce into your retailing, what are the bumps for shoppers you’re working to straighten out this week?
No comments:
Post a Comment