Well, we'll just have to train people.

How to screw up a UI

[willybfriendly]

Classic large organization inflexibility. I just left a meeting in which a new rollout of a mission critical application was being displayed.

One particular subscreen was put on display and to a person (about 15 end users) everyone said, "That screen is really confusing. It is going to cause a lot of problems..."

The response?

"We'll just have to train people..."

AARRGGH!

Attempts to speak to the importance of the UI were fruitless. Should I start a pool on the date that the application gets redesigned? This is govt. work, so it will be a minimum of 6 months after it reaches critical mass (or within 72 hrs of a big enough screw-up to make the news).

[weeks]

This meeting HAD to be held in the United States. Every other country in the world the device works for the user. In the US, the people are to serve the device.

[lawman]

Many, many, many years ago, 60 minutes ran a segment on the VA (Veterans Admin) health care. The VA paid for special shoes for one of the patients featured in the segment. The shoes didn't fit.

The solution:

They wanted to operate on his feet to make them fit the shoes. Talk about people serving the device. :)

[willybfriendly]

Yes, US.

Government agency associated with "public safety". I believe there are approx 4,000 potential end users of the application, all of who will be subject to the "training" needed to use a non-intuitive UI displaying mission critical data.