DarkWyrm's Haiku Site Designer Power Tools: Computers are Drills and Saws Done in Software

Designer Power Tools

Who is George Doughty? No one most of us know, but someone we can sympathize with. He is a bar owner who lives in Lafayette, Colorado. He was arrested on charges of felony menacing, reckless endangerment and the prohibited use of weapons. Why? He shot his computer. As the story goes, he emerged from his on-site office and announced that he was going to shoot his computer. Half an hour later, he returned with a Dell laptop, set it on the floor, asked two customers to cover their ears, and the said notebook took four bullets.

Microsoft has developed an unsavory reputation with a lot of different kinds of people for a lot of reasons. One of them is what I call "badgering the user. " I have met many, many users who think computers don't "like" them, they are simply not good with them, or don't understand how to use them. Simply put, computers make them feel stupid. For example, a college student may say to campus support staff, "I need to print out this paper for my Medieval Plumbing class, but every time I print it, it keeps coming out the wrong way, and class starts in 15 minutes!" In my support days when I was also much more cynical and much less patient, my first thought would have been "Man, this guy needs five bucks to buy a clue!" followed by quickly showing him how to reorient page layout from Landscape to Portrait and sending him on his merry way. Nowadays, I still do support for my school, but when asked something about why MS Office isn't doing what it's supposed to, I remind myself of how much I can't stand Microsoft and its shoddy software. The student was frustrated because everything he thought he was doing right wasn't yielding the results he expected, and Microsoft is one place where what you expect and what you get are all-too-often two very different things.

Shortly after I graduated from college, I married a wonderful woman on the same level of computer literacy as the hypothetical student mentioned above. It has been quite the learning experience for the both of us. When it comes to the computer, we look at the beige box in the living room and see the same 50-pound paperweight differently. I see a machine which I work with for both work and play and that I love to learn new things about. She sees a beige box which allows her to print parent newsletters and average grades for school. She sees the computer as the means to an end. I see it both as such and also as an end unto itself. For both of us, in any event, it is a tool.

Hummer is a renowned brand of vehicle used by the US Military, famous for being rugged and reliable. It is used as a tool by which personnel are carried, for example, and it does what is expected of it, but this is not by accident. Innumerable hours were put into its design. Developers, as a group, are responsible for building the tools by which others perform tasks. Why should it be any different?

The USS Yorktown is a ship in the US Navy which was given quite a surprise by a Microsoft product. In the Navy's Smart Ship program, off-the-shelf PCs running Windows NT Server 4.0 were used to handle tasks normally performed by sailors. A divide-by-zero error rendered the vessel quite literally dead in the water for more than two hours.

On December 20, 1995 at about 6:30 EST, American Airlines Flight 965 left Miami for Cali airport. It never made it. About three hours later, it contacted Rozo airport for clearance to land and received it. The crew attempted to select the Rozo flight beacon in the flight computer. They found out that something was wrong when it passed the strip and turned left. A minute and a half after it turned, the plane crashed into the side of a mountain. Of 163 on board, only four survived.

Why did this have to happen? It didn't. The NTSB attributed the crash to human error. It was, but the human error came about from another flaw. Their Jeppesen approach plates told them that 'R' was the code for Rozo, but in the flight computer it was Romeo, a navigational aid 150 nautical miles from Rozo, but with the same frequency. The pilots didn't realize their mistake until after they were supposed to be landing. A design flaw killed 159 people. Product makers sometimes forget that people, though not normally, can live or die by the design of their product or products. Power tools used in building houses are carefully designed for safety, reliability, cost, marketability, and ease-of-use. Why not software?

Some software is, but it seems like for every well-designed software package, there are at least two or three which are not. Computers and software are tools, and software must not only pose no barriers to the user, it must be an aid to the user in whatever task is to be performed. Great software doesn't just happen - it requires careful thought, testing, and effort. Our focus of attention needs to change. How? Wait until next time and see.

Cool Isn't Always Usable

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