It has to deliver what people expect - wait what?
I came across an article about tools that improve employee performance at work. That’s perfectly fine, of course, but something struck me.
It was an idea that roughly said this: IT equipment should meet expectations. I don’t want to criticize anyone, I would just take the liberty of standing up to that statement based on my experience in the following areas
- Users don’t have enough insight — infrastructure
- People have different experiences and opinions — graphical interface
- Simplicity and security often collide
User vs. infrastructure 👥
Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” And he was talking about something people could see. But once we get to the IT infrastructure level in a company, even engineers sometimes lose sight of what they need.
This stems from the shift to specialization within technology. If the IT people in the company aren’t specialists in architecture and infrastructure, their perspective and expectations may not match the needs.
For example, an outsourcing provider was selling individual virtual private servers to their customers. Each one had its own management environment, so it wasn’t an easy job. What helped them was that they were running individual machines within a virtual data center, but managing them all efficiently in one place.
In my experience, expectations of which infrastructure would cover the needs and the reality of what would actually do that don’t often meet.
Subjectivity vs. interface 🎯
One of the most glaring examples is the direction of scrolling on the screen — two global adversary camps. And now the question — which group is right?
Every person is different and also each person has different preferences. One thing is of course the system we are used to using. Then there are programming languages and applications and software…
User expectations do not always coincide with the design of the technology and its interface. Personalization is possible to a certain extent, but it is not possible to make a completely different environment for each user. Not yet.
It is much more logical to stick to best practices and make a reasonable environment than to try to please everyone. We all know that does not work.
Simplicity vs. security 🔒
We’ve all gotten used to the idea that good software makes our lives easier. We’ve enjoyed that era, and now we have to leave it behind because of the dangers that lurk in the online world.
This transition is more difficult for some users because they simply don’t want to give up simplicity. They’d rather give up access to their accounts. How does that show?
Take two-step verification. How much of a nuisance is it? In a global perspective, it’s actually very small. Getting a code, entering a code. But even so, because these two steps are an obstacle to simplicity and habits, some people hate this type of security.
Mismatch of expectations ❌
People expect a lot of things, but those expectations are not always right. Or appropriate. Or beneficial. For this reason, systems and technologies should not meet expectations. Utility and logic should be the basis. But as you can see, that is not always possible.
