Keep It Simple!

David Pogue says "Simplicity Sells"

David Pogue is a New York Times columnist who writes about technology. Watch the video, which although from 2006, still has great relevance for anyone who is concerned about interface design. He gives good and bad examples as he empathizes with the user. It's also pretty funny!

 

So don't forget to Keep It Simple!

How Do We Manage?

The organizational level of Vicente's human-tech ladder is, I think, pure common sense! Any dysfunctional aspects between people and particular hard and soft technologies at the lower levels of physical, psychological, and team, should be identified, and rectified whenever possible. An effective and respected feedback system should be utilized at every level, but especially when those interactions impact health and safety issues.

The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster: a failure in decision support system and human factors management, is a web page detailing the various levels of missteps and mismatches at every level of Vicente's Human-Tech ladder. This is documented by Jeff Forest at Metropolitan State College.

This holds particular import for me as I remember the incident so well. In fact, I was watching this live on the television and had insisted my young daughters watch with me as it was such a momentous occasion: a teacher was to teach her elementary students from space, how cool was that? Well, as it turned out, my children and Christa McAuliffe's students learned a very different lesson--technology can fail!

What I didn't understand at the time was how complex this failure was. It wasn't purely that the hardware had broken for some reason, but that many levels of communication and trust had also broken. I was shocked to learn that, for example, "suggestions made by any group member that would ultimately support a scheduled launch were met with positive support by the group. Any suggestion that would lead to a delay was rejected by the group." Jeff Forest 

As Vicente explains, for the consideration of expediency, the burden of proof had shifted, from reassuring that everything was safe to launch to having to prove that it wasn't. Safety was being compromised at this point anyway! Disincentives to speaking against the popular view are illustrated by a manager simply stating, "I'm appalled, when do you want us to launch, Thiokol, in April?" (Vicente, p. 187)

So how do we distinguish organizational issues from individual or group ones? Vicente points out that at this complex and overarching level we have to take a hard, critical look at "incentives, disincentives, staffing levels, management structures, information flow across teams, and organizational cultures." (p. 188) Each of these areas can have a positive or negative impact on the human factor, be it at the physical, psychological, and/or team focus, Hence, effective management cannot distance itself from context specific technical skills and knowledge. In other words, there has to be a realistic and insightful connection that links all 'steps' of of the human-tech ladder or human disasters such as the above will continue to occur. As Vicente notes, "The goal is to find out what's to blame, not who's to blame." (p. 201)

In a roundabout way, success at this level is all about relationship building and respect for human nature, which creates a community that allows and encourages people to deal honestly and forthrightly with any problems or barriers in using micro/macro hard/soft technologies. Denouncing a culture of "blame and shame" (p. 214) requires all of us to participate: it is too easy to be caught up in a similar pattern of knee jerk assumptions without considering any underlying factors. So, in a sense, we all play many roles in a variety of cultures as part of living and working in the world. By association then, we are all implicated in how we view 'Management" roles, duties, and responsibilities: each of us has to ensure the "flow" of information is happening and is a normal state of affairs.

As is say, How Do We Manage?