Did I say that we're heading for a release? This is always an exciting time in the office. (Especially when one crucial member of staff was off for two days after an after-show party. I have my suspicions about whether said tin man was in bed with a hangover or something else, but I hope he had a lovely time either way.)
It's especially challenging at the moment as David came in looking somewhat stressed and very excited.He has made a massive sale (he hopes) to a whole group of GP practices, but (there's always a "but" isn't there) they have an extra set of financial issues. They have been using some other package, and want to be able to export all the current data from package X and put it into our package (hitherto not given a name but let us call it "VAT's up Doc"). And their database and our database have some differences of opinion.
Now Ian, lovely Ian, treasures databases as if they were his third child (and more than his five-a-side football team). He is happy when thinking of such things as efficient sorting tables and effective queries. I don't talk to him much about it, but occasionally I hear snippets as I go by. Apparently incorporating this other system means a total restructuring of the data tables (whatever that implies). I, of course, want to get my filthy, little hands on the interface and see how their work method compares to our work method. But I won't get a chance. They are pulling Ian out of the development push to the release date so he can restructure his tables. Worse than that, if he restructures the data tables every other transaction that we use on the data will have to be checked, tested, and possibly rewritten. So there are some heartfelt meetings going on as to how they're going to organise the development effort and what features are going to be cut so they can squeeze in the restructure and whether the sale is absolutely guaranteed with a signed contract with plenty of exciting trailing zeroes.
And I know that they will cut it and hack it and do whatever it takes and it will require some front end re-design to make it work and no-one will have the time or effort available to ensure that the re-design is going to be user-friendly because what matters is that the transfer is going to work first time.
Oh well. At least I know it's doomed and I understand why. And at least there's something fairly stable there for them to hack about with. And looking on the really bright side of life, this does mean that David won't put any other featurettes in.
Monday, 25 February 2013
Sunday, 17 February 2013
What is maths for?
Some of you will have been following the controversy about Michael Gove's (the education secretary) ideas about the curriculum for primary and secondary education. Some of this has to do with how maths is taught and what it's for.
There appear to be two views about education: one that it is designed to equip people to operate in the world. So you teach people how to hew wood and draw water, so they will be efficient and effective wood-hewers and water-drawers and increase the country's GNP and so on; the other that it teaches people to think, so they suggest maybe we could have an aqueduct.
And maths can be seen as a set of tools in your toolbox, to tell you how much wood to hew and water to draw, or even how to set up the aqueduct at the correct angle and flow rate. Or it can be seen as a philosophy, a way of thinking about the world. Or even an art form, an occupation that is a human pleasure and delight and not necessarily for anything.
One of the thing that concerns me about interface design is that sometimes, it is a series of incremental improvements to make things easier, rather than a question as to whether the thing that is being done is worth doing at all. Yes, I know, that it is seen as a luxury. firstly, there are the bills to pay and the food to cook (and the wood to hew and the water to draw). But occasionally, if you have the time, ask yourself if there is something of delight in what you are doing. If so, it is probably worth it.
There appear to be two views about education: one that it is designed to equip people to operate in the world. So you teach people how to hew wood and draw water, so they will be efficient and effective wood-hewers and water-drawers and increase the country's GNP and so on; the other that it teaches people to think, so they suggest maybe we could have an aqueduct.
And maths can be seen as a set of tools in your toolbox, to tell you how much wood to hew and water to draw, or even how to set up the aqueduct at the correct angle and flow rate. Or it can be seen as a philosophy, a way of thinking about the world. Or even an art form, an occupation that is a human pleasure and delight and not necessarily for anything.
One of the thing that concerns me about interface design is that sometimes, it is a series of incremental improvements to make things easier, rather than a question as to whether the thing that is being done is worth doing at all. Yes, I know, that it is seen as a luxury. firstly, there are the bills to pay and the food to cook (and the wood to hew and the water to draw). But occasionally, if you have the time, ask yourself if there is something of delight in what you are doing. If so, it is probably worth it.
Tuesday, 5 February 2013
Organisational culture
I promised everyone an organisational analysis of the GandD's company. You've probably already worked out that I'm a bit of a fan of soft systems methodology (Peter Checkland). NO, you probably haven't, after all, I don't think I've mentioned it before. Well, I am, because it tries to deal with complex problems.
OK. Back to organisational models. You can think of an organisation as made up (like Gaul) of three interdependent parts. These are:
This is because the culture of an organisation arises from its history and previous purposes, as well as its current ones. It can also change according to the people who are in post.
The notes |I have refer to four types of culture:
GandD have each other, and they've pretty much split the company between them. You can think of them as the left and right hemispheres of the brain. There's a lot of communication running between them, but they have one to one communication with each part of the body. They see their company very much like that. They can't see why Ian would need to chat to Jeanette or Jeanette would want to chat to me, because you don't get hands talking to ankles, or ears chatting to livers: except of course, you do. There isn't just a nervous system running through the body, there are other ways messages are carried, most obviously in the blood. You can think of gossip as all those molecules being transported about, from lungs to heart to liver to pancreas to skin...
I'm quite enjoying this analogy. And then you can have new people coming in like blood transfusions, and how your muscles behave differently when they're tired, and how the placebo effect works and, well, anyway, I think I'd better stop there before I go too far.
Oh, did I mention it's Nick's show this weekend? I don't know who sneaked onto his computer when he'd gone out to get some coffee and changed all the system sounds to snatches off music from The Wizard of Oz, but they did a very thorough job. Even now, you're never quite sure if "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" is suddenly going to come pouring from his speakers when he's compiling a library.
OK. Back to organisational models. You can think of an organisation as made up (like Gaul) of three interdependent parts. These are:
- Systems: the functions that are carried out
- Structure: the layers in the hierarchy
- Culture: the norms and values of the environment in which you operate
This is because the culture of an organisation arises from its history and previous purposes, as well as its current ones. It can also change according to the people who are in post.
The notes |I have refer to four types of culture:
- Power
- Role
- Task
- Person
GandD have each other, and they've pretty much split the company between them. You can think of them as the left and right hemispheres of the brain. There's a lot of communication running between them, but they have one to one communication with each part of the body. They see their company very much like that. They can't see why Ian would need to chat to Jeanette or Jeanette would want to chat to me, because you don't get hands talking to ankles, or ears chatting to livers: except of course, you do. There isn't just a nervous system running through the body, there are other ways messages are carried, most obviously in the blood. You can think of gossip as all those molecules being transported about, from lungs to heart to liver to pancreas to skin...
I'm quite enjoying this analogy. And then you can have new people coming in like blood transfusions, and how your muscles behave differently when they're tired, and how the placebo effect works and, well, anyway, I think I'd better stop there before I go too far.
Oh, did I mention it's Nick's show this weekend? I don't know who sneaked onto his computer when he'd gone out to get some coffee and changed all the system sounds to snatches off music from The Wizard of Oz, but they did a very thorough job. Even now, you're never quite sure if "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" is suddenly going to come pouring from his speakers when he's compiling a library.
Friday, 1 February 2013
The value of installation guides
I was updating the installation guide today. This is not one of my favourite tasks. Obviously, I have to install the software as often as possible, on as many different operating systems as possible, locally and on a network and so on and so on. (Did you say that sounds like testing? You'd be right.)
I wonder how many people ever look at an installation guide these days? Download the program and there it is. Perhaps you might have a CD or DVD drive with a disk that needs installing, but mostly it is an unnecessary item.
Except for all the other messages it carries. What to do when things go wrong. What your license number is. Whether the company is solid, reliable, reassuring. Some of this is to do with human emotions. Although we may be suspicious of marketing, we still succumb to it, the weight and glossiness of an object. The sense that somehow it has value. The booklet is the only tangible evidence that we have that we have bought something. It must represent the value that we have paid.
I haven't mentioned much about the developers lately. This is because they all have the "heads down, arses up" aspect of extreme concentration before the release date approaches. The steady ones are getting more frazzled: Ian, normally calm in all situations, is drinking more coffee than usual. Nick is going straight from work to rehearsals. Loadsoftime Jack seems to have realised that there isn't loads of time, and is frantically flip-flopping between all the different bugs that he is fixing and introducing. And GandD are both very happy. There is a very very big contract in the offing. Yes, the re-organisation of the NHS, so disturbing to so many, has been a wonderful gift to them.
I wonder how many people ever look at an installation guide these days? Download the program and there it is. Perhaps you might have a CD or DVD drive with a disk that needs installing, but mostly it is an unnecessary item.
Except for all the other messages it carries. What to do when things go wrong. What your license number is. Whether the company is solid, reliable, reassuring. Some of this is to do with human emotions. Although we may be suspicious of marketing, we still succumb to it, the weight and glossiness of an object. The sense that somehow it has value. The booklet is the only tangible evidence that we have that we have bought something. It must represent the value that we have paid.
I haven't mentioned much about the developers lately. This is because they all have the "heads down, arses up" aspect of extreme concentration before the release date approaches. The steady ones are getting more frazzled: Ian, normally calm in all situations, is drinking more coffee than usual. Nick is going straight from work to rehearsals. Loadsoftime Jack seems to have realised that there isn't loads of time, and is frantically flip-flopping between all the different bugs that he is fixing and introducing. And GandD are both very happy. There is a very very big contract in the offing. Yes, the re-organisation of the NHS, so disturbing to so many, has been a wonderful gift to them.
Monday, 28 January 2013
Data, capta and astonishment
I'm starting today with a digression about data and a slightly mind-boggling quote.
The quote is from an article by Richard L. Lanigan, "Capta versus data: Method and evidence in
communicology", Human Studies 17: 109-130, 1994. (If nothing else, doing an MSc teaches you to cite, cite, and cite again.)
"Like most other human practices, research is largely a symbolic activity
in which "evidence" is mediated by converting experience ("observation")
into consciousness ("measurement") and calling it "humanistic" or
"naturalistic." Postmodernity has come to favor this methodology and
names the evidence thus produced as capta (quod erat inveniendum; which
was to be found out). Capta is that which is taken as evidence; it is the
methodology of discovery (Lanigan, 1992:215)."
OK. Have you recovered? Basically, I can summarise his position as data only has meaning once it has been organised, whereupon we call it capta (not a term that has made much headway in the world, as far as I know). Organised data, plus significance, equals knowledge.
So, a string of numbers is data. An organised string of numbers can identify your bank account.
Letters can be organised into random arrangements, into words, into sentences, into this blog. But they only have meaning if you have the knowledge, the mass of education and culture and abilities and humanity to read them. And they only have value to you if they stimulate some response. Interest, amusement, anger, whatever...
It is your emotional response that matters here. Boop boop a doop
Why did the turkey cross the road? It was the chicken's day off....
Arise, ye starvelings from your slumber, arise....
My country, tis of thee
And so on and so on and so on. Maybe each one of those organised clumps of data triggered some sort of response in you. And from our shared culture, I might have a pretty good idea about what they might be. Perhaps I'm even toying with you, setting up one expectation to enjoy watching it crash and burn.
And I can hear quote my favourite user experience recommendation (wherever I roam, I get back to UX eventually) by Harold Thimbleby "the principle of least astonishment".
In normal life, we love being astounded, amazed and delighted. It's rare that this is a good scheme in user interface design. Much like the rubber chocolate biscuit or the exploding cigar, an user interface that thwarts our expectations makes us feel that the world is a little less to be trusted, that our understanding of how it works is not as reliable as we wished.
And....
.....
......
I'm not going to say anything more about it.
The quote is from an article by Richard L. Lanigan, "Capta versus data: Method and evidence in
communicology", Human Studies 17: 109-130, 1994. (If nothing else, doing an MSc teaches you to cite, cite, and cite again.)
"Like most other human practices, research is largely a symbolic activity
in which "evidence" is mediated by converting experience ("observation")
into consciousness ("measurement") and calling it "humanistic" or
"naturalistic." Postmodernity has come to favor this methodology and
names the evidence thus produced as capta (quod erat inveniendum; which
was to be found out). Capta is that which is taken as evidence; it is the
methodology of discovery (Lanigan, 1992:215)."
OK. Have you recovered? Basically, I can summarise his position as data only has meaning once it has been organised, whereupon we call it capta (not a term that has made much headway in the world, as far as I know). Organised data, plus significance, equals knowledge.
So, a string of numbers is data. An organised string of numbers can identify your bank account.
Letters can be organised into random arrangements, into words, into sentences, into this blog. But they only have meaning if you have the knowledge, the mass of education and culture and abilities and humanity to read them. And they only have value to you if they stimulate some response. Interest, amusement, anger, whatever...
It is your emotional response that matters here. Boop boop a doop
Why did the turkey cross the road? It was the chicken's day off....
Arise, ye starvelings from your slumber, arise....
My country, tis of thee
And so on and so on and so on. Maybe each one of those organised clumps of data triggered some sort of response in you. And from our shared culture, I might have a pretty good idea about what they might be. Perhaps I'm even toying with you, setting up one expectation to enjoy watching it crash and burn.
And I can hear quote my favourite user experience recommendation (wherever I roam, I get back to UX eventually) by Harold Thimbleby "the principle of least astonishment".
In normal life, we love being astounded, amazed and delighted. It's rare that this is a good scheme in user interface design. Much like the rubber chocolate biscuit or the exploding cigar, an user interface that thwarts our expectations makes us feel that the world is a little less to be trusted, that our understanding of how it works is not as reliable as we wished.
And....
.....
......
I'm not going to say anything more about it.
Sunday, 27 January 2013
It's been a long week
First of all, have I name checked Dekker's Just Culture book in this blog? "Just", in this case, doesn't mean merely culture, or only culture, but a cultural environment that is fair, based on justice. My mind has gone off at a tangent here - it's Friday and I no longer have to pretend that I am a serious person. I merely cross-referenced to Robert Hughes "The Culture of Complaint" and then to C.P. Snow's two cultures and then culture vultures and then the culture of herbaceous borders and so it goes on.
Culture appears very much of a buzzword at the moment. There's a little bit that we covered in the MSc about it, about designing for different cultures, which covered how university websites present different aspects in Greece, China and the US, depending on what is seen as important to students and/or their parents.
That in itself is an amazing question. Is it the student or the parent who chooses the university? Behind that lie a whole set of assumptions and values that are tagged with the word "culture". Then there is the idea of someone being "cultured" which has a faintly superior air to it. we don't talk about people being cultured if they talk about Jay-Zee and the chip shop, but if it's Liszt and Chez Panisse, then that is cultured. But it isn't culture as in cultured pearls - though in both senses there is an implication of it being created rather than emerging naturally.
Our culture can be summarised as the totality of the external experience which we have internalised and trigger our emotions and inform our values. Some of it will be common - for example, western music conventions are widely recognised across the world, and some will be more particular to our own experience (such as breakfast choice).
When you create an interface, it is informed by your culture. What matters is whether understanding it requires an understanding of the culture or merely of the interface. A famous example of this, is the different meaning of a red light, which can mean a live socket or a problem (or an invitation, or a veto). Just because you know what you mean by it doesn't mean the user will. But luckily, most of the time they don't have to.
Oh, and the Dekker book? That basically says, that if you get punished for making for mistakes or discovering errors, you're going to hide the fact you make them, and this will lead to some very big problems
Culture appears very much of a buzzword at the moment. There's a little bit that we covered in the MSc about it, about designing for different cultures, which covered how university websites present different aspects in Greece, China and the US, depending on what is seen as important to students and/or their parents.
That in itself is an amazing question. Is it the student or the parent who chooses the university? Behind that lie a whole set of assumptions and values that are tagged with the word "culture". Then there is the idea of someone being "cultured" which has a faintly superior air to it. we don't talk about people being cultured if they talk about Jay-Zee and the chip shop, but if it's Liszt and Chez Panisse, then that is cultured. But it isn't culture as in cultured pearls - though in both senses there is an implication of it being created rather than emerging naturally.
Our culture can be summarised as the totality of the external experience which we have internalised and trigger our emotions and inform our values. Some of it will be common - for example, western music conventions are widely recognised across the world, and some will be more particular to our own experience (such as breakfast choice).
When you create an interface, it is informed by your culture. What matters is whether understanding it requires an understanding of the culture or merely of the interface. A famous example of this, is the different meaning of a red light, which can mean a live socket or a problem (or an invitation, or a veto). Just because you know what you mean by it doesn't mean the user will. But luckily, most of the time they don't have to.
Oh, and the Dekker book? That basically says, that if you get punished for making for mistakes or discovering errors, you're going to hide the fact you make them, and this will lead to some very big problems
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Gossip, gossip, gossip
Yes, there has been a major excitement at work, and every office is buzzing. Nick has shaved off his beard. It took a little while to percolate, but once people realised, there was a continual stream of people coming to check this, that and the other, and make sure to get a good look at the previously-concealed jawline. Needless to say, it was Jeanette who stepped right out there and asked why he'd done it. And lo and behold, our unremarkable coder has managed to bag himself a starring role in his local village production of The Wizard of Oz.
He explained that some years ago someone had heard him sing, and suggested that he would be an asset. So he had joined the chorus, and stood in the back row whenever possible. Being painfully shy, he had never admitted to anyone he was there, but apparently there is photographic evidence that he dressed as a cowboy in Oklahoma. This year, flu and children and university had struck at the available menfolk. He had boldly stepped into the breach and auditioned. (I would have paid good money - or money with no moral qualities whatsoever - to have seen that) and either due to his assets or the company's liabilities, he had been given the role of the Tin Man. This is a part that demands a certain absence in the facial hair department, so he had ventured into the local Boots and bought one of those cut your own hair devices to remove all the long hair, and a razor with seventeen blades at different angles (I may be exaggerating slightly for effect here) to create the required metallic smoothness.
I think that it probably, all in all, lost the company half a day's work as the news was passed from room to room and cubicle to cubicle. Dates were put in diaries for people to go and see the show.
Even better than that, of course, was what the company gained. Enthusiasm, interest, and a better understanding of developers. They were cheered by people coming in to see them. They were happy that people wanted to know what they did. Even better, the people who dropped by to see the amazing, never-before-displayed chin also dropped by to see what was going to be happening and signed up on the "I'm willing to test" sheet.
I think that the person who made a comment about whether Nick really was "a friend of Dorothy" was being a little unfair. After all, a liking for musicals is perfectly possible to combine with a liking of lego. It's just a little unusual.
Anyway, I'm definitely going to be buying my ticket for the team night-out to watch him saunter down the yellow brick road, singing "If I only had a heart". I'll even offer to give other people lifts.
Sorry, I seem rather to have omitted any user interface information at all, but this is seriously exciting news. I'll be back on the Doctors V Accountants front real soon now though.
He explained that some years ago someone had heard him sing, and suggested that he would be an asset. So he had joined the chorus, and stood in the back row whenever possible. Being painfully shy, he had never admitted to anyone he was there, but apparently there is photographic evidence that he dressed as a cowboy in Oklahoma. This year, flu and children and university had struck at the available menfolk. He had boldly stepped into the breach and auditioned. (I would have paid good money - or money with no moral qualities whatsoever - to have seen that) and either due to his assets or the company's liabilities, he had been given the role of the Tin Man. This is a part that demands a certain absence in the facial hair department, so he had ventured into the local Boots and bought one of those cut your own hair devices to remove all the long hair, and a razor with seventeen blades at different angles (I may be exaggerating slightly for effect here) to create the required metallic smoothness.
I think that it probably, all in all, lost the company half a day's work as the news was passed from room to room and cubicle to cubicle. Dates were put in diaries for people to go and see the show.
Even better than that, of course, was what the company gained. Enthusiasm, interest, and a better understanding of developers. They were cheered by people coming in to see them. They were happy that people wanted to know what they did. Even better, the people who dropped by to see the amazing, never-before-displayed chin also dropped by to see what was going to be happening and signed up on the "I'm willing to test" sheet.
I think that the person who made a comment about whether Nick really was "a friend of Dorothy" was being a little unfair. After all, a liking for musicals is perfectly possible to combine with a liking of lego. It's just a little unusual.
Anyway, I'm definitely going to be buying my ticket for the team night-out to watch him saunter down the yellow brick road, singing "If I only had a heart". I'll even offer to give other people lifts.
Sorry, I seem rather to have omitted any user interface information at all, but this is seriously exciting news. I'll be back on the Doctors V Accountants front real soon now though.
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