Software was made for people, not people for software
I had a very frustrating experience this morning. I decided to start editing an internal team wiki and ran into a significant roadblock: To edit the wiki, I first needed to learn "wikiml." What is wikiml? I'm glad you asked. It's a wiki markup language so that wikis look more like Web pages/documents, and not like a stream of undifferentiated text.
There's just one problem: Wikiml. Who wants to learn a markup language just so you can collaborate with colleagues? It's not that the markup language is particularly difficult (here's a cheat sheet for reference), but requiring the learning of a new language is a step backward, not forward, in terms of ease of use.
Wikis may be more powerful than a Microsoft Word document, but if they're not at least as easy, then they're simply not going to get used. Period. Google gets this: Google Docs is actually easier to use than Microsoft Word.
The Bible has this great counsel in Mark 2:27:
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
The idea is that Biblical commandments were not designed to inhibit people, but to enable and improve them. Sometimes we let the letter of a law impede the spirit and end up cramping our capabilities. Is there a correlation to software?
Of course there is. Software developers need to focus on creating software for humans, not expecting humans to reshape their behaviors for software. Enterprise content management (ECM) has been a market that has depended on people changing their behaviors to fit the system...which is why 95 percent of any given enterprise persists in not using the software.
ECM, of course, is not alone in this. CRM (customer relationship management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), and other enterprise applications think more of the enterprise than the person within the enterprise that is forced to use the software. SAP's CEO suggested the other day that this is by design. Well, it's a lame design.
Software is for people. When it's not, people won't use it, at least not as much as they otherwise would.
What is it about "user friendly" that the tech developers do NOT understand? Do they think that all consumers want is a laundry list of features, regardless of how long the directions are, or how arcane and jargon-filled they are? "Getting it right" is not hard, it takes only the effort (time/resources/desire) to "get it right" (not just to "get it out the door & in the stores"). I am sitting here with two digital picture frames (Quantaray/Sunpac and GPX). While working with them the thought keeps nagging me: "This should NOT be this difficult (or time consuming)."
To me, technology - in its most perfect, ideal state - should be invisible. It would interface perfectly with the human animal; it would fit the way we think, act, move and speak. Technology should not require us to learn about it, but should be able to adapt itself to us. Perfect technology has no user manual. It should not draw attention to itself, it should just be there, doing what it was designed to do.
That's the ideal. Of course, we are not there yet, so we have manuals, and we have to learn about the technology to use it. But just adding more minimally useful features (that we are told should appeal to us) and more buttons and switches only makes the technology look (and act) like a confused, pimply faced adolescent. Sometimes I think the developers don't want to make tech easy because they intend tap into the prideful, primal male "I've conquered it" conceit. Then once you have "conquered it" you are now one of the "insiders" and can help lead other lost and wandering souls to the promised land.
Perhaps this happens because tech developers are used to dealing with, well, technology, and not humans. So they design technology that misses the mark, and it becomes technology "because we can do it," not technology that actually fits into our human existence and enhances it. And we buy it, because we are told we need it and should like it.
So really the argument isn't so much whether or not it's better to make easier to use software, but whether or not people are willing to pay for such software. Often, especially in the case of something like a wiki that is usually set up in an ad-hoc manner, the answer is "no." So you pay a little more in effort to pay a little less in cash.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
There is a markup standardization effort at www.wikicreole.org that can also be extended for common WYSIWYG.
Also remember that Wikipedia was created using markup only---basically no visual editing at all. So you can't say it doesn't work at all.
If you want to raise your voice further, come to the Wiki Symposium this year (or send someone), see www.wikisym.org
There are plenty of WYSIWYG wikis these days which do not require you to learn wikiml. Give Mindtouch's Deki or Atlassian's Confluence a shot. Naturally, I prefer to open source and much more powerful Deki.
Ilan