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Long ago, in the mists of time, (1987) I wrote a program that worked with hand held computers, barcode scanners, and was meant to be run by folks working in a power plant. I wrote the code, and got it working in about 2 months. It did everything in the spec, and the customer (Russ) loved what we had, but it turned out (of course) there were many things missed in the spec. A week or two later, we worked out a deal for all of their power plants, provided I would work with Russ to make sure it did everything they wanted... it would take about a year, in the end. Russ taught me everything I needed to know about users and how they think, in a direct and very effective manner. He was the assistant plant manager, so he would pull a random person into the office, and say to them "I know you're not a computer person, I want to you to do X,Y,Z... but don't worry... if anything goes wrong, it's not your fault... it's Mike's fault (Russ points at Me). He then tells me to just watch... It took exactly 1 minute to learn the first lesson... there should always be "Press F1 for Help" somewhere on the screen. It was a very instructive and productive year. I've carried those lessons from his forcing function with me for decades. I love telling the story, thanks for listening. |