Software Bugs and Complexity

[Dan Emory <danemory -at- primenet -dot- com>]

I recommend to you the following article, found in today's LA Times. You 
can find it at:
http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/20001127/t000113753.html

No 'Silver Bullet' for Software's Growing Complexity
Industry and society suffer when design bugs eat up worker hours and users 
who don't get with the program fall behind.
By GARY CHAPMAN

Here's a relevant extract from the article:
==============================
On the user end, repeated experiences with software glitches tend to narrow 
one's use of computers to the familiar and routine. Studies have shown that 
most users rely on less than 10% of the features of common programs such as 
Microsoft Word or Netscape Communicator. It takes a high tolerance for 
frustration and failure to explore beyond the boundaries of one's own 
comfort level. This adds to the exasperation of tech-support personnel, who 
often don't understand why users are reluctant to venture into the 
unfamiliar features of a program. It also calls into question how much 
money and energy we spend on new software features that most people don't 
use or even know about.
"This is just a national scandal, this problem with software complexity and 
unreliability," says Leon Kappelman, director of the Information Systems 
Research Center at the University of North Texas in Denton. "No one should 
have to put up with computers being so unreliable or so difficult. We don't 
put up with this with any other product we use."
Across the country these days, community and national leaders are talking 
about such issues as the "digital divide," the severe shortage in 
technically skilled workers, massive investments in education to increase 
the skills of young people and those willing to be retrained and how high 
salaries in tech fields are transforming neighborhoods.
But few people are talking about how to make technology easier to use. 
There's a universal assumption that people will have to adjust to the 
rampant, irrational and escalating complexity of a hyper-technologized 
society--or fall into the ranks of the losers and the ignorant. This split 
is likely to characterize modern life in the 21st century.
==================================
The two software products cited above are prime examples
where, for most users, on-line help is the sole source of
information about how to use the product.

QUIZ
Choose below the explanation(s) for this phenomenon:

1. Most users are denizens of that netherworld known as the "post-literate,"
    and you can't expect much more from them?
2. On-line help and "Wizards" which cater to the post-literate mind-set are 
abject
    failures, not only for the post-literate, but also for users who do 
not suffer
    from that malady?
3. Most users don't need the 90% of features they don't use?
4. The TWs who wrote the on-line help didn't understand the
     unused 90% of  features well enough to document them
     adequately?
5. Software should be designed for the post-literate, thus the 90%
    of unused features should be deleted from the product?
6. It's the software design stupid?
7. The dirty little secret is that most TWs who document software
    have no in-depth understanding of the products they're
    writing about, and even less understanding about the disciplines
    in which those products are used.
8. All of the above?
9. Other?


====================
| Nullius in Verba |
====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory -at- primenet -dot- com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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