TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: For the love of spreadsheets From:Dan Goldstein <DGoldstein -at- nuot -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L (techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com)" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:00:35 +0000
It might often be a lack of effort, but not always. Sometimes people use spreadsheets to deliberately bury unfriendly data. This is especially true of spreadsheets that extend eastward for dozens of columns.
-----Original Message-----
From: mbaker
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2016 8:45 AM
To: 'Cardimon, Craig'; 'TechWhirl'
Subject: RE: For the love of spreadsheets
I feel your pain. I have no love for spreadsheets either.
My theory is this: most people will take awkwardness over complexity most of the time. Or, to put it another way, people will choose conceptual ease of use over practical ease of use every time. Or to put it another way, don't make me think.
A spreadsheet provides a ready-made grid layout. You don't have to do anything to create the grid. You just plop things in where you want them and move them around if you need to. It is awkward and time consuming compared to a normal word processing document most of the time, and the result is much harder to read and navigate, but you don't have to know anything about page layout tools to place stuff where you want it.
I see all kinds of cases were people choose to do the awkward time consuming thing rather than the simple elegant thing if the simple elegant thing requires even a little bit of learning, particularly if that learning involves even a little bit of abstraction. Most people are extraordinarily concrete in their thinking, something I think it is very easy to forget when you work in tech. (It does seem to have been the key thing that Steve Jobs understood. I think it is what he meant by saying things should just work -- things should require no thought, particularly no abstract thought. Thus the skeuomorphic interface.)
The amount of abstraction required to use page layout tools in a word processor rather than the ready-made grid may seem very small. But that is the curse of knowledge. Once you get it, it is very small. But when you don't its huge, scary, and the kind of mental effort people naturally shy away from.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Visit TechWhirl for the latest on content technology, content strategy and content development | http://techwhirl.com
