User-friendly is the new Lazy

I didn’t post my frustrations about the Notes development yesterday, but. I built the survey application, from scratch, made it Notes and Web accessible, and then I’m told that it’s too much for the users to do. I don’t know if this slang has gotten to the industry yet, “user-lazy”. I’m realizing that there is a big difference between user-friendly, which would be a nice informative interface leading you step by step through the process, and user-lazy which is point, click, barely any typing involved and everything is pretty much done for you, as if you were an old person in a home with great insurance.

It boils down to the fact that I work on a gov’t contract and they don’t want to admit that their users are dinosaurs who refuse to learn and that the agency has given up on trying to train. Yet we’re the HQ so we have to update our technology before anyone else. Does anyone see a problem inherent in this methodology? So the more we upgrade, the more problems our users have, and the more we try to teach them the right way, the more they resist.

So I spent a good 5 hours working on the app, and will probably be told that it isn’t suitable for the customer’s needs. And I deal with this kind of thing all the time here. I’ve been getting some bites on my resume online, I’m going to go and add my education information today which will probably aid in getting offers, but time will tell.

Having some ‘company’ this afternoon, more on that later.

I play in an online RPG on a MUSH. One of the users on the system passed away 3 nights ago. I feel sad, but I don’t seem to feel as bad as a lot of others do, ‘cos I never met him, and honestly when online all he did was annoy me. But any loss is a terrible one.

Ok, work time.