Comments on: Subject To Change http://craigrandall.net/archives/2009/06/subject-to-change/ Thoughts about software architecture, books and life Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:04:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: In Pursuit of Elegance | Craig's Musings http://craigrandall.net/archives/2009/06/subject-to-change/comment-page-1/#comment-20803 In Pursuit of Elegance | Craig's Musings Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:31:32 +0000 http://craigrandall.net/?p=1097#comment-20803 [...] glad that I found it after my previous read, since it covers similar ground in places as does Subject To Change but ends up exploring different [...] [...] glad that I found it after my previous read, since it covers similar ground in places as does Subject To Change but ends up exploring different [...]

]]> By: vasuki_narayan http://craigrandall.net/archives/2009/06/subject-to-change/comment-page-1/#comment-20793 vasuki_narayan Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:20:09 +0000 http://craigrandall.net/?p=1097#comment-20793 And this is something that many large engineering organisations do not understand - design is not necessarily just about technical design, not just a "how can we make this widget work with that widget to do this thing" - it involves process, culture, experiences... When Microsoft introduced Word for Windows (2.0??) they did a lot of research into the functions that people did every day, and made them really simple to do. They then added a WordPerfect 5.1 to Word conversion set of macros, so you could learn Word while still working in the WP paradigm (WP was the standard at the time). Result? An almost painless move to Word, which became the defacto standard. Today, MS has changed the user experience of Word to a point where maybe such a tool is necessary again, but they didn't provide it, so voila - resistance!! And this is something that many large engineering organisations do not understand – design is not necessarily just about technical design, not just a “how can we make this widget work with that widget to do this thing” – it involves process, culture, experiences…

When Microsoft introduced Word for Windows (2.0??) they did a lot of research into the functions that people did every day, and made them really simple to do. They then added a WordPerfect 5.1 to Word conversion set of macros, so you could learn Word while still working in the WP paradigm (WP was the standard at the time). Result? An almost painless move to Word, which became the defacto standard. Today, MS has changed the user experience of Word to a point where maybe such a tool is necessary again, but they didn’t provide it, so voila – resistance!!

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