Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems

6-5. Letter from a User

When I was working on a project for a large company, an experienced user of that company's software wrote a letter that illustrates a few of the points made in this book. The quoted statements are from the letter.

• “The software was represented to me as a more mature product.” Interviewing the programmers revealed that schedule was put ahead of quality in the priorities. What had been offered to the customers was the dream of the original project leaders. What was delivered was a schedule-driven “minimal usable subset.” Many desirable details had to be omitted because the tools, which had been chosen prior to the completion of the interface design, could not implement the desired interactions.

• “The user is required to press ...