I am using this ancient machine to type away on blog drafts and other documents, when I need to focus and don’t want to be distracted by other things going on on my computer. With that, I pretty much mean the internet.
So I bought an Amstrad NC100 off of ebay a while ago to type stuff. It’s been fantastic, except for the portability of the documents and getting them from the machine to my notebook for final editing and uploading.
That NC100 was introduced as a very mobile but cheap notebook, where editors, writers or executives of companies would work on documents when on the road. I can see how they could stay productive. The successor of this model had a floppy drive, that helped with sharing documents and moving them to a different machine. On this one – that option doesn’t exist. I am pretty much confined to the serial interface, to send my text documents through.
So to get my blog drafts to my PC, I’ll need to connect a nullmodem (XMODEM) cable between the serial port and USB. I would send the file then on the NC100, the computer would receive the file through PuTTY. I could print the whole thing too, but I don’t have a printer from the 80s here. So PuTTY it is. Apart from the cabling, you would have to tell both machines the baud rate at which to talk to one another, as well as data bits configuration and parity setup. If you have a description and you know how to do it – cool. Otherwise, that’s slightly a nightmare. arguably, it’s as difficult to set up today, as it probably was back in the 80s, when few knew how to do it and documentation or IT personnel was scarce.
Setting it all up is a little bit like black magic, and I am not sure show someone who isn’t a techie would set it up. If this machine was made for writers, either they had to be tech savvy or needed their IT guy that wasn’t really a widespread job in the 80s to set it up regularly. I am assuming IT personnel wasn’t a thing, and even if it was, it didn’t have the man/woman power it has today. Did writers, executives, word processing people on the go set these up themselves? And if they have – do we think they were far more proficient with these technological challenges than some of the business users we deal with today?
Clearly this device was an entry-level device and may not have all expensive hardware and extensibility options than its successors or larger models – but even if you designed it with cost in mind, wouldn’t you try to make the core use cases that a writing device has, for the main user audience work, end-to-end? That’s where I am puzzled, to be honest. Was this a clear omission – or were end users really more advanced, or were able to cope with technicalities better than today’s users? I wouldn’t necessarily think that ordinary users or writers would know how to set up serial – let alone the dial-up connection with a modem. Did they call in IT and had them fix stuff for them, or was this just state of the art, considered part of the job?
I am wondering, because in today’s world, if you design for an end-user feature, especially in the enterprise context, you need to wrap a whole lot of branding, customization and the right communications channel in place, so that enterprises would adopt your product. Else – their end users may refuse to work with your product, or won’t accept it or ignore. End users will find an excuse not to work with your product. If your way of user engagement is via email, they surely will not find email in the SPAM folder, or don’t trust it because your emails aren’t just formatted right. Or if the steps aren’t clear and users spend too much time figuring their way out, it may totally be legitimate for them to push back and refuse to continue – it’s the tool’s fault.
That’s disheartening at times. I think the difference in perception, the 80s “I’ll make it work, even with a serial connection” and today’s “the tool’s branding is off, I won’t use it” comes from a number of reasons. And clearly, I am painting people with a large brush here, clearly not everybody has the same mindset, yet, it partly stems from:
- Everybody has tech at home -> we all know what good user experience and software looks like.
- If your it tool isn’t working, it’s not my job to fix it -> IT can’t be in the way of business
- This isn’t your uncle’s PC: tailoring the experience matters -> It isn’t generic IT of the 80s any more and stuff should be working in line with business processes and flows.
- IT tell me I should be careful – -> if you can’t deliver it in a trustworthy manner, users will believe it’s a scam or phishing.
Everybody has tech at home, in their bags, in their pockets. It’s ubiquitously available and people are used to things just working for them – especially in the personal realm. As IT systems support almost all business transactions and processes, there’s this expectation that they work flawlessly, the way the user expects. My iPod plays my albums and I can sort them no problem, so I should be able to sort all my contracts in ascending order, filtered by volume size and customer segment and how dare you IT system, not to give it to me?
IT’s place is supporting the business. Infrastructure, tools and products must support the business cause and aren’t cool tech any more that people will *want* to interact with, because it’s fantastic technology from a faraway future. It serves the greater purpose of fulfilling a business need, supporting the end user in their job – not more, not less. If that IT system is wasting my time, I will not be using it – I have no time on my hands to and I am not paid for, fix the tools the business give me. Even if I choose to do so, it’s the corporate tax I have to pay to get my job done, I shouldn’t be asked to do this. If this continues like this, I may find a company that lets me focus on my job.
We’re not a some generic shop. My colleagues in IT have learned in their IT field for years or even studied at university, they should know how systems for business, or most significantly, _our_ business should work. This isn’t your uncle’s PC, you should know how we work, what our processes are and counts for us to be successful. Make IT work for us – why do we have to ask for these things? It should be an almost tailored experience.
I need to be careful, everybody tells me IT is a dark, untrustworthy place now. If it doesn’t carry our company logo, company branding or wording, and I haven’t been trained to use a tool, I won’t follow a link in an email that takes me there. Even if it says I have an action to complete. Especially if the thing wants my password – not in a 100 years. The last thing I want is follow yet another tool that I can’t trust, and get angry emails by IT or my boss for not following the practices. If it *is* a legitimate tool, their loss – it doesn’t look trustworthy.
Right — so what do we do about that? A few suggestions:
- Let customers define their own branding and words, if possible: that’s speed up the adoption process and help with end user acceptance. If they can make it theirs, it’ll be easier for them to just “turn it on”. Clearly that may be harder, if you’re a cloud service, but could push your features forward. Harder, if it’s a cloud service, but let them do it.
- Provide the engine, but let the branding, messaging, marketing come from existing IT systems: this is about allowing for hybrid or highly integrated solutions. There’s bound to be existing systems that your customers already have. Let them connect to the right data, APIs, ingress or egress systems that support whatever process they’re trying to satisfy with your solution. Your system should be an isolated island. If your takes the end user on a journey, make it easier to call external/internal APIs to get feedback, extra data, or just flip a bit in a database. This would also allow for sending custom messages to end users, approvers, superiors or peers of users, through the company’s sanctioned channels.
- Provide documentation, videos, material that makes it easy for organization to adopt your software – that they can relay to their users. Make it easier for IT to give your system to end users. Provide email communication templates, online help that’s end-user ready and everything that helpdesk may need to know, including training-ready material to empower the end user.
FRICKELSOFT 