I picked up a link from Simon Coles’ ELN Blog to an article entitled Bad Software Design Inhibits Use of Enterprise Apps, published in ComputerWorld. Simon has a few things to say about the article in his blog, and it’s an issue I’m sure we all have an opinion about. The interesting point is about the relationship between design and usability.
A lesson I learned very early in my career was that you just do not computerise a manual process. A whole department in which I worked fell victim to a misguided and misdirected effort to replace a paper-based sample logging system with a computerised version. The new system replicated the paper process, with all of its limitations; same workflow, same forms. There was no pretence at designing anything; the outcome was a system that users hated; offered nothing new or better, and caused three or four years of mayhem.
I’ve recently experienced the other extreme, switching from a windows-based smart phone to an iPhone. Now, the iPhone does hardly anything that the Windows phone couldn’t, but it’s the way it does it that makes the difference – a classic case of good design maximising usability.
So, how good is laboratory software design, and what would be a good indicator of good design? I can’t help feeling that the ultimate indicator would be no need for a user manual or a training course. Unlikely I know, but we can dream!
I don’t know what effort laboratory software vendors put into design and usability – it would be great to hear from them – but usability, and hence user acceptance, is always a criterion that is held up as a measure of a project’s success. But sometimes it just seems that user acceptance is an outcome of the training program.
Both Simon’s and the ComputerWorld article are excellent and I think that everyone should read both of them. Here are a few of my own comments:
Bad software design: The ComputerWorld article mentions how little of purchased software we really used. Is this bad design? I wouldn’t agree that it is. When you buy software to be general-purpose, enterprise-class software, you’re buying something that addresses many areas. The question is whether customers should be doing that or not. This brings us to the issue regarding whether to buy general-purpose LIMS and ELNs or to buy a number of specific systems and to integrate them. Different customers have different reasons for choosing one over the other. While I understand Simon’s point about being able to buy software and just start to use it, and can agree with it for certain situations, I don’t see how you can do that with the enterprise-class, general-purpose software.
Bad Design: The best book I’ve ever read on the subject is “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum” by Alan Cooper, which talks about putting the right people in charge of software design. I loved this book so much I wrote a book review on it: http://www.geometrick.com/inmates-asylum.html