Well, I’ve started up the MA again with Ultralab (that’s got to be the grooviest sounding uni, huh? :-), and I’m admitting defeat – I haven’t got time to think and post there and here. But then I thought – I’ll just repeat myself. So, here goes – the laziest blog entry so far…this is a point I made about why I think software companies make overly prescriptive wizards:
“…but I know why software makers do it (put wizards everywhere) – sales. I’ve come across three peices of software that have been full of promise but required me to change my thinking, which was hard – Radio, Tinderbox and Omni Outliner. Neither of these tools, at least when I first came across them (Radio changed from beta) used wizards or help me tools. In fact, I’m mistaken as Tinderbox does.
Anyway, my point is that these are innovative tools that require me to tinker for a few hours, play and actually change my perceptions of how i regard my interactions and thinking. And it’s hard for a busy activist learner like me – I don’t simply have the time to figure it out. I only do because my curiosity keeps me going, but i’ve seen this time and time again with colleagues and clients – no one has the time or inclination to try new stuff or to extend their mental models. These must have been set through original exposure to Outlook and Word and that’s it, it’ll take an intellectual earthquake to change.
Obviously it doesn’t help that applications like Word are so aburdly complex and unintuitive (ever tried putting a Watermark in document? ;-). I’m not excusing – I can’t stand what i’ve just described, but i think thats the hard reality for a lot of users. And software companies know this, so they make their software prescriptive and wizard focused, which i guess is the lazyist way to make software easy.”
More lazy posts on their way…