Getting Info: No Easy Answer
September 27, 2010
The azurini are beating the UX or user experience drum. I find that there are two schools of thought. On one side are the “info for dummies approach”. The idea is that users are too lazy, tired, busy, addled, or indifferent to do much more than click a link. In fact, what ever link is prominent is the “right link”. The number one practitioner of this approach is Google.
The other school of thought is that users should be able to control their information experience. In this approach is “set up what you want”. This can be accomplished through a command line, graphical interface, or behind the scenes.
One approach abrogates control; the other gives the illusion of control. Both are a problem for me.
The way to get information has been and remains:
- Using primary data collection methods; that is, ask people and gather data
- Using secondary data collection methods; that is, multiple sources both online and hard copy
- Using various analytic tools; that is, converting data to machine readable form and performing some tricks even if the work is little more than click on Excel functions
- Discussing the information with informed individuals.
Omitting a step or two leads to some interesting situations. One example may be the present health care, banking, or employment crises. Choose one. The inability to focus on research may have more to do with lousy decisions than the second string consultants care to admit. Heck, toss in some 30 something Blue Chip consultants. Short cuts in research are the norm.
Most organizations have huge databases which feed more operations. These databases are typically used by experts as well as regular users. Experts generally are people who understand the database solutions and structure and build their use around it. The regular users are looking for a more obvious and intuitive solution than actually learning programming.
While few companies have really tried to tackle this problem, it continues to loom large on most corporations. Frequent request to IT support for query help leads to bottleneck. As a result, database utilization becomes inefficient.
We learned recently that “Stonefield Query” is an attempt to overcome this. “Stonefield Query eliminates the IT bottleneck putting business reporting in the hands of the casual user where it belongs.”
Despite all the new logics and enhancements certain database requests require a level of customization which standard enhancements cannot support; so complete control of direct queries by end user is still a distant dream.
Short cuts won’t solve the problem of doing thorough research. Put that in your Google Instant, add water, and season with a point-and-click preferences interface.
Stephen E Arnold, September 26, 2010
Freebie
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