[LINK] re: eCensus web page design

[Jan Whitaker]

At 08:25 AM 10/08/2006, Tom Worthington wrote:

>Due to the constant red messages the inexperienced user is likely to be 
>agitated while filling in the form, thinking they are doing something 
>wrong. The experienced user will have their confidence in the system (and 
>the ABS) diminished by the continued erroneous and intrusive error messages.

Tom, your laundry list of difficulties are those things that should have 
been thoroughly tested before release. Unfortunately, projects cut corners 
at this point in projects. I put a position on testing multiple conditions 
during trials for another project (MAJOR basic research trial of something 
that may have some importance down the track) but the attitude to testing 
during the trial, mind you, was who was going to pay for all that?

I was flabbergasted! What did these people think the word 'trial' meant? 
They have confused design and prototyping with development and roll-out. 
Hopefully the 'pay me a little now with a sample' versus 'pay me a LOT 
later when the bugs appear in operation' will be heard.

Looks like ABS and their partners also missed the testing part, at least as 
thoroughly as it needed to be done.

Have IT designers/developers fallen into the Microsoft methodology of 
letting the marketplace do their debugging for them?

Jan


Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
commentary: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/

'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, there is 
no plant.' - JW, April 2005
_ __________________ _