[LINK] Usable computing

Ivan Trundle ivan at itrundle.com
Sat Jan 30 17:39:01 AEDT 2010


This article by Fraser Spiers supports my view, and extends it beyond the iPad ecosystem: an interesting read:

http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html

Key paras:

"The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get "real work" done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the "real work".

It's not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organising the party.

Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done."

Perhaps the era of 'usable computing'?

iT



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