[IxDA Discuss] Software companies actually using UCD

[Jeff Howard]

Andrew Otwell wrote:
> I can't believe that they're doing everything wrong, or
misunderstanding 
>UCD, or haven't read their Don Norman closely enough. So what's
going >on here?

I think that it's too easy to view Microsoft as a monolithic entity.
This obscures the fact that there are many, many different teams
inside, each with their own facet of the culture. I firmly believe
that there are good designers at Microsoft doing good work. I don't
know that it's happening everywhere, but they do embrace UCD
principles. There are anecdotes that support that argument, but for
most people there's no incentive to look closely enough to find
them.

Anyway, Microsoft's history and its scale make changes to its public
perception move at a glacial pace. When Gates observes that to make
software user friendly you just stamp the words "user friendly" on
the side of the box, I think people suspect there's more truth than
he lets on. Their past products haven't been exemplars of design and
that inertia is hard to shift.

Neal Stephenson wrote this about Microsoft in 1999:
"If Microsoft sells goods that are aesthetically unappealing, or
that don't work very well, it does not mean that they are
(respectively) philistines or half-wits. It is because Microsoft's
excellent management has figured out that they can make more money
for their stockholders by releasing stuff with obvious, known
imperfections than they can by making it beautiful or bug free."

>From that cynical point-of-view, it follows that if they're
embracing UCD now, it's only part of some new calculus to sell more
software rather than from an honest desire to make it easier for
people to do their work and live their lives. I don't believe
that's quite the truth (for the reasons I mentioned above), but it
makes it easier for people to bash them.

I think that Microsoft can turn that perception around. It's just
going to take some time.