17 ms·

What’s the waiter doing with the computer screen? (2012)

471 points by cbhl 8y ago

josefresco 8y ago
I hope no one is depending on the reporting from that software to make any sort of decisions (What do you mean no one showed up for their reservation this past month?!?). Or maybe at the end of their shift, they go in an "clear" the reservations who showed? My guess is there's no reporting / data analysis on the back end.
- IncRnd 8y ago
  At a successful restaurant, they don't care about reporting, data analysis, or who sat in what seat, just that all seats were occupied. That is already accounted for by looking around the rounm and by the numbers at the end of the night. The reservations are for the seating not the take. If there is any data analysis it has to do with where the next restaurant can be built.
  - Mikeb85 8y ago
    Not true at all. Restaurants definitely care about things like total covers, check average, profit per seat, turnaround time, etc... There's massive profit different between say, 1 turn and 2.5 turns. Simply filling every seat once per night isn't good enough for a lot of restaurants.
    - IncRnd 8y ago
      > Simply filling every seat once per night isn't good enough for a lot of restaurants. Great, except that isn't what I wrote.
- taneq 8y ago
  My cynical thought on the matter was more along the lines of "any booking that doesn't go into the system is probably easier not to report on your taxes"...
PuffinBlue 8y ago
I love this story and I truly hope some of those that build things for other people to use take onboard its point. You really can make something beautiful and elegant and yet totally unusable for the people actually using the interface.
lb1lf 8y ago
The book referred to at the end of the blog entry is brilliant; reading case study upon case study on how projects derailed (if they were ever on track in the first place...) is a humbling experience for anyone who has ever found himself in the position of trying to figure out what a customer wants (often not what he says he wants, sigh). The domain it is hosted on, by the way, translates roughly to bloodyshitesystem.se :)
- txru 8y ago
  For those looking, the book seems to be in progress being translated to English, but doesn't seem to be done yet. http://javlaskitsystem.se/english/ http://javlaskitsystem.se/english/
jschwartzi 8y ago
I used to do this exact thing with a Vis-a-Vis marker on one of those Apple monitors. They had a nice glass front that made this kind of thing easy.
hermannj314 8y ago
And some of us were using light pen systems in the 80s and 90s. I guess it all goes full circle.
21 8y ago
The equivalent in finance is when they convert the Excel sheet into a "proper" app, only for the users to go back to Excel after a while.
- ccozan 8y ago
  I don't know if there is a name for this law, but is true: every business app will get an 'export to excel' functionality. No matter how well is modeled or close to the user flow, the users will want to export the data in an excel - where they can be creative!
- xupybd 8y ago
  I've seen this before. The customer wanted a huge spread sheet converted into an application. Turns out the spreadsheet changed it's function from week to week. The user was using the spreadsheet to play with numbers and didn't need the application they asked for, they just needed an easy way to get data out of the database so they could play with the numbers and a way to get some data back into the db.
throwaway2016a 8y ago
Reminds me of when I used to draw on CRT monitors because it was quicker to illustrate UX changes than to use the mouse / change code. I know a lot of restaurants around here that use a sheet of glass placed over a printout of the seating chart to record reservations and which tables are clear / ready to be seated at. This article buries the lead, the most important takeaway is at the end of the list at #6: > to really find out what’s important to the users, and how a system is actually used, you need to observe real users, in the field.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  Came here to say exactly that. The only relevant and important take away from this article is to perform proper user research. All the other insights will follow that.
- Y_Y 8y ago
  Some people like to bury the "lede" nowadays, presumably because buried lead can be harmful to wildlife and water supplies. (see also: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-versus-lead https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-... )
ghayes 8y ago
For what it's worth, the author of the article misses one crucial aspect of the system: it allows customers to reserve online and via third-party applications. Checking in users (clearly) had a bad experience, but the fact that all upcoming reservations were made and listed is still important (and seemed to function quite well).
combatentropy 8y ago
iPad vs. Paper, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4mlLiyjYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4mlLiyjYo
_bxg1 8y ago
I think one key takeaway which isn't directly mentioned in the article is that UX designers, especially on custom-built business solutions like this one, tend to have a pretty rigid concept of the user flow. But the most useful and time-tested pieces of software tend to be the most flexible; the ones that empower users to do what they want, when they want, on-the-fly. That's what's so powerful about a whiteboard; not the fact that it isn't software. They're infinitely flexible and easy to manipulate. Excel is an (eghem) excellent example of this concept in software, as pointed out by another commenter here. It doesn't presume a particular flow or even a particular set of user stories. It gives you the tools to record and manipulate large amounts of data, no matter what it is or what shape it's in, without writing code. That's a powerful concept and one that more designers should keep in mind.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  Heck, this exact use case probably could have been served with a clever spreadsheet
  - digi_owl 8y ago
    The UI looked very much like a cross between a spreadsheet and a music sequencer.
    - mrguyorama 8y ago
      To me it looked like they aught to just be running google calendar on an iPad or something.
- golergka 8y ago
  Another beautiful example is Trello. I've used several task trackers for software projects, Jira and Mantis several times, and my experience with Trello beats everything else. Turns out, you don't really need complicated automated processes and different views for the same data (as abstractions lover in me was absolutely sure of). Doing task management manually and easily changing workflows on the fly is much more useful.
Yhippa 8y ago
Even today for semi- or non-routine tasks I'll do weird stuff like copy text to Notepad to remove formatting then past it back into the same app/web page to enter information. I'll also do some weird things like instead of using an entire screen to read text on a long web page article I'll just keep my eyes near the top of the screen and scroll so my eyes don't have to move. Not sure what I'm trying to say but maybe there are entirely new ways of building existing app types out there that have an audience out there. I wish we spent as much time on HCI in our field. I get a lot more value out of seeing how people I develop software for do their tasks and then thinking about how that could be improved. An implication of that is that I'm not building a fancy UI for my resume's sake; that I'm actually improving their day-to-day workflows. That takes some cost and time but in my projects nobody wants to pay for that.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  Pro tip: Ctrl-Shift-V pastes with formatting stripped in many systems. Also, on most Google apps including Docs and Gmail, Ctrl-\ (backslash) will reset the formatting of selected text.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    And on macOS, the standard way to do this is "Edit > Paste and Match Style".
    - rando444 8y ago
      Windows has the same menu options, theirs is just called "Paste without formatting" On mac the shortcut is Command-Option-Shift-V
      - Yhippa 8y ago
        This almost makes me wonder if paste with formatting should be the longer shortcut and that unformatted paste is the default.
toss1 8y ago
Great story, and he's absolutely right about having the developers talk directly to the end users. The systems built with customers where we talked to the end users both worked well and were well-accepted. Other systems, where the managers insisted that we talk to a specified manager who would 'gather and transmit' the end-user requirements typically ended up being the endless projects that never quite worked. Yes, sort of endless billables too, but much less satisfying to both build and use. If I were still developing software, I'd be at the point of insisting on direct end-user participation as a condition of doing the work, and primarily for the customer's sake.
- Kluny 8y ago
  As a developer, I always _try_ to talk to the end users. Sadly I find that managers prevent me from doing so more often than not.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Yup, I hate when managers do that. Where I can, I always push for direct developer-customer interaction, because it turns out that developers can communicate with customers just fine, and adding an additional indirection layer only loses lots of intangible or non-obvious information about the problem domain in the process.
dqv 8y ago
So you know that law? Conway's law? There is a kind of inverse in certain niche industries where the communication structure of the organizations is a result of the software. Like the people are as rigid/dysfunctional as the software. Sometimes there aren't nice solutions like dry erase marker on screen. If you work in one of these, it's the most uncomfortable feeling. One benefit is that it can be motivating to create alternative software to claw your way out. Unless the software mirrors the dysfunctional organization...
barbs 8y ago
The post linked at the end is also interesting: http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/09/the-doctor-that-rocks-the-mouse/ http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/09/the-doctor-that-rocks-the-... Although I can't help but note the irony of an ugly non-responsive webpage! At least on Firefox Android...
- newsbinator 8y ago
  > [...] Henrik noted that a post-it note covered the upper right corner of the screen. Why? > Well, when patients are ready, they’re supposed to press a ”Save” button on the screen. > But a lot of them instead press the Windows’ ”Close” icon in the upper right corner (perhaps they were determined not to let the next person see their entries). > But this also shut down the machine, and the data they had entered were lost! > Solution: cover the icon with a piece of paper or tape!
antoineMoPa 8y ago
There is no software like no software.
sebringj 8y ago
If you are carpenter holding a hammer you see nails. We are programmers so we see user flows. Put the hammer down, clear your mind. Look at what the u̶s̶e̶r̶ person is doing.
- digi_owl 8y ago
  And i have seen programmers that when they do so, declare users to be drooling idiots best confined to a padded cell...
otakucode 8y ago
What it tells me is that preventing the developers from talking directly with the users, a practice which is mind-bogglingly common (bordering on universal), is a hurdle which companies are incapable of overcoming. There really is no replacement for a developer who can become embedded in the organization which is going to be using the software, watching or performing the job themselves for any position which is going to be enhanced by using the system being built, etc. I have always wanted to do exactly this as a developer, and the closest I have been able to get was on a couple freelance solo projects. As far as I know there's not even really a name for a person that functions this way. The closest I've seen is "Business Analyst", but if you just look for positions with that name you find nothing even remotely close to actually doing that sort of thing. As a developer, it is normal to look at a system and extract the generalities and patterns and systematize them. Then the users start using the system. And they always ask for the same things. Exceptions. The ability to cheat the rules they swore were "always" the case. If they've got someone on the staff who knows just enough to be dangerous, their system will grow by bits and pieces organically, eventually resulting in a real nightmarish mess. For years I have wanted to try to design a system which actually has this in mind as a primary use case. Something which can be bit-by-bit 'expanded' over time with the special cases, exceptions, etc but which can remain sensible, maintainable, and tractable. It's possible that such a system cannot be made both as flexible as necessary and still usable by the average person, but I think it might be. Anything which accomplished the goal even partially would be pretty successful I imagine.
- sopooneo 8y ago
  One problem with putting developers in direct contact with customers is that we developers tend to be more terse, more concrete, more exact, than the average Joe(lla). And that leads us to occasionally use the word "no". And that word infuriates and terrifies average Joe(lla)'s bosses. I completely agree that good software requires this direct contact, but you have to find the right people.
jancsika 8y ago
Long story short, the UI devs aren't dogfooding their product, right? I mean if the company just went out for beers one night and had one person try to use the software to "seat" each employee, they'd figure out pretty quickly that there are too many clicks. Especially if the rule is to take a drink for each employee seated. :)
- askvictor 8y ago
  I think that's a bit dangerous as developers often think differently to non-developers; also they already know how to use their product since they wrote it. Needs to be tested with actual end-users.
  - davegauer 8y ago
    You are absolutely right about the danger of knowing your own product too well. On the other hand, a developer is often in a much better position to know how to "make the computer do the work" than the end-user. Ideally, you'd test with both...several times. It would be wonderful if clients were willing to pay for this level of software perfection!
- taneq 8y ago
  Precisely. What you suggest here would be a good start - if they took notes, even one evening would pick up probably 20-30 significant UI issues. Next, get the most attractive member of the waitstaff to go through the same process with your prototype. Ideally offer minimal prompting. Ask them at each step what they expected to see. Take notes. Repeat for the rest of the waitstaff, if possible. The designer of a UI being able to do everything they need with it quickly and easily is the first step. The intended user being able do so with minimal training is a much later, much more important step.
kazinator 8y ago
If the position of objects in the UI is immutable, you can use the glass as part of the state. This overlay over the screen reminds me of some video games systems that used transparencies for part of the scene, or at least a measure of color. Vectrex was like this: vector graphics, augmented with a game-specific acetate overlay that you'd put on the screen for that game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex Vectrex is fantastic; if you find a working one in some garage sale, with game cartridges, snap it the hell up, and post about it here. :)
- kazinator 8y ago
  Speaking of holding state in the display itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_tube What the waiter is doing is kind of like a storage tube driven by markers.
uxamanda 8y ago
I have been telling this story to UX designers since I first read it. Fun to see it pop up again, it's one of my favorites. My favorite part of UX is getting to go on site to see people's workflows in action. An example that comes to mind was working on an early iPad app for EMS / first responders. They already had toughbook-style computers in the ambulances, but had lots of complaints. One thing we noticed immediately was that they couldn't use the computers when they were wearing latex gloves. They actually tracked vital signs by writing them on the gloves themselves and attempting to transcribe them when they got back to the computer.
- jimmyswimmy 8y ago
  Just did exactly this an hour ago. Much easier than trying to type in those little boxes. I can put any value I want on my glove in any format or order. The computer on the other hand will barf if I try to put 120/80 in the pulse field, or anywhere, because systolic and diastolic pressure are two different fields. Seems like a great application for relatively straightforward pattern recognition, an empty text box and a heuristic that guesses what I mean and asks for approval.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
I used to work for a company that made a POS system for hospitality. It was incredibly hard to make everybody happy. Every restaurant and bar and cafe had their own way of doing things, and wanted our system to do it that way. We did have a few "rules" that helped make the system easier to use and to avoid stories like this. We tried to ensure that nothing that was used more than a couple of times a day was more than 3 taps away from the main screen. We also did a lot of visits to our customers. If there were sticky notes around the POS terminal, that was always a red flag that our system wasn't doing something the right way. One important take away from my time at the company, where we worked fairly closely with our customers, is that people love sticking to the old way of doing things, even if there's an easier, new way to do it. If you changed this system to only require one click to change bookings, they'd probably still use a whiteboard marker on the screen, because that's the way they've always done it. Cargo culting is incredibly common for non-technical people using technology, and even fairly common for technical people.
- scrooched_moose 8y ago
  The flip side is techies often assume that because something is newer, more complicated, and more "high-tech" it's automatically better. In reality they often introduce dozens of new failure modes (what's the worst that can happen with a whiteboard, out of ink?) for a 10% productivity gain on the rare occasions it works as intended. I've sat through dozens of sales pitches for (shiny new product that will replace your old piece of junk). When pressed on why it's better, the answer is basically "Technology!"
  - jon_richards 8y ago
    One of the things I've realized is that you basically need to design your technology to do exactly what the customer does. Once you've done that, you can start cutting unneccesary stuff out and making stuff easier. If you want to introduce a step that lets someone skip 2 steps, it's going to be a hard sell. Unless it's a critical part of your product, you should probably make it skippable. Otherwise people are liable to avoid it, falling back onto pen and paper, then run into trouble down the line when it prevents them from doing what they want.
sidedishes 8y ago
I think Norman's The Design of Everyday Things rings incredibly true to this story and its lessons. There are so many examples in that book where users, frustrated or inconvenienced by the (high-tech) complexity of their tools, devise their own (low-tech) way to use a tiny subset of the features that just barely gets the job done for them--though perhaps not as creatively as writing on the screen here. One is the emergence of scrappy post-it-note instruction guides for basic tasks people would tape next to overengineered phone systems in the 90s. He also presents the concept of a 'gulf of evaluation' that makes contextualizes the difference between designer expectations and actual use (or the difficulty of getting feedback that would bridge this gulf). The book---in its latest version, intentionally---omits discussions about modern software, but it does more than enough to prove its point with simple everyday examples. I'd highly recommend giving it a read to anyone!
- digi_owl 8y ago
  I seem to recall reading about something similar regarding field testing of new gear for soldiers. The generals and sales goons would come up with all kinds of "would it not be useful if they had XYZ on their helmet". but once given field trials the feedback was that while it was nice to have, it made said helmets heavy, leading to neck strain and problems with simply looking around.
cnees 8y ago
“That’s the best use of a computer I’ve ever seen,” my CS prof told me as I wrote pseudocode on my MacBook with a pencil.
- aetherspawn 8y ago
  .. does that come off?
  - rangibaby 8y ago
    I wouldn't be worried if it is a grease pencil
    - zafiro17 8y ago
      I once worked in an architecture/engineering firm with an old school architect who worked wonders with pencils and inks. He had a cartoon over his desk: "Computer aided drafting." Showed a crusty, bearded architect sitting on top of his computer as though it were a chair, while drawing with pencils as usual. Back on topic, the solution as I see it is a data store, and different interfaces customized for each employee. Expensive, but the bartender and the hostess don't need the same information.
  - notatoad 8y ago
    Yep. MacBooks are pretty good at shedding whatever you put on them. Even sharpie rubs off pretty easily.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
spectaclepiece 8y ago
Another gem from this blog: http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/09/the-doctor-that-rocks-the-mouse/ http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/09/the-doctor-that-rocks-the-...
- digi_owl 8y ago
  Reminds me that some time back HN linked an article showing that floppies (the 3.5" type, not the 5.25" kind) were still used in Norway to distribute data to doctors. Thing that came up in the comments were that said doctors were holding on to and older, DOS based, patient record system, because it was all keyboard operated. This in turn allowed a seasoned doctor to work the UI while maintaining a dialog with the patient.
tomelders 8y ago
Too many applications are really just crappy database UIs. Software is meant to do things for you, but so many software developers think software is there to stop users messing up their database.
- amelius 8y ago
  Someone should write a program that builds a UI for arbitrary database schemas; and allow the user to extend the schema using the UI.
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    Is this sarcasm? New programs like this tend to crop up every few years - MS Access, FileMaker, and most recently, Airtable.
klausjensen 8y ago
I recently had a chance to visit a company in Glasgow, Scotland, that develops and sells a restaurant management system. The owner told me something, that stuck with me. They only hire people who have worked in the hospitality industry before. They wanted people to know the domain extensively, so they were more likely to understand what their customers were facing in their workday. During my talks with various roles in the company, formal and informal, almost all of them would refer back to a real-life situation, where they would face a problem - and how they tackle that in their software. I think that was a pretty interesting approach.
havkom 8y ago
What is important is the business objectives. It does not matter if a whiteboard marker is used or a mouse is used that sends signals to an elegant micro-service architecture. The customer is always right, and in this case the restaurant is the customer. This is a great example of that principle and in the end the customer was happy and used a, for their business need, a good system.
- havkom 8y ago
  Another upshot is that this system with a whiteboard marker is avoiding personal data processing that is not needed (the GDPR data minimization and storage limitation principles). Privacy by design :-)
quark33 8y ago
They central probelm here there is no way to satisfy everyone's needs in the POS terminal. The bartender will have differnet needs than the hostess, waiter, manager, or kitchen staff. It would be nearly impossible for everyone to agree. Simplicity is the key and I found this restaurants solution to be extremely intuitive. More steps to sit a table simply because the technology is there to acquire more data points, is not always the correct solution.
- scarface74 8y ago
  It’s a monitor - they could have different views of the same data for different users.
alkonaut 8y ago
It’s a combination of they bought the wrong system and the designers didn’t listen. If the product is used successfully in thousands of restaurants without the pen hack then it’s more of the former. If this is one of 25 customers using this system then it’s more of the latter.
dghughes 8y ago
At my old job the food and beverage department used IBM POS. I'm pretty sure it was touch screen but seemed to also have some extra detection from the screen edges. One day a fly landed on the screen and managed to enter an order for a sandwich and two bottles of pop. Talk about a bug!
peter303 8y ago
I was at one of the McDonalds last week with one of their updated computer ording kiosks. They place about 15 feet from the cash register. So if they is a line of 4 people or more, these kiosks are right in you face and tempt you to use them rather wait in line. So with four people ahead of me I started using the kiosk. But the computer menus for both items I wanted to order where three levels deep. The line moved faster than my use of the kiosk. So I abondoned it a returned to the line. Having been spoiled by voice assistants, I'd like one I could bark my order to and have it done.
paddyredbeard 8y ago
I love this!
greymeister 8y ago
It's like SAP. They deliver tools that adapt to your business model, as long as you adapt your business model to do everything the way it works in SAP.

471 points by cbhl 8y ago

I hope no one is depending on the reporting from that software to make any sort of decisions (What do you mean no one showed up for their reservation this past month?!?). Or maybe at the end of their shift, they go in an "clear" the reservations who showed? My guess is there's no reporting / data analysis on the back end.

IncRnd 8y ago
At a successful restaurant, they don't care about reporting, data analysis, or who sat in what seat, just that all seats were occupied. That is already accounted for by looking around the rounm and by the numbers at the end of the night. The reservations are for the seating not the take. If there is any data analysis it has to do with where the next restaurant can be built.
- Mikeb85 8y ago
  Not true at all. Restaurants definitely care about things like total covers, check average, profit per seat, turnaround time, etc... There's massive profit different between say, 1 turn and 2.5 turns. Simply filling every seat once per night isn't good enough for a lot of restaurants.
  - IncRnd 8y ago
    > Simply filling every seat once per night isn't good enough for a lot of restaurants. Great, except that isn't what I wrote.
taneq 8y ago
My cynical thought on the matter was more along the lines of "any booking that doesn't go into the system is probably easier not to report on your taxes"...

PuffinBlue 8y ago

I love this story and I truly hope some of those that build things for other people to use take onboard its point. You really can make something beautiful and elegant and yet totally unusable for the people actually using the interface.

lb1lf 8y ago

The book referred to at the end of the blog entry is brilliant; reading case study upon case study on how projects derailed (if they were ever on track in the first place...) is a humbling experience for anyone who has ever found himself in the position of trying to figure out what a customer wants (often not what he says he wants, sigh). The domain it is hosted on, by the way, translates roughly to bloodyshitesystem.se :)

txru 8y ago
For those looking, the book seems to be in progress being translated to English, but doesn't seem to be done yet. http://javlaskitsystem.se/english/ http://javlaskitsystem.se/english/

jschwartzi 8y ago

I used to do this exact thing with a Vis-a-Vis marker on one of those Apple monitors. They had a nice glass front that made this kind of thing easy.

hermannj314 8y ago

And some of us were using light pen systems in the 80s and 90s. I guess it all goes full circle.

21 8y ago

The equivalent in finance is when they convert the Excel sheet into a "proper" app, only for the users to go back to Excel after a while.

ccozan 8y ago
I don't know if there is a name for this law, but is true: every business app will get an 'export to excel' functionality. No matter how well is modeled or close to the user flow, the users will want to export the data in an excel - where they can be creative!
xupybd 8y ago
I've seen this before. The customer wanted a huge spread sheet converted into an application. Turns out the spreadsheet changed it's function from week to week. The user was using the spreadsheet to play with numbers and didn't need the application they asked for, they just needed an easy way to get data out of the database so they could play with the numbers and a way to get some data back into the db.

throwaway2016a 8y ago

Reminds me of when I used to draw on CRT monitors because it was quicker to illustrate UX changes than to use the mouse / change code. I know a lot of restaurants around here that use a sheet of glass placed over a printout of the seating chart to record reservations and which tables are clear / ready to be seated at. This article buries the lead, the most important takeaway is at the end of the list at #6: > to really find out what’s important to the users, and how a system is actually used, you need to observe real users, in the field.

madeofpalk 8y ago
Came here to say exactly that. The only relevant and important take away from this article is to perform proper user research. All the other insights will follow that.
Y_Y 8y ago
Some people like to bury the "lede" nowadays, presumably because buried lead can be harmful to wildlife and water supplies. (see also: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-versus-lead https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-... )

ghayes 8y ago

For what it's worth, the author of the article misses one crucial aspect of the system: it allows customers to reserve online and via third-party applications. Checking in users (clearly) had a bad experience, but the fact that all upcoming reservations were made and listed is still important (and seemed to function quite well).

combatentropy 8y ago

iPad vs. Paper, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4mlLiyjYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4mlLiyjYo

_bxg1 8y ago

I think one key takeaway which isn't directly mentioned in the article is that UX designers, especially on custom-built business solutions like this one, tend to have a pretty rigid concept of the user flow. But the most useful and time-tested pieces of software tend to be the most flexible; the ones that empower users to do what they want, when they want, on-the-fly. That's what's so powerful about a whiteboard; not the fact that it isn't software. They're infinitely flexible and easy to manipulate. Excel is an (eghem) excellent example of this concept in software, as pointed out by another commenter here. It doesn't presume a particular flow or even a particular set of user stories. It gives you the tools to record and manipulate large amounts of data, no matter what it is or what shape it's in, without writing code. That's a powerful concept and one that more designers should keep in mind.

_bxg1 8y ago
Heck, this exact use case probably could have been served with a clever spreadsheet
- digi_owl 8y ago
  The UI looked very much like a cross between a spreadsheet and a music sequencer.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    To me it looked like they aught to just be running google calendar on an iPad or something.
golergka 8y ago
Another beautiful example is Trello. I've used several task trackers for software projects, Jira and Mantis several times, and my experience with Trello beats everything else. Turns out, you don't really need complicated automated processes and different views for the same data (as abstractions lover in me was absolutely sure of). Doing task management manually and easily changing workflows on the fly is much more useful.

Yhippa 8y ago

Even today for semi- or non-routine tasks I'll do weird stuff like copy text to Notepad to remove formatting then past it back into the same app/web page to enter information. I'll also do some weird things like instead of using an entire screen to read text on a long web page article I'll just keep my eyes near the top of the screen and scroll so my eyes don't have to move. Not sure what I'm trying to say but maybe there are entirely new ways of building existing app types out there that have an audience out there. I wish we spent as much time on HCI in our field. I get a lot more value out of seeing how people I develop software for do their tasks and then thinking about how that could be improved. An implication of that is that I'm not building a fancy UI for my resume's sake; that I'm actually improving their day-to-day workflows. That takes some cost and time but in my projects nobody wants to pay for that.

jpatokal 8y ago
Pro tip: Ctrl-Shift-V pastes with formatting stripped in many systems. Also, on most Google apps including Docs and Gmail, Ctrl-\ (backslash) will reset the formatting of selected text.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  And on macOS, the standard way to do this is "Edit > Paste and Match Style".
  - rando444 8y ago
    Windows has the same menu options, theirs is just called "Paste without formatting" On mac the shortcut is Command-Option-Shift-V
    - Yhippa 8y ago
      This almost makes me wonder if paste with formatting should be the longer shortcut and that unformatted paste is the default.

toss1 8y ago

Great story, and he's absolutely right about having the developers talk directly to the end users. The systems built with customers where we talked to the end users both worked well and were well-accepted. Other systems, where the managers insisted that we talk to a specified manager who would 'gather and transmit' the end-user requirements typically ended up being the endless projects that never quite worked. Yes, sort of endless billables too, but much less satisfying to both build and use. If I were still developing software, I'd be at the point of insisting on direct end-user participation as a condition of doing the work, and primarily for the customer's sake.

Kluny 8y ago
As a developer, I always _try_ to talk to the end users. Sadly I find that managers prevent me from doing so more often than not.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Yup, I hate when managers do that. Where I can, I always push for direct developer-customer interaction, because it turns out that developers can communicate with customers just fine, and adding an additional indirection layer only loses lots of intangible or non-obvious information about the problem domain in the process.

dqv 8y ago

So you know that law? Conway's law? There is a kind of inverse in certain niche industries where the communication structure of the organizations is a result of the software. Like the people are as rigid/dysfunctional as the software. Sometimes there aren't nice solutions like dry erase marker on screen. If you work in one of these, it's the most uncomfortable feeling. One benefit is that it can be motivating to create alternative software to claw your way out. Unless the software mirrors the dysfunctional organization...

barbs 8y ago

The post linked at the end is also interesting: http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/09/the-doctor-that-rocks-the-mouse/ http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/09/the-doctor-that-rocks-the-... Although I can't help but note the irony of an ugly non-responsive webpage! At least on Firefox Android...

newsbinator 8y ago
> [...] Henrik noted that a post-it note covered the upper right corner of the screen. Why? > Well, when patients are ready, they’re supposed to press a ”Save” button on the screen. > But a lot of them instead press the Windows’ ”Close” icon in the upper right corner (perhaps they were determined not to let the next person see their entries). > But this also shut down the machine, and the data they had entered were lost! > Solution: cover the icon with a piece of paper or tape!

antoineMoPa 8y ago

There is no software like no software.

sebringj 8y ago

If you are carpenter holding a hammer you see nails. We are programmers so we see user flows. Put the hammer down, clear your mind. Look at what the u̶s̶e̶r̶ person is doing.

digi_owl 8y ago
And i have seen programmers that when they do so, declare users to be drooling idiots best confined to a padded cell...

otakucode 8y ago

What it tells me is that preventing the developers from talking directly with the users, a practice which is mind-bogglingly common (bordering on universal), is a hurdle which companies are incapable of overcoming. There really is no replacement for a developer who can become embedded in the organization which is going to be using the software, watching or performing the job themselves for any position which is going to be enhanced by using the system being built, etc. I have always wanted to do exactly this as a developer, and the closest I have been able to get was on a couple freelance solo projects. As far as I know there's not even really a name for a person that functions this way. The closest I've seen is "Business Analyst", but if you just look for positions with that name you find nothing even remotely close to actually doing that sort of thing. As a developer, it is normal to look at a system and extract the generalities and patterns and systematize them. Then the users start using the system. And they always ask for the same things. Exceptions. The ability to cheat the rules they swore were "always" the case. If they've got someone on the staff who knows just enough to be dangerous, their system will grow by bits and pieces organically, eventually resulting in a real nightmarish mess. For years I have wanted to try to design a system which actually has this in mind as a primary use case. Something which can be bit-by-bit 'expanded' over time with the special cases, exceptions, etc but which can remain sensible, maintainable, and tractable. It's possible that such a system cannot be made both as flexible as necessary and still usable by the average person, but I think it might be. Anything which accomplished the goal even partially would be pretty successful I imagine.

sopooneo 8y ago
One problem with putting developers in direct contact with customers is that we developers tend to be more terse, more concrete, more exact, than the average Joe(lla). And that leads us to occasionally use the word "no". And that word infuriates and terrifies average Joe(lla)'s bosses. I completely agree that good software requires this direct contact, but you have to find the right people.

jancsika 8y ago

Long story short, the UI devs aren't dogfooding their product, right? I mean if the company just went out for beers one night and had one person try to use the software to "seat" each employee, they'd figure out pretty quickly that there are too many clicks. Especially if the rule is to take a drink for each employee seated. :)

askvictor 8y ago
I think that's a bit dangerous as developers often think differently to non-developers; also they already know how to use their product since they wrote it. Needs to be tested with actual end-users.
- davegauer 8y ago
  You are absolutely right about the danger of knowing your own product too well. On the other hand, a developer is often in a much better position to know how to "make the computer do the work" than the end-user. Ideally, you'd test with both...several times. It would be wonderful if clients were willing to pay for this level of software perfection!
taneq 8y ago
Precisely. What you suggest here would be a good start - if they took notes, even one evening would pick up probably 20-30 significant UI issues. Next, get the most attractive member of the waitstaff to go through the same process with your prototype. Ideally offer minimal prompting. Ask them at each step what they expected to see. Take notes. Repeat for the rest of the waitstaff, if possible. The designer of a UI being able to do everything they need with it quickly and easily is the first step. The intended user being able do so with minimal training is a much later, much more important step.

kazinator 8y ago

If the position of objects in the UI is immutable, you can use the glass as part of the state. This overlay over the screen reminds me of some video games systems that used transparencies for part of the scene, or at least a measure of color. Vectrex was like this: vector graphics, augmented with a game-specific acetate overlay that you'd put on the screen for that game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex Vectrex is fantastic; if you find a working one in some garage sale, with game cartridges, snap it the hell up, and post about it here. :)

kazinator 8y ago
Speaking of holding state in the display itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_tube What the waiter is doing is kind of like a storage tube driven by markers.

uxamanda 8y ago

I have been telling this story to UX designers since I first read it. Fun to see it pop up again, it's one of my favorites. My favorite part of UX is getting to go on site to see people's workflows in action. An example that comes to mind was working on an early iPad app for EMS / first responders. They already had toughbook-style computers in the ambulances, but had lots of complaints. One thing we noticed immediately was that they couldn't use the computers when they were wearing latex gloves. They actually tracked vital signs by writing them on the gloves themselves and attempting to transcribe them when they got back to the computer.

jimmyswimmy 8y ago
Just did exactly this an hour ago. Much easier than trying to type in those little boxes. I can put any value I want on my glove in any format or order. The computer on the other hand will barf if I try to put 120/80 in the pulse field, or anywhere, because systolic and diastolic pressure are two different fields. Seems like a great application for relatively straightforward pattern recognition, an empty text box and a heuristic that guesses what I mean and asks for approval.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

I used to work for a company that made a POS system for hospitality. It was incredibly hard to make everybody happy. Every restaurant and bar and cafe had their own way of doing things, and wanted our system to do it that way. We did have a few "rules" that helped make the system easier to use and to avoid stories like this. We tried to ensure that nothing that was used more than a couple of times a day was more than 3 taps away from the main screen. We also did a lot of visits to our customers. If there were sticky notes around the POS terminal, that was always a red flag that our system wasn't doing something the right way. One important take away from my time at the company, where we worked fairly closely with our customers, is that people love sticking to the old way of doing things, even if there's an easier, new way to do it. If you changed this system to only require one click to change bookings, they'd probably still use a whiteboard marker on the screen, because that's the way they've always done it. Cargo culting is incredibly common for non-technical people using technology, and even fairly common for technical people.

scrooched_moose 8y ago
The flip side is techies often assume that because something is newer, more complicated, and more "high-tech" it's automatically better. In reality they often introduce dozens of new failure modes (what's the worst that can happen with a whiteboard, out of ink?) for a 10% productivity gain on the rare occasions it works as intended. I've sat through dozens of sales pitches for (shiny new product that will replace your old piece of junk). When pressed on why it's better, the answer is basically "Technology!"
- jon_richards 8y ago
  One of the things I've realized is that you basically need to design your technology to do exactly what the customer does. Once you've done that, you can start cutting unneccesary stuff out and making stuff easier. If you want to introduce a step that lets someone skip 2 steps, it's going to be a hard sell. Unless it's a critical part of your product, you should probably make it skippable. Otherwise people are liable to avoid it, falling back onto pen and paper, then run into trouble down the line when it prevents them from doing what they want.

sidedishes 8y ago

I think Norman's The Design of Everyday Things rings incredibly true to this story and its lessons. There are so many examples in that book where users, frustrated or inconvenienced by the (high-tech) complexity of their tools, devise their own (low-tech) way to use a tiny subset of the features that just barely gets the job done for them--though perhaps not as creatively as writing on the screen here. One is the emergence of scrappy post-it-note instruction guides for basic tasks people would tape next to overengineered phone systems in the 90s. He also presents the concept of a 'gulf of evaluation' that makes contextualizes the difference between designer expectations and actual use (or the difficulty of getting feedback that would bridge this gulf). The book---in its latest version, intentionally---omits discussions about modern software, but it does more than enough to prove its point with simple everyday examples. I'd highly recommend giving it a read to anyone!

digi_owl 8y ago
I seem to recall reading about something similar regarding field testing of new gear for soldiers. The generals and sales goons would come up with all kinds of "would it not be useful if they had XYZ on their helmet". but once given field trials the feedback was that while it was nice to have, it made said helmets heavy, leading to neck strain and problems with simply looking around.

cnees 8y ago

“That’s the best use of a computer I’ve ever seen,” my CS prof told me as I wrote pseudocode on my MacBook with a pencil.

aetherspawn 8y ago
.. does that come off?
- rangibaby 8y ago
  I wouldn't be worried if it is a grease pencil
  - zafiro17 8y ago
    I once worked in an architecture/engineering firm with an old school architect who worked wonders with pencils and inks. He had a cartoon over his desk: "Computer aided drafting." Showed a crusty, bearded architect sitting on top of his computer as though it were a chair, while drawing with pencils as usual. Back on topic, the solution as I see it is a data store, and different interfaces customized for each employee. Expensive, but the bartender and the hostess don't need the same information.
- notatoad 8y ago
  Yep. MacBooks are pretty good at shedding whatever you put on them. Even sharpie rubs off pretty easily.

deleted 8y ago

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spectaclepiece 8y ago

Another gem from this blog: http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/09/the-doctor-that-rocks-the-mouse/ http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/09/the-doctor-that-rocks-the-...

digi_owl 8y ago
Reminds me that some time back HN linked an article showing that floppies (the 3.5" type, not the 5.25" kind) were still used in Norway to distribute data to doctors. Thing that came up in the comments were that said doctors were holding on to and older, DOS based, patient record system, because it was all keyboard operated. This in turn allowed a seasoned doctor to work the UI while maintaining a dialog with the patient.

tomelders 8y ago

Too many applications are really just crappy database UIs. Software is meant to do things for you, but so many software developers think software is there to stop users messing up their database.

amelius 8y ago
Someone should write a program that builds a UI for arbitrary database schemas; and allow the user to extend the schema using the UI.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  Is this sarcasm? New programs like this tend to crop up every few years - MS Access, FileMaker, and most recently, Airtable.

klausjensen 8y ago

I recently had a chance to visit a company in Glasgow, Scotland, that develops and sells a restaurant management system. The owner told me something, that stuck with me. They only hire people who have worked in the hospitality industry before. They wanted people to know the domain extensively, so they were more likely to understand what their customers were facing in their workday. During my talks with various roles in the company, formal and informal, almost all of them would refer back to a real-life situation, where they would face a problem - and how they tackle that in their software. I think that was a pretty interesting approach.

havkom 8y ago

What is important is the business objectives. It does not matter if a whiteboard marker is used or a mouse is used that sends signals to an elegant micro-service architecture. The customer is always right, and in this case the restaurant is the customer. This is a great example of that principle and in the end the customer was happy and used a, for their business need, a good system.

havkom 8y ago
Another upshot is that this system with a whiteboard marker is avoiding personal data processing that is not needed (the GDPR data minimization and storage limitation principles). Privacy by design :-)

quark33 8y ago

They central probelm here there is no way to satisfy everyone's needs in the POS terminal. The bartender will have differnet needs than the hostess, waiter, manager, or kitchen staff. It would be nearly impossible for everyone to agree. Simplicity is the key and I found this restaurants solution to be extremely intuitive. More steps to sit a table simply because the technology is there to acquire more data points, is not always the correct solution.

scarface74 8y ago
It’s a monitor - they could have different views of the same data for different users.

alkonaut 8y ago

It’s a combination of they bought the wrong system and the designers didn’t listen. If the product is used successfully in thousands of restaurants without the pen hack then it’s more of the former. If this is one of 25 customers using this system then it’s more of the latter.

dghughes 8y ago

At my old job the food and beverage department used IBM POS. I'm pretty sure it was touch screen but seemed to also have some extra detection from the screen edges. One day a fly landed on the screen and managed to enter an order for a sandwich and two bottles of pop. Talk about a bug!

peter303 8y ago

I was at one of the McDonalds last week with one of their updated computer ording kiosks. They place about 15 feet from the cash register. So if they is a line of 4 people or more, these kiosks are right in you face and tempt you to use them rather wait in line. So with four people ahead of me I started using the kiosk. But the computer menus for both items I wanted to order where three levels deep. The line moved faster than my use of the kiosk. So I abondoned it a returned to the line. Having been spoiled by voice assistants, I'd like one I could bark my order to and have it done.

paddyredbeard 8y ago

I love this!

greymeister 8y ago

It's like SAP. They deliver tools that adapt to your business model, as long as you adapt your business model to do everything the way it works in SAP.