8 ms·

> Assessors are prone to make mistakes when using the vintage software because it can’t display all the basic information for a given property on one screen. W

> Assessors are prone to make mistakes when using the vintage software because it can’t display all the basic information for a given property on one screen. Well they're in for a surprise if they think modern user experience designers would fix that.

rietta 8y ago
Geez. This is the truth. Applying A/B tested mobile design fads from consumer app to data driven for-professional-use software is leading us in a very bad direction.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Replace half of the labeled buttons with inscrutable generic hieroglyphs and hide the other half under a hamburger menu! <Aliens Guy>User Experience</Aliens Guy>
- gambler 8y ago
  Very true. Modern web UIs have some good ideas and some bad ideas, but fundamentally they are designed for people browsing stuff and optimized for conversion and engagement. At work, people do work and you need to optimize for efficiency and reducing burnout. A lot of people don't get this and blindly copy designs. Yay, your tool now looks like Amazon! ...which people leisurely use two hours a week, while your tool is being used 9 hours a day, in a crunch.
doodpants 8y ago
Agreed. Perhaps this software from the '80s should be replaced by software with interface design sensibilities from the '90s.
smt88 8y ago
I've found some great UX designers who could fix this. They complain that they're constantly at war with designers, who think things like text labels are "ugly".
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Do you have some examples of modern UIs made for work instead of looks?
  - atoko 8y ago
    I would vouch for IntelliJ. It's clean, customizable and nothing is hidden away
    - lostcolony 8y ago
      I wouldn't say it's very effective though. I end up looking for things -way- too often in it, as there is just -way- too much to it. I'm fairly experienced with it, having used it off and on for 3-4 years now (any time I'm using a language that isn't miserable I'll just use Sublime), but I still find myself trying to figure out how to do certain things. And starting out it was terrible; yes, plenty of auto-magic things that make Java suck less, but even just a basic 'find any occurrences of this line of text in the project' required multiple tries to figure out (apparently it's not "Find...", "Find Next/Move to Next Occurrence", nor "Find Usages", but "Find in Path". Which is not at all what I would have expected when it's not a class I'm searching for).
      - chimpburger 8y ago
        You haven't used many IDEs. This is standard behavior. "find next" or "find usages" is for the current editor and you should never expect it to search the entire project. Searching files recursively is usually called "find in path".
        lostcolony 8y ago
        I HADN'T used many IDEs. I -did- say 'starting out'. Regardless, defending it as standard behavior means you're arguing it has -average- UX. The OP was in favor of it having -good- UX (well, 'clean, customizable and nothing is hidden away', and I was just pointing out that doesn't necessarily mean it's good).
Spooky23 8y ago
I used to support a few assessors offices. The software is pretty simple, and mistakes were almost always process problems associated with complex exemptions and classification. The other set of problems were related to small market sample size for some corner cases. You can see this at play with Zillow. Software is used as a boogeyman for leadership and process failure. A clipper system from 1985 is a great solution. The problem with it is that it’s highly likely that the needs of the business have changed over 30 years, and the software has not. That just reflects the lack of capital investment and process improvement typical in municipal government. It’s easier to say “OMG, Clipper from 1980!” Because that is better than “we are a bunch of idiots”. In the town that I grew up in, the process prior to 1980s computerization was a 100 year old paper process that was essentially the same as the computerized process — maybe better as the internal controls were better. Some of the properties in that town had deeds dating back to the Dutch colonial period, and in many ways the 1650 process was similar to the 2019 process, except they used percentage of rents and a levy of crops based on market value.
- nobleach 8y ago
  CA Clipper, FoxPro.... those systems were awesome.
  - aNoob7000 8y ago
    As a Foxpro 2.6 developer in my earlier days, I really miss those days.
  - Roboprog 8y ago
    My first part time job while back in college (1985) was doing dBase II work. Then dBase III+, Clipper 86, Clipper 87, ... It sucked not having transactions and referential integrity, but I liked not having to second guess a query planner :-) Systems didn’t scale past small workgroup LANs very well, though.
- sbuttgereit 8y ago
  "Software is used as a boogeyman for leadership and process failure." In my business systems consulting business, I think I have seen exactly this issue almost more than any other issue that I've encountered... across industries and business sizes. Software gives you that convenient, opaque, ill-understood rug you can sweep any old systemic (non-technological sense) problem under. And it's probably so common because it works. Those people trying to get to the root of organizational problems more often than not don't have sufficient understanding of what role technology plays in their business as to challenge people blaming the system... so many dollars and so much time get dedicated to solving the wrong problems this way.... To be fair most, if not all, business systems are terrible, but they aren't usually the core problem when a company gets to bringing some like me in to "fix/replace" the systems. Makes my job a little harder than it should be to be honest.
dentemple 8y ago
Modern UX has ways to compartmentalize information on a single screen for when it's needed/not needed. This assumes that you're not also trying to make it a mobile app. Many of the more (in)famous public redesigns in recent years went for "open" and "spacey" UX because they erroneously tried to make their main design a mobile-first design, when that wasn't their core business need. (Often, a second application can be built that satisfies mobile needs. Many uses of reddit or gmail, like myself, are more than happy to use a separate mobile app for consuming data.)
- apostacy 8y ago
  In reality though, most UX designers will just try to transform an interface that people have been using for 30 years into a phone interface, and then smugly dismiss any criticism. "You'll get used to it" "It's the latest trend, you have to do it."
- efiecho 8y ago
  > Many of the more (in)famous public redesigns in recent years went for "open" and "spacey" UX because they erroneously tried to make their main design a mobile-first design, when that wasn't their core business need. The Internet Archive redesign is a great example of this.
tmaly 8y ago
completely changing the interface has its own problems in my opinion. People that have years of experience using the older interface are going to have a tough time making the transition. training is usually lacking, and a newer UI does not guarantee that more mistakes will not be made in the learning curve.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  One thing I've often heard that the old software is oftentimes DOS / ncurses style keyboard-driven UI, the new is a Windows forms app or webapp - often completely incompatible with the existing flows, lacking any keyboard interaction, and even with optimization and training not as fast or as fast to operate as the old application.
  - sixdimensional 8y ago
    Green screen!!!
    - coldacid 8y ago
      Green screens need to make a comeback.
      - inetknght 8y ago
        I appreciate the concept of a green screen, but I'd rather have an 80x24 with multi-color than an 80x24 with mono-color. 8-bit color is perfectly acceptable to me; I don't need a lot of color, just enough to use to differentiate categories of data.
    - hermitdev 8y ago
      How about a green screen with burn-in?
  - apostacy 8y ago
    If most UX designers took the time to listen and understand people's needs, then this wouldn't be such an issue. But in my experience, there is a culture of hubris in the UX community. I doubt most UX designers have ever even used a curses based interface. They are just disgusted by seeing so much monospace text, and are compelled to tear it down and replace it with something they are comfortable with (And usually the only thing they know how to use). I had to clean up after some UX monkeys a few years ago, who "upgraded" a warehouse inventory system. The warehouse used 30 year old embedded MSDOS based portable Symbol terminals and a SCO UNIX server in the back end. They also used Wyse terminals in the office for the admin interface and data entry. Everything booted in seconds, and the portable terminal/scanners lasted for days, and never had a problem. They decided to replace it with React Native on Android touch screen terminals (this was a refrigerated food warehouse). The hardware couldn't go even a whole day, and the touchscreens were not at all appropriate. The software was slow and unreliable, and had led to costly mistakes. Speaking to the designer, he seemed far more concerned about how it looked than about adding back essential features. He kept joking about how backward things had been, and how heroic he was for helping these simpletons see the light. His only justification for several things was that it was "trending" and he didn't want his client to be "left behind". They also started by gutting essential features, and adding them back on a rolling basis, when they got around to it. In my opinion, a big part of the problem is the culture of UX. It seems to have amplified the stereotypical arrogance that people sometimes associate with IT people, and combined it with smug fashionistas.
snarfy 8y ago
They could if they understood their users. A lot of UX design you see today is designed for new users, as apposed to say expert users like assessors that use the same software all day, everyday. Those are different UX goals. A good UX designer understands the user first.
Shivetya 8y ago
Since I work on the AS/400 (iSeries) what makes the whole story ludicrous is that for nearly a decade if not more it has been relatively simple to web face your applications. There are vendors who can do but the tools are pretty straight forward. Hell even the zSeries and AIX based solutions have web facing products that make supporting new interfaces a breeze while keeping decades old proven business logic in the background. however as you mentioned, a modern user experience isn't the end all. we even did a migration from an MS Access database application to a new platform where it was required to be 100% look a like. The whole move was done to modernize that application yet those doing the work got handcuffed on day one. one isuse holding back the upgrades in most cities is that their IT departments tend to be a real mess with one or two SME per system/platform that isn't PC related and even then its all maintenance mode anyway because it just works. however the real issue is likely, infrastructure maintenance which includes IT and other not sexy items like sewer and road repair fall by the way side of ribbon cutting opportunities for new buildings, roads, and bridges. then throw in the incredible debt to employee benefits and pensions most cities have and its no wonder so falls to the wayside
- Roboprog 8y ago
  Did some work back in the early 90s at a place that sold tools to port RPG code from S/36 and AS/400 to Unix and PC type environments. RPG was not my cup of tea, but the results on the screen looked much like the XBase stuff on PCs I was doing the previous half decade, so I guess people were happy to schlep their working code onto newer, cheaper machines.

rietta 8y ago

Geez. This is the truth. Applying A/B tested mobile design fads from consumer app to data driven for-professional-use software is leading us in a very bad direction.

jjoonathan 8y ago
Replace half of the labeled buttons with inscrutable generic hieroglyphs and hide the other half under a hamburger menu! <Aliens Guy>User Experience</Aliens Guy>
gambler 8y ago
Very true. Modern web UIs have some good ideas and some bad ideas, but fundamentally they are designed for people browsing stuff and optimized for conversion and engagement. At work, people do work and you need to optimize for efficiency and reducing burnout. A lot of people don't get this and blindly copy designs. Yay, your tool now looks like Amazon! ...which people leisurely use two hours a week, while your tool is being used 9 hours a day, in a crunch.

doodpants 8y ago

Agreed. Perhaps this software from the '80s should be replaced by software with interface design sensibilities from the '90s.

smt88 8y ago

I've found some great UX designers who could fix this. They complain that they're constantly at war with designers, who think things like text labels are "ugly".

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Do you have some examples of modern UIs made for work instead of looks?
- atoko 8y ago
  I would vouch for IntelliJ. It's clean, customizable and nothing is hidden away
  - lostcolony 8y ago
    I wouldn't say it's very effective though. I end up looking for things -way- too often in it, as there is just -way- too much to it. I'm fairly experienced with it, having used it off and on for 3-4 years now (any time I'm using a language that isn't miserable I'll just use Sublime), but I still find myself trying to figure out how to do certain things. And starting out it was terrible; yes, plenty of auto-magic things that make Java suck less, but even just a basic 'find any occurrences of this line of text in the project' required multiple tries to figure out (apparently it's not "Find...", "Find Next/Move to Next Occurrence", nor "Find Usages", but "Find in Path". Which is not at all what I would have expected when it's not a class I'm searching for).
    - chimpburger 8y ago
      You haven't used many IDEs. This is standard behavior. "find next" or "find usages" is for the current editor and you should never expect it to search the entire project. Searching files recursively is usually called "find in path".
      - lostcolony 8y ago
        I HADN'T used many IDEs. I -did- say 'starting out'. Regardless, defending it as standard behavior means you're arguing it has -average- UX. The OP was in favor of it having -good- UX (well, 'clean, customizable and nothing is hidden away', and I was just pointing out that doesn't necessarily mean it's good).

Spooky23 8y ago

I used to support a few assessors offices. The software is pretty simple, and mistakes were almost always process problems associated with complex exemptions and classification. The other set of problems were related to small market sample size for some corner cases. You can see this at play with Zillow. Software is used as a boogeyman for leadership and process failure. A clipper system from 1985 is a great solution. The problem with it is that it’s highly likely that the needs of the business have changed over 30 years, and the software has not. That just reflects the lack of capital investment and process improvement typical in municipal government. It’s easier to say “OMG, Clipper from 1980!” Because that is better than “we are a bunch of idiots”. In the town that I grew up in, the process prior to 1980s computerization was a 100 year old paper process that was essentially the same as the computerized process — maybe better as the internal controls were better. Some of the properties in that town had deeds dating back to the Dutch colonial period, and in many ways the 1650 process was similar to the 2019 process, except they used percentage of rents and a levy of crops based on market value.

nobleach 8y ago
CA Clipper, FoxPro.... those systems were awesome.
- aNoob7000 8y ago
  As a Foxpro 2.6 developer in my earlier days, I really miss those days.
- Roboprog 8y ago
  My first part time job while back in college (1985) was doing dBase II work. Then dBase III+, Clipper 86, Clipper 87, ... It sucked not having transactions and referential integrity, but I liked not having to second guess a query planner :-) Systems didn’t scale past small workgroup LANs very well, though.
sbuttgereit 8y ago
"Software is used as a boogeyman for leadership and process failure." In my business systems consulting business, I think I have seen exactly this issue almost more than any other issue that I've encountered... across industries and business sizes. Software gives you that convenient, opaque, ill-understood rug you can sweep any old systemic (non-technological sense) problem under. And it's probably so common because it works. Those people trying to get to the root of organizational problems more often than not don't have sufficient understanding of what role technology plays in their business as to challenge people blaming the system... so many dollars and so much time get dedicated to solving the wrong problems this way.... To be fair most, if not all, business systems are terrible, but they aren't usually the core problem when a company gets to bringing some like me in to "fix/replace" the systems. Makes my job a little harder than it should be to be honest.

dentemple 8y ago

Modern UX has ways to compartmentalize information on a single screen for when it's needed/not needed. This assumes that you're not also trying to make it a mobile app. Many of the more (in)famous public redesigns in recent years went for "open" and "spacey" UX because they erroneously tried to make their main design a mobile-first design, when that wasn't their core business need. (Often, a second application can be built that satisfies mobile needs. Many uses of reddit or gmail, like myself, are more than happy to use a separate mobile app for consuming data.)

apostacy 8y ago
In reality though, most UX designers will just try to transform an interface that people have been using for 30 years into a phone interface, and then smugly dismiss any criticism. "You'll get used to it" "It's the latest trend, you have to do it."
efiecho 8y ago
> Many of the more (in)famous public redesigns in recent years went for "open" and "spacey" UX because they erroneously tried to make their main design a mobile-first design, when that wasn't their core business need. The Internet Archive redesign is a great example of this.

tmaly 8y ago

completely changing the interface has its own problems in my opinion. People that have years of experience using the older interface are going to have a tough time making the transition. training is usually lacking, and a newer UI does not guarantee that more mistakes will not be made in the learning curve.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
One thing I've often heard that the old software is oftentimes DOS / ncurses style keyboard-driven UI, the new is a Windows forms app or webapp - often completely incompatible with the existing flows, lacking any keyboard interaction, and even with optimization and training not as fast or as fast to operate as the old application.
- sixdimensional 8y ago
  Green screen!!!
  - coldacid 8y ago
    Green screens need to make a comeback.
    - inetknght 8y ago
      I appreciate the concept of a green screen, but I'd rather have an 80x24 with multi-color than an 80x24 with mono-color. 8-bit color is perfectly acceptable to me; I don't need a lot of color, just enough to use to differentiate categories of data.
  - hermitdev 8y ago
    How about a green screen with burn-in?
- apostacy 8y ago
  If most UX designers took the time to listen and understand people's needs, then this wouldn't be such an issue. But in my experience, there is a culture of hubris in the UX community. I doubt most UX designers have ever even used a curses based interface. They are just disgusted by seeing so much monospace text, and are compelled to tear it down and replace it with something they are comfortable with (And usually the only thing they know how to use). I had to clean up after some UX monkeys a few years ago, who "upgraded" a warehouse inventory system. The warehouse used 30 year old embedded MSDOS based portable Symbol terminals and a SCO UNIX server in the back end. They also used Wyse terminals in the office for the admin interface and data entry. Everything booted in seconds, and the portable terminal/scanners lasted for days, and never had a problem. They decided to replace it with React Native on Android touch screen terminals (this was a refrigerated food warehouse). The hardware couldn't go even a whole day, and the touchscreens were not at all appropriate. The software was slow and unreliable, and had led to costly mistakes. Speaking to the designer, he seemed far more concerned about how it looked than about adding back essential features. He kept joking about how backward things had been, and how heroic he was for helping these simpletons see the light. His only justification for several things was that it was "trending" and he didn't want his client to be "left behind". They also started by gutting essential features, and adding them back on a rolling basis, when they got around to it. In my opinion, a big part of the problem is the culture of UX. It seems to have amplified the stereotypical arrogance that people sometimes associate with IT people, and combined it with smug fashionistas.

snarfy 8y ago

They could if they understood their users. A lot of UX design you see today is designed for new users, as apposed to say expert users like assessors that use the same software all day, everyday. Those are different UX goals. A good UX designer understands the user first.

Shivetya 8y ago

Since I work on the AS/400 (iSeries) what makes the whole story ludicrous is that for nearly a decade if not more it has been relatively simple to web face your applications. There are vendors who can do but the tools are pretty straight forward. Hell even the zSeries and AIX based solutions have web facing products that make supporting new interfaces a breeze while keeping decades old proven business logic in the background. however as you mentioned, a modern user experience isn't the end all. we even did a migration from an MS Access database application to a new platform where it was required to be 100% look a like. The whole move was done to modernize that application yet those doing the work got handcuffed on day one. one isuse holding back the upgrades in most cities is that their IT departments tend to be a real mess with one or two SME per system/platform that isn't PC related and even then its all maintenance mode anyway because it just works. however the real issue is likely, infrastructure maintenance which includes IT and other not sexy items like sewer and road repair fall by the way side of ribbon cutting opportunities for new buildings, roads, and bridges. then throw in the incredible debt to employee benefits and pensions most cities have and its no wonder so falls to the wayside

Roboprog 8y ago
Did some work back in the early 90s at a place that sold tools to port RPG code from S/36 and AS/400 to Unix and PC type environments. RPG was not my cup of tea, but the results on the screen looked much like the XBase stuff on PCs I was doing the previous half decade, so I guess people were happy to schlep their working code onto newer, cheaper machines.