>Well, mcDonalds draws maps of where their workers put their feet, and then designs the kitchens to minimize the number of steps the workers needs to take to co

>Well, mcDonalds draws maps of where their workers put their feet, and then designs the kitchens to minimize the number of steps the workers needs to take to complete their jobs. In a completely different field (architecture, public spaces, parks) it has become common (and I find it a particularly smart approach) to create a new garden/public space/park with no "paths" and open it to the public. And put some benches "here and there" semi-randomly. Soon the grass will be worn out where people actually walks (i.e. people that needs to cross the park because it needs to go from point A to point B), so there you make the actual paved paths and the same goes for benches, some will have a path in the grass leading to them and some will look like never used, etc. But when it comes to Excel (or similar software) there is a difference. In the case of McDonalds personnel are instructed on exactly what they have to do and how exactly do it, i.e. their footsteps are their own optimization of an exactly specified chore. In the case of the people on public parks there is no need for instructions, as people actually needs to go through the park to get from point A to point B and knows where they love to seat down. In the case of Excel (or similar software) the issue is IMHO that most often than not the user doesn't actually know what he/she is doing, in the sense that user may (and often does) take a "wrong" or exceedingly convoluted path to get to the actual wanted result (when/if he/she actually gets to the result AND the result is actually correct). I often deal with people that (most probably in good faith) bluffed their way in "familiarity with Office" on their resumè and never actually learned to work in Excel, the spreadsheet they make are "terrible", with material (and sometimes also conceptual) mistakes that are all fine if you are using Excel to - say - keep your monthly budget under control but that cause (big) issues if you are using it at work to manage a project expenses/production/forecasts, a bid offer or similar. Feedback/telemetry from these users would "dumbify" the product and probably even make it much worse. >I could go on all day. I could too, I have seen things ...