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Tech as it stands today requires a cognitive overhead that I think is wearing down people. It seems like we can make more complex software but we can't make it

by bpyne 6y ago

Tech as it stands today requires a cognitive overhead that I think is wearing down people. It seems like we can make more complex software but we can't make it work smoothly. People are spending far too much time searching the web for tech workarounds and contacting support teams. Tech, when done right, should be unnoticed in the background of people's minds. It's anything but that right now.

amatecha 6y ago
I'd argue that today's challenge is making powerful, complex software that is easy to use or accessible. The software industry, in general, makes customers pay for the developers' laziness in design and implementation. Every modal/alert you have to read, every choice you have to make, was something that could probably have been designed out of the user flow. Technology is complicated because companies/vendors choose for it to be -- generally they will invest just as much energy/money as they have to do ship something that checks off the bullet points and brings enough ROI to please the shareholders.
- bpyne 6y ago
  There's no single culprit, but you hit part of the problem. - Users prioritizing new features over rock solid performance hurt us badly. Basically, we as customers are our own worst enemy. - Software done as distributed services when it doesn't need to be. Each tier added to a distributed architecture is a point of failure. And each tier needs to be supported in vendor upgrades and the like for server software, VM software, security patches, etc. - Reduced emphasis on protocols. When my team started to develop services for the first time we decided to use JSON as the lingua franca for communicating between them. But we didn't think about developing protocols using JSON. Now it's a shit show of different messaging formats in JSON. So we don't have any standard components for parsing and forming messages. - Here's a particular pain point with me. I'm sick of creating an account for every damned service I use. When I pull up an app to order takeout from a restaurant, I shouldn't need an account. All too often, I'm required to create one. I have accounts all over the web now and I'm sure I don't remember half of them. Of course, having lots of accounts requires lots of passwords to manage. So I have a password manager which works mostly until I'm in a hurry and then it doesn't. I don't see a way out of our current predicament. But I do hear an undercurrent of "I want to simplify my life" growing. I believe that tech is taking too much cognitive effort from non-tech people.
  - amatecha 6y ago
    Oh yeah, regarding creating accounts, I had a recent situation where I wanted to make a reservation at a restaurant and the system they used required creating an account to do so. I disagreed with this so I phone them to make the reservation. After the call I actually got an email confirming my reservation, without me having given my email address! Their reservation system (Resy) had created an account for me! The only way I can think they got an email is from me having made a reservation with that restaurant in the past with a different reservation system and the restaurant took it upon themselves to populate that info in the new system, which then created an account for me. Needless to say I was a little frustrated that an account was created on a foreign-owned 3rd party service that I didn't agree to (and the whole reason I had called in the first place)... Anyway, bit of a rant there but it's another symptom of software essentially disrespecting the user/customer and making them "pay" for the choices of product design. Regarding cognitive effort, I talk about this with people on a pretty much constant basis. My feedback to designers and product people is always about how much cognitive energy I have to consume to interact with this feature/app/etc. We live in a time where our cognitive capacity is constantly sapped by exactly the things we're discussing in this thread. Extraneous notifications, software update reminders, "dark pattern" UX on news websites, animated advertisements, inconsistent/unintuitive design patterns across different software/platforms, low batteries (or other tech problems), etc. Every bit of effort we can make on the creators' side to make the user's life easier is a 100% worthy undertaking, IMO. Not only is it a good thing to do for our fellow humans, they will recognize the ease of use and be a happy user or customer as a result.

by bpyne 6y ago

amatecha 6y ago

I'd argue that today's challenge is making powerful, complex software that is easy to use or accessible. The software industry, in general, makes customers pay for the developers' laziness in design and implementation. Every modal/alert you have to read, every choice you have to make, was something that could probably have been designed out of the user flow. Technology is complicated because companies/vendors choose for it to be -- generally they will invest just as much energy/money as they have to do ship something that checks off the bullet points and brings enough ROI to please the shareholders.

bpyne 6y ago
There's no single culprit, but you hit part of the problem. - Users prioritizing new features over rock solid performance hurt us badly. Basically, we as customers are our own worst enemy. - Software done as distributed services when it doesn't need to be. Each tier added to a distributed architecture is a point of failure. And each tier needs to be supported in vendor upgrades and the like for server software, VM software, security patches, etc. - Reduced emphasis on protocols. When my team started to develop services for the first time we decided to use JSON as the lingua franca for communicating between them. But we didn't think about developing protocols using JSON. Now it's a shit show of different messaging formats in JSON. So we don't have any standard components for parsing and forming messages. - Here's a particular pain point with me. I'm sick of creating an account for every damned service I use. When I pull up an app to order takeout from a restaurant, I shouldn't need an account. All too often, I'm required to create one. I have accounts all over the web now and I'm sure I don't remember half of them. Of course, having lots of accounts requires lots of passwords to manage. So I have a password manager which works mostly until I'm in a hurry and then it doesn't. I don't see a way out of our current predicament. But I do hear an undercurrent of "I want to simplify my life" growing. I believe that tech is taking too much cognitive effort from non-tech people.
- amatecha 6y ago
  Oh yeah, regarding creating accounts, I had a recent situation where I wanted to make a reservation at a restaurant and the system they used required creating an account to do so. I disagreed with this so I phone them to make the reservation. After the call I actually got an email confirming my reservation, without me having given my email address! Their reservation system (Resy) had created an account for me! The only way I can think they got an email is from me having made a reservation with that restaurant in the past with a different reservation system and the restaurant took it upon themselves to populate that info in the new system, which then created an account for me. Needless to say I was a little frustrated that an account was created on a foreign-owned 3rd party service that I didn't agree to (and the whole reason I had called in the first place)... Anyway, bit of a rant there but it's another symptom of software essentially disrespecting the user/customer and making them "pay" for the choices of product design. Regarding cognitive effort, I talk about this with people on a pretty much constant basis. My feedback to designers and product people is always about how much cognitive energy I have to consume to interact with this feature/app/etc. We live in a time where our cognitive capacity is constantly sapped by exactly the things we're discussing in this thread. Extraneous notifications, software update reminders, "dark pattern" UX on news websites, animated advertisements, inconsistent/unintuitive design patterns across different software/platforms, low batteries (or other tech problems), etc. Every bit of effort we can make on the creators' side to make the user's life easier is a 100% worthy undertaking, IMO. Not only is it a good thing to do for our fellow humans, they will recognize the ease of use and be a happy user or customer as a result.