4 ms·

What would happen if you replace "performance" in this article with "not contrast enough UI" or "bad autocorrect" or "annoying background music"? Should this ar

What would happen if you replace "performance" in this article with "not contrast enough UI" or "bad autocorrect" or "annoying background music"? Should this article have been "Good autocorrect matters"? The problem here isn't performance. The problem here is that the company which is building this software are so remote from end-user that they don't hear feedback. If they knew that performance is the problem and multidollar contract with some huge network of hospitals were at risk, I can bet you, this performance issues would have been fixed really fast.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
It isn’t as simple as that but I still want to recognize and applaud this response. You’re right, performance isn’t the fundamental issue, distance from user need and user pain is. Unfortunately even where that distance is short, mitigation can be hard to achieve. Understaffed and underfunded orgs can be wildly aware and even obsessed with shortcomings in their offerings and still fail to deliver improvements. I’ve worked in such orgs, I’ve seen overworked, deeply caring and empathetic and dedicated engineers trying to move mountains to fix (and have habitually been one myself). More to the point: unfortunately the software needs in the world, and the ways the world are underserved by software, are competing for resources and organizing talent with organizations that fundamentally don’t serve those needs. And both categories are competing in a limited pool, because software’s capabilities have outpaced the available talent to take advantage of those capabilities. Good for my bank account, I guess. But bad for people and the world we (I) inhabit. And bad for me too, probably even more than I know. Anyway this is far afield of parent comment’s point, but I felt it was a good place to add a little depth as an engineer who gives a damn but rarely sees the opportunity to apply damns.
- xupybd 6y ago
  I can't agree more. Everyone wants amazing software yesterday. They don't want to spend money to do it. The company that wins the bid tends to over promise on delivery dates and under supply resources to do it.
greggman3 6y ago
It certainly is frustrating when there is no way to get your message to the devs. There's a game I play. Sometime in late July it started exhibiting a game breaking bug. AFAIK there is no way to contact the devs. I went through the "proper channels" and silence. I remember back when FogBugz was a thing and Joel claimed that the correct way to provide customer service was track bugs, have one owner, and only allow the original reporter of the bug to mark it as closed. I'm sure that's not completely feasible but It's surprising to me how I know of ZERO software developers that follow anything even remotely close to this practice except for a few open source projects. Want to report a bug on Windows? Photoshop? Almost any game ever? Good luck finding out if a dev ever saw your report and that it didn't just get dropped by some underpaid customer service center rep.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Want to report a bug on Windows? Photoshop? Almost any game ever? Good luck finding out if a dev ever saw your report and that it didn't just get dropped by some underpaid customer service center rep. The current industry standard is directing such reports to official "support forums", where users try to help each other and nobody with any relevant expertise is present. After all, why would the crew of a modern and enlightened software project stoop so low as to talk with actual users, where extensive telemetry provides all the information they need? s/, but only slightly.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
"Bad autocorrect" is a problem (notable examples include MacOS helpfully autoincorrecting names of prescription medicines in some clinics). "Not contrast enough" and "annoying background music" can be worked around. Bad performance can't.
appleflaxen 6y ago
end users don't know how to give this feedback in the case of EMS, it sounds like they could recognize it, but probably didn't report it back to the company. Why bother? They have used their product; they see it as "good enough". But very often, end users get frustrated by things like input latency, and can't express what is making them frustrated in specific terms. So they tell their IT department that "it's slow", and IT goes back and starts hammering on the __ team (networking, server farm, whatever). It's remarkably powerful if you can help you users develop vocabulary to recognize and report what they experience. (it's also flipping hard)

eyelidlessness 6y ago

It isn’t as simple as that but I still want to recognize and applaud this response. You’re right, performance isn’t the fundamental issue, distance from user need and user pain is. Unfortunately even where that distance is short, mitigation can be hard to achieve. Understaffed and underfunded orgs can be wildly aware and even obsessed with shortcomings in their offerings and still fail to deliver improvements. I’ve worked in such orgs, I’ve seen overworked, deeply caring and empathetic and dedicated engineers trying to move mountains to fix (and have habitually been one myself). More to the point: unfortunately the software needs in the world, and the ways the world are underserved by software, are competing for resources and organizing talent with organizations that fundamentally don’t serve those needs. And both categories are competing in a limited pool, because software’s capabilities have outpaced the available talent to take advantage of those capabilities. Good for my bank account, I guess. But bad for people and the world we (I) inhabit. And bad for me too, probably even more than I know. Anyway this is far afield of parent comment’s point, but I felt it was a good place to add a little depth as an engineer who gives a damn but rarely sees the opportunity to apply damns.

xupybd 6y ago
I can't agree more. Everyone wants amazing software yesterday. They don't want to spend money to do it. The company that wins the bid tends to over promise on delivery dates and under supply resources to do it.

greggman3 6y ago

It certainly is frustrating when there is no way to get your message to the devs. There's a game I play. Sometime in late July it started exhibiting a game breaking bug. AFAIK there is no way to contact the devs. I went through the "proper channels" and silence. I remember back when FogBugz was a thing and Joel claimed that the correct way to provide customer service was track bugs, have one owner, and only allow the original reporter of the bug to mark it as closed. I'm sure that's not completely feasible but It's surprising to me how I know of ZERO software developers that follow anything even remotely close to this practice except for a few open source projects. Want to report a bug on Windows? Photoshop? Almost any game ever? Good luck finding out if a dev ever saw your report and that it didn't just get dropped by some underpaid customer service center rep.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Want to report a bug on Windows? Photoshop? Almost any game ever? Good luck finding out if a dev ever saw your report and that it didn't just get dropped by some underpaid customer service center rep. The current industry standard is directing such reports to official "support forums", where users try to help each other and nobody with any relevant expertise is present. After all, why would the crew of a modern and enlightened software project stoop so low as to talk with actual users, where extensive telemetry provides all the information they need? s/, but only slightly.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

"Bad autocorrect" is a problem (notable examples include MacOS helpfully autoincorrecting names of prescription medicines in some clinics). "Not contrast enough" and "annoying background music" can be worked around. Bad performance can't.

appleflaxen 6y ago

end users don't know how to give this feedback in the case of EMS, it sounds like they could recognize it, but probably didn't report it back to the company. Why bother? They have used their product; they see it as "good enough". But very often, end users get frustrated by things like input latency, and can't express what is making them frustrated in specific terms. So they tell their IT department that "it's slow", and IT goes back and starts hammering on the __ team (networking, server farm, whatever). It's remarkably powerful if you can help you users develop vocabulary to recognize and report what they experience. (it's also flipping hard)