3 ms·

And just to confirm the forces in play here: enterprises care primarily about business outcomes of software, license cost, and support risk, with end-user exper

by jl6 6y ago

And just to confirm the forces in play here: enterprises care primarily about business outcomes of software, license cost, and support risk, with end-user experience being very far down the priority list except for a very few productivity applications where UI responsiveness actually matters for increasing employee output (fewer than you’d think). In short, the users aren’t the customers.

tharne 6y ago
Yup. That's exactly why enterprise software almost universally sucks. This could really be applied to any good or service where the purchaser is not the end user. For example, in the U.S. dealing with your health insurance company is a nightmare, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's your employer who's the customer. If the health insurance company treats you badly, you can't go with another provider, so they're free to offer terrible service so long as they don't piss of your company's HR department who decides which health plans to go with.
branko_d 6y ago
> ...except for a very few productivity applications where UI responsiveness actually matters for increasing employee output (fewer than you’d think). If there is UI, UI responsiveness matters for employee output. Research that has been done on this topic suggests that increase in UI latency non-linearly decreases user productivity, whith the ultimate effect on the cost of doing business. And that has been known for decades - take a look at the "The Economic Value of Rapid Response Time" from 1982: https://jlelliotton.blogspot.com/p/the-economic-value-of-rapid-response.html https://jlelliotton.blogspot.com/p/the-economic-value-of-rap... It's puzzling to me why businisses still don't prioritize UI latency, but it's not a rational decision. Perhaps it's just human nature, as hinted in the linked article: "...few executives are aware that such a balance is economically and technically feasible."

by jl6 6y ago

tharne 6y ago

Yup. That's exactly why enterprise software almost universally sucks. This could really be applied to any good or service where the purchaser is not the end user. For example, in the U.S. dealing with your health insurance company is a nightmare, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's your employer who's the customer. If the health insurance company treats you badly, you can't go with another provider, so they're free to offer terrible service so long as they don't piss of your company's HR department who decides which health plans to go with.

branko_d 6y ago

> ...except for a very few productivity applications where UI responsiveness actually matters for increasing employee output (fewer than you’d think). If there is UI, UI responsiveness matters for employee output. Research that has been done on this topic suggests that increase in UI latency non-linearly decreases user productivity, whith the ultimate effect on the cost of doing business. And that has been known for decades - take a look at the "The Economic Value of Rapid Response Time" from 1982: https://jlelliotton.blogspot.com/p/the-economic-value-of-rapid-response.html https://jlelliotton.blogspot.com/p/the-economic-value-of-rap... It's puzzling to me why businisses still don't prioritize UI latency, but it's not a rational decision. Perhaps it's just human nature, as hinted in the linked article: "...few executives are aware that such a balance is economically and technically feasible."