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I'm totally stealing this from a friend, but the single biggest cause of terrible user experience at large companies is the term "workaround." Late in the relea

I'm totally stealing this from a friend, but the single biggest cause of terrible user experience at large companies is the term "workaround." Late in the release cycle, a pretty grody bug comes up, causing the application to hang. Or maybe the installer just plain breaks at some stage. However, the dev team has found a "workaround" for the issue. Run the installer twice, and it works. Back out of the hung screen and try again, because the bug only repros 1/10. The bug gets punted because it's on a non-critical path, there's no data lost, it doesn't crash the entire application, and there's a workaround, even though the workaround sucks. Next time around, the bug is weighed against new feature work, and judged based on how it aligns with the product's core pillars. Not important enough this cycle, maybe next cycle. Next cycle comes around, and the team no longer knows how to fix the bug, because it's no longer fresh in anyone's mind, or the person who wrote it doesn't work there anymore. The broken module is now essentially a black box, and the cost of fixing the bug has increased drastically. The bug gets punted again until the next release, because hey, we've got a workaround. The project will be cancelled before the bug is fixed. Not all big companies work this way, but enough of them do, or have subgroups within them that do, that it creates usability problems like the ones in the article. It's not that the problems don't get found by QA, it's just that nobody can be bothered to address them.

dustingetz 14y ago
> The project will be cancelled before the bug is fixed. it most certainly won't be cancelled, despite multiple farked edge cases, if the critical path is providing business value. the customer increases revenues, the software company turns a profit, the managers and developers get nice bonuses to give their children a nice education, our 401k's get stable returns, the world gets buggy software but not THAT buggy, and everyone is happy except for a few cranky developers who get paid a lot of money to maintain shitty software from 9-5 inbetween disney world trips and cruises.
- sirmarksalot 14y ago
  I meant "the project will be cancelled" in the same sense as "the heat death of the universe will occur." Basically, the problem will persist until either the end of time, or until such a time as that particular component is deemed completely obsolete and replaced wholesale.

dustingetz 14y ago

> The project will be cancelled before the bug is fixed. it most certainly won't be cancelled, despite multiple farked edge cases, if the critical path is providing business value. the customer increases revenues, the software company turns a profit, the managers and developers get nice bonuses to give their children a nice education, our 401k's get stable returns, the world gets buggy software but not THAT buggy, and everyone is happy except for a few cranky developers who get paid a lot of money to maintain shitty software from 9-5 inbetween disney world trips and cruises.

sirmarksalot 14y ago
I meant "the project will be cancelled" in the same sense as "the heat death of the universe will occur." Basically, the problem will persist until either the end of time, or until such a time as that particular component is deemed completely obsolete and replaced wholesale.