Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Helping others, helping yourself Phil Agre is an associate professor of information studies at UCLA. He has some handy suggestions on how to teach someone to use a computer -- some of which we can apply to writing good technical documentation and designing user experiences. For instance: Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it's usually the fault of the interface. You've forgotten how many ways you've learned to adapt to bad interfaces. Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. When they get nailed by a false assumption about the computer's behavior, tell them their assumption was reasonable. Tell *yourself* that it was reasonable. Don't say "it's in the manual". (You knew that.) Also of interest is Phil's treatise on "How to Be a Leader in Your Profession." Some of his thoughts are applicable to both the transformation of STC, and to the discussions around offshoring: In a knowledge-intensive world of ceaseless innovation and change, I assert, every professional must be a leader. . . The skills that the leader exercises in building a critical mass of opinion around emerging issues are the same skills that every professional needs to stay employed at all. . .  Every professional's job is now the front lines, and the skills of leadership must become central to everyone's conception of themselves as a professional. The rest of this piece builds on the concept I heard some years ago from a motivational speaker, who suggested that everyone become an expert on something. He recommended spending an hour a day reading, researching, discussing, writing about some one interest. Before long, you become the come-to person on that topic. And maybe it turns into a job for which you're the only candidate. In other words, you're no longer a commodity. How did I happen upon Agre's work? This thread on MacSlash. 4:44:12 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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