It's all about users

Does It Wink?
It's time to roll out a new antivirus tool to all PCs in this company, but first this pilot fish sends an e-mail telling everyone that the software will put a new icon on their desktops: a circle with what looks like an eye in the middle. Then fish pushes out the tool -- and promptly gets a call. "It was a manager in one of our remote offices," says fish. "She said a new icon was on her computer and she wanted to make sure it wasn't a virus. I asked if she had read the e-mail I sent. She said no. So I told her, 'That's a new camera I'm installing on all computers. In fact, I can see you right now.' After a short moment of silence, I heard 'Hiiiiiiiii!' I could just picture her leaning forward, looking at the monitor and waving to me. Then I told her the truth."

The Real Thing
Field tech pilot fish is on the team deploying new systems to a group of hospitals and clinics where most users are older and not very computer-literate. "One day, we were sitting in our office between deployments, going through the help desk tickets forwarded to us," says fish. "As we joked about users saying 'keyboard needs to be remapped' and a user who couldn't get a CD out of his 'hard drive,' we came upon one that stated a user's PC started smoking and caught fire. Not entirely believing, we went down to check it out -- and actually found a scorched PC case and motherboard in a room that smelled strongly of smoke and burnt plastic. From that point on, we took the users' input slightly more seriously."

Try, Try Again
Junior programmer pilot fish is supporting a huge hotel-reservation system. "The principal user was a pedantic person whose suggestions created several levels of dialog boxes, confirmation screens and warnings before routine functions would be processed," says fish. "After months of this, she was promoted. Her replacement was an experienced reservations clerk who was brought up on old-style terminal-based systems." And at the first meeting with developers, the user pronounces the system completely unusable with the endless dialog boxes and messages: "This system is way too user-friendly to be useful. Please change it to something more reasonable."

Born Identity
E-mail from user: "I forgot my answer to the keyword for the password reset. Can you reset my password for the benefits enrollment?" Support pilot fish: "Your keyword is your city of birth. Try it again." User: "I know this sounds dumb, but I forgot what city I used."

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