Re: Order Amongst Chaos (late replay)

["M. David Orr" <whitears -at- INTERACCESS -dot- COM>]

I believe Andrew Plato's comments are right on target when applied to
formative business activities. When a company is trying to create something
new or innovative, there need to be goals and sufficient flexibility to let
solutions emerge organically.

Businesses also have normative activities--activities that don't change all
that much over time. For example, what business would want constant changes
in invoicing procedures. It would drive customers and employees nuts.

It's also helpful to have document templates to make a company's documents
consistent in look and presentation. This approach also has a usability
advantage in setting up a consistent mental model for documents, so the user
doesn't have to learn how to use the manual or online help each time. This
uniformity is part of the popularity of GUI interfaces (I've used one
Window's word processor, I can probably figure out how to use the others,
mostly from the interface.)

Both engineers and writers can be guilty of putting up walls. We're all
parts of the same enterprise--bringing technology to users.

__
M. David Orr
Orr & Associates/Usability Management
7366 N. Lincoln Ave., Suite 101
Lincolnwood, IL, USA 60646
Phone: 847-6771920
Fax:   847-677-7878
Mailto: whitears -at- orrnet -dot- com
Web site: http://www.orrnet.com