
Why is most software so hard to use? - paulpauper
You buy a program and you spend weeks just trying to figure it out because there are so many features and options that do nothing important but create needless complications. Do the people who create software have ordinary people test it?<p>You cannot buy software these days. You have to spend a fortune hiring someone to create program to meed your specific need, show you how to use it, and then make modifications as necessary.
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bsvalley
2 things:

1/ Dev: Stop hiring whiteboard coders.

2/ Product: Stop hiring MBA's who can tell you a lot about strategies and
nothing about building solutions.

Long story short, fix the hiring process in tech and you'll see a much better
outcome. Customers and Users ain't care about my GPA, they want pretty
solutions. Hire people who know how to build nice products, not how to sort a
linked list in 2 minutes on a whiteboard under pressure. Google started that
trend back in 2000 and everyone followed... Guess what, Google products have
always been the worst products out there in terms of User Experience.

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afarrell
3/ When building a product team, instill a culture of starting with “why?”
Before building things. A clear focus on the job that your product actually
does for people and Why that job matters should inform all design decisions.

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odonnellryan
> You cannot buy software these days. You have to spend a fortune hiring
> someone to create program to meed your specific need, show you how to use
> it, and then make modifications as necessary.

I disagree, you can buy general-purpose software. However, these days general-
purpose does not give you a competitive edge.

Business is about having a competitive edge. Today, to do that, you need
software beyond whatever everyone else can buy.

Yes that CRM tool might work in general, but does it do everything you need,
exactly how you need it to be done? Very unlikely.

Also, what is a fortune? A few tens of thousands of dollars?

\---

To answer your question as to why bad software happens...

If the developers are not actively using the software it's going to be really
bad.

Even if they are, if the business prioritizes number of features over quality
of features, the software is going to be bad: your devs can only do so much.

Even if your devs are using your product and they have the time to make the
features great, if they are not motivated your software is going to be bad:
why would your developers care to make something better when they realize it
can be better if they just don't care?

Obviously it isn't all on the developers: but it's not all up to management,
either. It turns out it's really hard to check all three of these boxes off,
so most software is sub-par.

Even great developers who are a part of a great company have created not-so-
great software.

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PaulHoule
Nobody uses all of the features of Photoshop, but somebody uses most of them.

It is easy to add stuff, almost impossible to remove stuff.

People are change-averse, which gets in the way of continuous improvement.
(They stick with Python 2, platforms like AOL IM, Skype, and HipChat seem to
reach a certain level and then slowly deteriorate.)

It would also help to make programming more accessible to non-programmers.

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dzonga
I think it's cause the majority of 'software developers' or people who tinker
with software have never observed a 'non-tech' user use software or other real
life items. Plus most developers don't approach software as a design problem.
i.e software should be something that helps you achieve something, but your
interaction with it, should be seamless. Think about the way you turn a stove
on.

I think to make improvements would be forcing every software developer to read
Design of Everyday things before writing a line of code.

In the words of Sherlock Holmes __' You see, but you don't observe' __

Btw i 'm not a designer, someone who tries to write non shitty simple
software.

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quickthrower2
For B2B the buyers are generally not the users. Therefore there are fewer
incentives for a business to create user friendly software. And since making
it nice to use takes time, to which there is no immediate ROI. Its a lower
priority.

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kleer001
> You cannot buy software these days.

Correct, you have to rent it. Which, IMHO, is a tragedy. It's turning tools
and craftspeople into walled fiefdoms with fickle landlords and helpless
serfs.

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slowmotarget
Maybe because when you ask a user what he wants, it turns to be a freaking
bloated nightmare ? And we tend to use the word "tool" to describe software
but I think it's misleading, Photoshop is not a hammer... it's more of a car
factory.

We should keep in mind that most software replace tasks that are too complex
or impossible for a human to do!

~~~
odonnellryan
If your job is to build software you should not be blaming the users for bad
software.

At the end of the day if you order an ice-cream, ketchup, and anchovy pie and
it tastes bad it is your fault: but who would want to make such a thing,
anyway?

