
My Two Years as an Anthropologist on the Photoshop Team (2015) - GuiA
https://medium.com/startup-study-group/my-two-years-as-an-anthropologist-on-the-photoshop-team-e700acb7d3d5#.1vo4fv6rz
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drizzzler
As a lifelong Adobe user, I'd rather hear that Adobe is doing this kind of
work at a higher level, that is, studying how users interact with all of their
apps as a whole.

Instead of adding art boards to Photoshop, I'd rather see art boards in
Illustrator integrated better with PS. And are the art boards in AI still
exporting at non-specified dimensions (a very common bug for years)? Fix what
is broken before adding features to PS that are already in AI.

Can anyone explain to me why copy/paste tools are different between AI/PS?
Just make them the same!

Edit:typo

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egypturnash
> Can anyone explain to me why copy/paste tools are different between AI/PS?

Because about thirty years ago, someone decided that Photoshop's copy and
paste should work one way, and someone working on Illustrator decided they
should work another way. They were not even at the same company back then. Now
there are people who have those shortcuts carved into their muscle memory, and
would holler bloody murder if it was changed. (Or just emit a very loud WTF?!?
and hit up the key shortcuts panel to change them back to what they should
be.)

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zer00eyz
I just linked to this article in the comments on "Why I turned down $500K and
shut down my startup"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866868)
As what the author did is essentially ethnography.

Ethnography is a powerful tool! Talking to your users, and more importantly
seeing first hand what they are doing with what you have built can drastically
change how you view your application. If you have the ability to get out there
and SEE your users in action, do it! It might just change your world.

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two2two
I can appreciate the need for an anthropological point of view when attempting
to understand the shortcomings of a process that eluded the standard feedback
loop before it, but I'd hope the findings are considered just a piece of the
puzzle rather than the last resort for an entire solution.

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unwind
This could do well with a [2015] in the title, please?

Not because it's old and shouldn't be (re-)posted, but to clarify that it
might have been here before. I know I've seen it somewhere earlier, and my
guess would be HN.

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tschuy
Previous discussion, 8 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9903354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9903354)

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amelius
If this anthropologist used a wider scope, then the conclusion might have been
that we, as a society, need less of Photoshop.

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wickawic
Makes me think of a new sub-field: "Prescriptive Anthropology"

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gcb0
that would mean listening to the user. unthinkable! me and my co-founded knows
exactly what they want.

