I like hats, hats are neat. They add character that often makes walking around and just being generally more interesting.
But I don’t need a hat. Right?
I don’t need a hat any more than I need another bike…okay bad analogy…but you get my drift.
That is, until I shaved my head – I have a whole new respect for hats (and hair) and I realize that the sun can be FREAKISHLY hot sometimes and the rain and the wind can be equally, freakishly cold and you know, moths sometimes think my crazy-white head is a light source. (That last one is no lie, just ask Apryl.)
The point here is: If you’re bald there is a very real and describable need for the hat.
What the HAY-L does this have to do with software? Scratch that – start over.
What the HAY-L does this have to do with understanding what you need your software to do?
Everything.
Many people, most in my experience, talk about what they want their software to do. They have meetings, they write it down, they make the words very specific, they labor over very specific turns of phrases, and they publish what they wrote.
A few days/weeks/months later, once the software is written and working the people who use it must wonder
What the HAY-L?
Ya know…I must really like my new phonetic spelling of a good-ol-boy cuss word.
What the HAY-Y happened between that meeting and what was written down and labored over and described and published and what it is that I am trying to do now?!
They tend not to match.
If you see this too then stop just talking. Go live the need for a while.
Go live in their world, go be one of them, go sit down and listen (REALLY listen) to what the people that use your software are saying/doing/feeling. If you don’t then you won’t have a clue of what they really need. The words (that were written by a committee anyway) won’t mean anything and the software will suffer.
It’ll suck.
Unless you do it this way you won’t know that the bald ones really, Really, REALLY, do need the hat.
If you want to create better software, that doesn’t suck – go shave your head.
blief 
I’m going bald without shaving my head, my head is too big to wear almost any hat, and I develop software (well, at least I do when I have a job)… FML
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Bravo!
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For a young squirt, you sure are getting smart in a hurry!!
A lot of software engineers/designers with whom I have had some experience, believe that what they created is just what I needed — whether it will do what I REALLY wanted it to do, or not. And I can only blame myself for this — I didn’t write good specifications of what I wanted it to do; perhaps I tried to specify what I wanted the program to look like.
Grumpy — (for a reason)
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Amen to that, I have been the client on the end of that stick and the purple gidget that I thought I order to calibrate this and that……ended up being orange written in Japanese and totally uncooperative with my operating systems.
Course it helps if the customer doesn’t assume they have the brains of the engineer and actually ask questions that might lead them both to a happy solution. So glad I’ve left it for the next generation to figure out! Oh and the engineer has to speak Cutomer’eaze!
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Take a look at this page.
The page shows the design, approval, development, and manufacturing of a simple tire swing, then a final picture of what the customer wanted. I first saw this diagram about 20 years ago, so this is not a new problem.
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