Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Some of our system’s users will work and work to make the system perform for them. Others, however, will dump it at the first sign of frustration.

We have a system. We think it is “good enough.” It can do things for a group of people that nothing else can do. It is worth their while to learn how to use it as the time it while save them is an order of magnitude greater than the time required to learn it, i.e., the return on investment is very high.

Will they learn it and use it?

Some will. They will work and work and use it. When the system bumps and trips—like all “good enough” systems will do now and then—they continue to work with it and move around the trips. It is worth the effort.

Others won’t. “Piece of junk.” They move on to something else or go back to the way they’ve always done their job before.

We want efforting users, i.e., those who will expend the effort required. They eventually forget the frustrating hours where they expended effort. They market the system for us among their peers.

How do we find those efforting users? We have to be like them. We have to expend the effort required to find them. We can’t just build a wonderful, albeit good enough, system and wait for the world to discover our masterpiece. We have to push away from our computer and, uh oh, here it comes, go to their place and talk to them face to face.

We have to be like the people we want to find. Couldn’t this be easier?