When I was a kid in Bangkok, my mother taught at a school for adults learning English as a foreign language. One Christmas I was invited to watch her perform in a play in English for the benefit of the students. “The Efficiency Expert” was a fable about a man who is sent, along with his fussy wife (played by Mom), to make recommendations for improving the efficiency of Santa Claus’ North Pole toymaking operation. This probably came out of a book of plays considered appropriate for schools; the moral was a warm-and-fuzzy about how the spirit of Christmas is more important than industrial efficiency. I could see the point that was being heavily belabored, but I wondered: what was so reprehensible about trying to make things work better?

I’m still wondering.

I’m Deirdré Straughan, and if you’re in at the beginning of this blog, it’s probably because you know me already. If not, you can learn far more than anyone needs to know about me and my life at my site Countries Beginning With I.

Over years of working with software development teams, and with the customers who had to use the resulting software, I have come to care deeply about usability. And not just in software.

Usability is a useful concept in many areas of life. The importance of making things usable seems so obvious to me, but I guess it isn’t to everybody. I spend a lot of my life bitching about how things could be better: software could be less frustrating, devices and appliances could be more obvious in their use, processes could be more streamlined and sensible, telephone trees could actually get you somewhere, companies could be nicer to the customers they are supposed to serve.

It seems as if every day is a potential minefield of things that irritate me, and probably everyone else who has to deal with them. Maybe I’m just a nasty pre-menopausal kvetch permanently ready for a fight. Or maybe the world, while becoming ever more marvellously complex, is also becoming ever less usable. (Or both.)

There are many causes for the increasing difficulty of navigating everyday life. Because of this variety of causes, some usability problems could be solved easily, others… not so easily, if at all. Still, I’m a solutions-oriented person, so for every problem that I point out, I will try to suggest a solution. Will this be any use at all? Will anybody who actually has the power to make the needed changes listen? Maybe not. But at least I will have tried.

And you still can hear me singin’ to the people who don’t listen
To the things that I am sayin’, prayin’ someone’s gonna hear
And I guess I’ll die explaining how the things that they complain about
Are things they could be changing, hoping someone’s gonna care.

To Beat the Devil – Kris Kristofferson