Efecte Blog

Let’s start this Fall’s blog stream with a short experiment that I ran on a friend. The idea was to test how two different workstation descriptions created by an IT department are understood by a normal user.

If I just pick one of these..

Me: “Which of these workstations would suit your needs?”

• Dell Latitude E6520
• Dell Latitude E4200
• Dell Precision T3500

Her: “No idea whatsoever, what do these mean?”

Me: “What about this list?”

• Laptop
• Mini Laptop
• Power desktop

Her: “Ok, this I get. Power desktop is a PC, right?”

Me: “Yes. Now, let’s take the next step. Does Latitude E6520 suit your needs? Read the description below.”

• Enhanced performance with increased memory, built-in webcam and backlit keyboard.
• Includes 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i3 Processor

Her: “This is so unclear. It’s too generic somehow.”

Me: “What about this one? Does laptop suit your needs?”

• Intended users: All office employees including sales, consultants, management, marketing, etc.
• Suitable for: All office work and traveling. Contains standard Microsoft Office tools and is able to run all common software.
• Not suitable for:
• Software development (not enough processing power)
• Image processing and graphics (not enough processing power)

Her: “Well this is much easier. I don’t do software or graphics, and I’m kind of a consultant. This  matches my work.”

People in general don’t give a rats ass about technical details.

People want to recognize themselves or their needs in the descriptions, so that they can feel comfortable about their choice. Technical descriptions make people mad, because their job is not to dig into the details of technology, but to do their job. And IT should make it easy.

Don’t just standardize IT. Humanize IT.

P.S. My friend uses IT daily but is not an IT expert, so she is a good example of a normal user. The descriptions were real descriptions created by two IT departments.