11–20 of 23 posts
But automation will save you a lot of time and stress if you had long vacations or worked on a different project for half a year. Suddenly the muscle memory isn't there and you have to learn the hard way AGAIN if it's not automated.
> Automation not only saves you time, it changes what you do. This bears repeating. When you automate a task, you often push it over a "breakpoint" where it suddenly makes certain things profitable in terms of effort. For example, say you fill up a water bottle and place it within arm's reach, instead of running to the tap every time you're thirsty. You save maybe 10 seconds per sip, but the real win is that you can…
In the software development realm, the biggest spot I see automation paying off is when it fosters consistency. To take an example from operations: To me (admittedly speaking from the developer side of things), the overwhelming benefit of containerization has nothing to do with elasticity or scaling or really any of the marketing buzzwords. The real benefit is that Docker and friends encourage presenting a much more…
I've worked with plenty of wizards that can figure anything/everything out, but these deviations have a hidden cost.
The farm of resources no longer behaves like cattle, it's all pets - with their own identities, personalities, etc.
Containers abstract most of this away, a simple runtime and any host can be just like another with a tiny amount of automation.
We get things like scale from this, but if it 'works on your machine' but not ours, we're no further.
As you make something cheaper demand for it goes up. Easy to forget about it when you try to calculate the value of automation. I'd say in most cases automation pays off if you do it properly, not to do the intended task but to do all the unintended tasks, reusing the automation code for later, reducing errors from manual work and opens up doors for new product design paths in the future. This assumes that you actual…
Right, so we have a number of advantages of automation that aren't captured in a simplistic time calculation like the "Is It Worth the Time?" XKCD: - if you can do something more quickly you might also choose to do it more often - automation can reduce human errors - once something is fully automated it can be used as a building block in a larger piece of automation I can think of one more: - automation can make it e…
Yeah, you shouldn't automate things that you don't know how to automate. Don't use ML for automation for example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the software development realm, the biggest spot I see automation paying off is when it fosters consistency. To take an example from operations: To me (admittedly speaking from the developer side of things), the overwhelming benefit of containerization has nothing to do with elasticity or scaling or really any of the marketing buzzwords. The real benefit is that Docker and friends encourage presenting a much more…
As someone in operations, totally this. Consistency is the biggest thing. I've worked with plenty of wizards that can figure anything/everything out, but these deviations have a hidden cost. The farm of resources no longer behaves like cattle, it's all pets - with their own identities, personalities, etc. Containers abstract most of this away, a simple runtime and any host can be just like another with a tiny amount…
Something that seemed somewhat implicit in this article, but never fully stated, is that it also increases the quality of the work, or in other words, decreases the probability of bugs and errors. Every time you do a manual process, you introduce the possibility for a lot of human error. That's where a lot of the "willingness" vs. "unwillingness" comes in (aside from just the "time" aspect, or partially as a cause of…
This happens when the person that uses the automation no longer needs to learn how to do the task.
Teaching people is actually extremely expensive even if you forget about reliability of entire process.
People have limited ability to learn stuff. So being able to automate certain tasks not only allows people to do more in less time or do it better, it can actually allow doing more things that the person would ever be able to learn, without need of learning.
As a UX practitioner with engineering experience, I'm happy to see an article like this, but also a bit disheartened that in 2021 it's still a revelation for many that frustration, satisfaction, and cognitive load are key considerations in prioritization in addition to raw efficiency.
How can you live? I took two classes in UX in college 20 years ago. I still can't walk into a kitchen without cursing the bad UX of the stove.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you live? I took two classes in UX in college 20 years ago. I still can't walk into a kitchen without cursing the bad UX of the stove.
Are you implying that all stoves in all kitchens are bad? At least that's what it looks like you are saying.
>When developing things which have a human interacting with it, you should consider how much you value your life time, and have empathy for your users' life time.
Well articulated. Outside of software and technology, people have to use software tools that they have little control over - tools assigned for their job. When authors take the time to understand how their tools are used, it can have a profound impact on the daily work for a huge number of people.
For example, I interact my electronic medical records system between 2-5+ hours each day. To write a document requires 15 mouse clicks, with a 1+ second load time after each click. It's painful. I would use the author's words to describe this as an unethical interface. If the devs who wrote this software had to use it for their daily work, I imagine that they would demand new tools or leave in frustration. But for us, as users without a choice, it contributes to dissatisfaction at work and ultimately to burn-out.
Something that seemed somewhat implicit in this article, but never fully stated, is that it also increases the quality of the work, or in other words, decreases the probability of bugs and errors. Every time you do a manual process, you introduce the possibility for a lot of human error. That's where a lot of the "willingness" vs. "unwillingness" comes in (aside from just the "time" aspect, or partially as a cause of…
Another important is that automation can solve the problem of passing the knowledge (on how to do something). This happens when the person that uses the automation no longer needs to learn how to do the task. Teaching people is actually extremely expensive even if you forget about reliability of entire process. People have limited ability to learn stuff. So being able to automate certain tasks not only allows people…