Why software sucks?

If I was reading a book, and the author made an update, I wouldn't necessarily want the new update from the author. Notify me there's an update? Sure! Automatically replace the copy I'm reading with the update, simultaneously removing my ability to ever get back to the version I was reading? No thanks.

"What's there has blinded people to what is possible." As someone who has a good idea of what's possible, I tend to agree, and think of browser 'cookie' support as a good example. 'cookies' were lambasted as the embodiment of evil in the mid-late 90's. The hysteria around them was insane. Why? We had little control over the visibility of what a cookie was, what it said, and how to manage them. Even today, in 2012, cookies are little understood, and to 'manager' them requires multiple clicks in to layers of menus often marked 'advanced' or 'privacy' (both are silly labels for cookie data, imo). We could have given people easier access to view/manage/understand cookie data, and probably avoided national legislation like we see in some countries now, but that would have meant breaking the status quo. Far easier to focus on browser market share and "standards compliance" as the primary measurements of browser utility and acceptance.

Who's ever wished for a giant red "PLEASE STOP HELPING ME" button on their computer? Everyone, right? One of the causes of frustration we looked at was when the software helps you, but gets it wrong. Frustration is increased when the effort to fix the software's "help" is anything other than minor, and increased again when the computer repeats it's efforts at helping. Throw in no obvious way to get it to stop and you're in for some blood-boiling times.

The guideline we came up with was to not concentrate so much on how cool it is when things go well, but think about what happens when the software guesses user intent incorrectly. Consider:

* How often is the software likely to get it wrong?

* what was the level of irritation is caused by getting it wrong?

* How much effort is required to undo the computer's help?

and weight it up against how much effort you're saving the user when you get it right.

Thinking about this has caused us not to add a particular cool feature we had planned, because even though (we thought) it was very cool, there was about 30% chance or so of it being wrong, and the payoff wasn't worth it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS

And NeWS was better in the sense that it used PS for everything rather than an unholy mess of JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc etc.

Consider internal software - there is literally no disconnect whatsoever, but very often the software is terrible. This is relevant because it raises the issue that the business simply may not care about quality, and thus putting in the work required to make the thing good might simply not be possible.

There are many, many factors involved in determining whether software sucks or not, and key is the understanding or lack thereof of what the users want and need, agreed. But keep in mind, there is a big difference between seeing what the users' need superficially vs. understanding clearly and deeply what the users' need and implementing it well.