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Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#121

Post by xani_ »

zajio1am wrote: post #98
matheusmoreira wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they resented features that controlled their time and their autonomy Of course. Nobody likes being controlled by software. The computer is supposed to obey us, not the other way around. Software controlling humans is a violation of basic human dignity.

Pretty much same argument could be said against checklists ('paper controlling humans is a violation of basic human dignity'), but it is a thing that consistently improves outcomes in medicine. In general, it is restricting autonomy in order to improve consistency and quality.

Only if you're extremely dishonest in comparisions.

Checklists at its core is just a list of common/required actions grouped in a list to don't forget during routine tasks. There is nothing limiting here, it is just a tool to aid repetitive/rare/complex tasks.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#122

Post by xani_ »

We had users complain about migrating to MS Teams as the text part of it is almost entirely a piece of shit that every competitor does orders of magnitude better but management said "fuck it, we're migrating regardless", throwing oh-so-great arguments like "our customers also use it"

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#123

Post by Bedon292 »

permo-w wrote: post #120
quacked wrote: post #13

Secondary to the question, but I live right by the Epic campus and use the Epic MyChart platform to communicate with the University of Wisconsin health system. It is phenomenal as a patient; I can handle all billing, message any doctor I've seen, view test results as soon as they're uploaded, etc. Recently I saw the results of some bloodwork in the ER before the nurses had time to come and tell me about it. (The UI/U…

I don’t mean this to sound passive aggressive; I’m genuinely unsure: are you using “UI/UX” correctly here? if you’re getting exactly what you want from it, is that not good UX?

Its definitely possible for something to work and still suck to use. Just because you can get there eventually doesn't mean the experience of clicking through a dozen menus to find where a button has been moved with this update is a good one.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

xani_ wrote: post #119
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m writing a book about Why We Play RuneScape, and the evolution of democratic updates is one of my favorite topics.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Also known as the longest description of stockholm syndrome known to man

Periodic reminder that “Stockholm Sybdrome” was invented, with no clinical basis whatsoever, by someone responsible for a use of excessive violence by law enforcement as a means of leveraging cultural misogyny and public trust in credentials to deflect criticism of the violence they had counselled, so metaphorical references to it that don’t mean to evoke a manipulative abuse of trust/position/credentials for victim blaming should probably be reconsidered.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#125

Post by belmarca »

akira2501 wrote: post #112
smallerdemon wrote: post #71

Having worked in IT supporing doctors, nurses, scientists, and academics for the last 23 years, in all honesty, it doesn't matter what they would have chosen it would have resulting in a percentage of them complaining. Doctors like change that they control and understand, such as research leading to new treatments and improved patient outcomes. They do NOT like having their workflows challenged, though. They have ver…

> What doctors LIKE are the ones they get used to in their residency, fellowships, and first years in practice. From observing a family member implement these systems, I'd say that what doctors like is an administration that's willing to listen to their specific complaints and then get the changes or some subset of them implemented in the system. There's often a fair amount of customization that can even be done at t…

I have also worked in healthcare IT and while user input is obviously essential for building an efficient and useful solution, too much of it can be a kiss of death.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#126

Post by becurious »

humanistbot wrote: post #45

There was a case more than 20 years ago of a similar revolt against a Canadian hospital's automated drug dispensing machine that would only let nurses withdraw the exact dose of medicine a patient needed in a short window around when patient was supposed to take each dose. It was so bad it got written up into an academic article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/016224390202700...

Diversion of painkillers is unfortunately a thing and so those are often now in computer controlled cabinets that track dispensing. It’s the right thing to do because if a HCP is doing this they need help.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#128

Post by matheusmoreira »

fomine3 wrote: post #118
matheusmoreira wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much same argument could be said against checklists No, the same argument most certainly cannot be made against useful patient safety tools like simple checklists. Not only are they useful, they are simple and integrate seamlessly with pretty much any workflow without obstructing them. Meanwhile poorly designed software can go so far as to actively impede the work being done which I have no doubt is the case…

Bad paper forms also makes things bad. It's not only the software's problem but the system's problem that human make. Valid criticism for current software system is that it's hard to improve without programmers who work for it.

Bad paper forms can at least be ignored or partially filled. Software can enforce validation and actively impede work until the constraints are satisfied.

> it's hard to improve without programmers who work for it

Any programmer who wants to improve things should probably volunteer at a local hospital or shadow a physician in order to grok what the actual work is like. Ergonomics means adapting the work to the human, not the human to the work. In my experience, healthcare software is all about the latter and it really shouldn't be. I guarantee programmers would hate it if they were forced to use tools that were as hostile to them as healthcare software is to staff.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#129

Post by meandthewallaby »

emmelaich wrote: post #105
meandthewallaby wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, the software development profession could spend a long, long time doing some self-reflection about this one. It's eloquently stated, and something a lot of developers could learn. Too many times, I've seen overly restrictive inputs cause users to hate and distrust the software. Ironically, overly restrictive inputs cause users to think that the software doesn't properly understand the domain, which…

I agree! But what would you put in the database? A NULL? A special fuck-it value?

Like with most things, it depends! Maybe it's a default value; maybe it's a null; maybe it's a special value that triggers a workflow on insert. I'm an evangelist for RDBMSes, and they can do so much, so let them help you!

Maybe you have a state column that's derived that you cannot move to another step in the workflow until all nulls are filled in, but you've let the UI save what data it knows about and move on. It totally depends on what the user is doing and why we're skipping steps/data.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

#130

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

fomine3 wrote: post #118
matheusmoreira wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much same argument could be said against checklists No, the same argument most certainly cannot be made against useful patient safety tools like simple checklists. Not only are they useful, they are simple and integrate seamlessly with pretty much any workflow without obstructing them. Meanwhile poorly designed software can go so far as to actively impede the work being done which I have no doubt is the case…

Bad paper forms also makes things bad. It's not only the software's problem but the system's problem that human make. Valid criticism for current software system is that it's hard to improve without programmers who work for it.

You cannot rationalize away the authoritarian nature of software with whataboutism like comparing it to a paper form.
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