Article View: comp.groupware
Article #274Re: why so little groupware?
From: Ittai Hershman
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 1990 22:33
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 1990 22:33
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> > Building groupware is really hard. > > It's interesting that this generality applies regardless of the type of > groupware. Ours is asynchronous narrow-band text... Not to be flippant, but I think that the correct abstraction is: Building good software (which takes the end-user into account) is really hard. The parentheses are there because that clause is really one of the primary components of "good", but not everyone agrees. I think that we are more sensitive to interface issues, when the software is a communications medium between/among other people. When a computational program is run, interface is relative to other programs which do similiar things -- we tend to curse while climbing the learning curve, and then we grow used to using the tool. When the software become a medium for human communications (we'll leave collaboration out for now), we compare it to the media with which we are familiar. We are less tolerant of the tool getting in the way. But it's not because it is inherently more difficult, it's because our expectations are higher. -Ittai
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!shemesh!ittai From: ittai@shemesh.GBA.NYU.EDU (Ittai Hershman) Newsgroups: comp.groupware Subject: Re: why so little groupware? Message-ID: <6480@shemesh.GBA.NYU.EDU> Date: 23 Oct 90 22:33:37 GMT References: <2997@jaytee.East.Sun.COM> <220@awaken.UUCP> Organization: NYU Stern School of Business Lines: 25