stop indicting your users

A couple of weeks ago, I had trouble accessing a system I needed in order to do my work. Unable to resolve the problem, I submitted a support request to the company's support request database where it was fielded by a "Web team" engineer. It turns out that the URL I tried to use was wrong. "Strange," I thought, especially since I found the URL directly from the Web team's online documentation. It turns out they kept some of their documentation updated (the documentation that was less visible on their site) but not other documentation (the documentation for this specific system). Granted, it is not uncommon for documentation to deteriorate in an IT setting. It was a simple, easily correctable mistake (which they still haven't corrected, by the way).

Now for the funny/disturbing part. I glanced at my support request the other day. The Web team engineer had closed the support request with the diagnosis "USER ERROR." Excuse me? I had followed their documentation to a "T"--at least the documentation that was visible for the task I was doing.

The problem lies in how younger IT professionals are "programmed" by their peers to regard users as "stupid" and usually the root of the problem in any support call situation. This myopic view propagates from one generation of professionals to the next. So, how can we combat this view? I would suggest educating professionals early on in their careers (while they're still being educated/trained) with themes central to HCI and usability. When desiging an interface, maintaining a system, etc., one must remember that users perform tasks to meet goals using their knowledge in a given context. If each of these are not considered (users, tasks, goals, knowledge, and context), the interface or system will fail and it will be the fault of the IT professional, not the user.

Stop indicting. Start serving.