Back in 2002 I went to Georgia to attend a Windows XP rollout event.  A story was related to me while I was there that I never forgot.  It’s second hand information and I probably have all the details wrong but the underlying message remains clear.  The story goes something like this:

A high-level Microsoft executive is sitting on an airplane.  A woman sits down beside him.  During the flight they strike up a conversation.  Eventually it comes out that he works for Microsoft.  The woman becomes very excited and proceeds to tell him that she has just quit her job and is getting ready to go to school full-time to become a Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS).  She can’t wait to get started.

Rather than congratulating her decision to go to school and get certified the Microsoft exec pondered, “Wow.  How bad does our product suck that you have to quit your job and go to school just to learn how to use it?”

To me the message is clear.  Excessively complex technology leaves the majority unable to participate.  Products targeted to the masses (Microsoft Office being at the top of that list) should be easy to use, intuitive.  Unfortunately, intuition is not part of the general population’s skill set.  If typical ideas relating to the distribution of IQ are correct, almost 1/2 the population simply doesn’t have the mental capacity to really embrace the complexity of a suite of products like Microsoft Office.  What an interesting problem.  Mass market technology that isn’t suitable for the masses.  Computers and the software that runs on them are complex by nature.  How do you make something that is inherently complex usable to a population whose intelligence level is mostly average or below average?  Hmmmph?

It was a conversation this morning with my wife that got me thinking about this again.  Her company is in the midst of a migration from Office 2003 to Office 2007.  The migraiton has been assigned “project” status in her shop, which is a big deal.  There are multiple employees dedicated almost exclusively to preparing for and executing the migration.  It is going to be done in phases, department by department.  Product training will be provided to IT staff and users along the way, of course.  The whole initiative is really quite large.  There are many departments and thousands of employees spread around the United States.

So now, almost a decade after that flight taken by the Microsoft exec, the question remains:  How bad does Microsoft Office suck that a company has to 1) purchase the software for ever seat (a few hundred bucks/seat), 2) dedicate multiple salaried employees to the planning and execution of the deployment, and 3) re-train every user in a company to be functional with the product (I’m assuming they have figured Office 2003 out for the most part)?  And let’s not forget the CPU, RAM and video upgrades needed by most computers to have a chance at running Office 2007 at anything above a crawl.

Quite the time and wallet-suck, huh?  I know it seems like it but I promise I’m not trying to bash Microsoft.  I like Microsoft and I like Office 2007.  I could be talking about any vendor or most any piece of software.  I don’t think that execs question was answered because there is no real answer.  Microsoft is pretty close to the top of this list when it comes to making software usable to the masses (I reluctantly admit that Apple has them beat).  Linux on the desktop is a usability joke when coupled with Joe Everyman.

So what’s my final analysis?  How do I see it?  Well, we do not need to decrease the complexity of technology.  We need smarter people.  But that just isn’t going to happen.

Colin Weaver

Note:  Ever notice how it’s always somebody else who isn’t smart?  It’s never you (me).  A few days ago a friend of mine asked me if I ever wished I was smarter.  I laughed and told him I wasn’t dissatisfied with my current level of intelligence even though I was aware that there are people out there much smarter than me.  This got me thinking about the whole idea of intelligence (which eventaully led to the topic above).  Does a person with really low intelligence realize he is the one who picked the short straw?  Does an idiot think he is smart?  How would he know when all he has is his own inner monologue talking to him (and that little voice always seems to makes sense, dosen’t it)?  And to that end, how do I’m not the one high-fiving myself and drinking from a short straw?