Rafa R — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:23:19 GMT

*Engineers especially have trouble stopping with a problem statement, and proceed right into the solution. So we end up with “Customer needs Add Widget Button” instead of “customer needs a way to add widgets,”*

Tell me about it! I am joining this party a bit late (kind of 4 years late?) but, anyway…
I am working on my MSc thesis (with a Computer Science BSc) trying to compile a list of requirements based on a Goal-Directed process. I interviewed some people, made some personas from those (and some other data) and now I’m trying to get the requirements for the product (a mobile application)

It took me a long time, and it wasn’t until my supervisor finally told me, that I didn’t have to answer the question “how is the user going to add a widget? a button? telepathy? a link? how? how? how? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TO KNOW IT??!?”, but just mention that “there has to be a way to add a widget”, as you say.

Cheers!

Rafa R — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:24:13 GMT

Great article. Now we just need politicians to understand these concepts, too.

Brendan:
“Forgive our ignorance, but what will happen when the trees run out?”

If they were like many people nowadays regarding global warming/contamination, the answer would probably have been something like “Oh, that would never happen; it hasn’t been proved that’s ever going to happen. And, if it does, we will *eventually* find a solution”.

I heard that in Tahitian, a [polynesian language][1], there is no “future tense”. Therefore, the concept of the future and predicting what will happen, or worrying about the future consequences, is not present among the population. If this is true, and it applied to Easter Islanders, it could explain why nobody asked what would happen after all the trees had been cut.

[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahitic_languages

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Rafa R