A Series of Unfortunate Events

I was working in London for a company that specialized in hotel reservation systems. The software application was really well designed, and it seemed easy to use. The productivity and quality numbers were impressive, and they were easily in the top 5% of software development companies. I learned this was not always the case, and they used to have a hard time getting any functionality out the door. The founder of the company told me he had an epiphany while traveling. He was sitting in a hotel lobby and realized none of his software developers knew anything about the hotel business. He recruited and hired several new staff members who had never worked on a single software project. These individuals knew and understood the hotel business. One of them told the founder he had managed hotels for over twenty years; and, as he said, “I know how to make a bed.” All of the remaining development team members were required to start subscribing and reading hospitality magazines and attending trade shows dedicated to the hotel and leisure markets. Additionally, the developers were required to start going to hotels and studying how their applications were being used. A few developers participated in hotel management trainee programs.

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When these developers went to where their customers worked, the hotel, they noticed there were yellow sticky notes all over the place, it was like a sea of yellow. They watched the hotel staff work instead of asking, “Hey, what are all the sticky notes for?” They learned the purpose of the yellow sticky was to keep track of hotel guests. They watched how the existing application was being used, and they quickly learned the existing application was creating problems for the hotel staff. The developers mapped out the natural flow of hotel guests and created a software application that fit this flow. When you go to where your customers work, you see things in a totally different light.

It is common for a hotel guest to have breakfast and then immediately go to the front desk and check out. When a guest checks out, his or her hotel key is disabled. So the guest returns to the room to gather his or her bags only to be locked out of the room. The guest returns to the front desk, and the desk clerk either reactivates the key or has to give the guest a new key. The yellow sticky note was there to remind the desk clerk to have a maid check to see if the guest had left the room. If the guest was still in his room, the maid put a yellow sticky note on her cart to remind her to check on the guest again in an hour or so. The hotel bill was not updated with the charges for breakfast. Since the restaurant staff is swamped in the morning, they generally wait to process breakfast charges. Since the guest had already checked out, the breakfast could not be charged to the room. The restaurant staff would place a yellow sticky note on the monitor as a reminder to notify the front desk that the guest had outstanding charges.

If you go to where your customer lives and works, you need to develop thick skin and to accept criticism. One of my clients in the health care industry took a video camera to where the customer works, the hospital. He videotaped doctors using the applications. He showed the videotape to the development team and many were shocked at how frustrating it was for doctors to use the applications. To the dismay of the development team, one of the doctors said, “What idiot designed this software application?” Several doctors commented, “Are they just trying to frustrate us?” Many of the developers felt discouraged, and one of them told me, “I was really disheartened: I thought our applications were easy to use. There are a lot of doctors who think we are stupid.” Doctors want to use software applications to help them treat patients. They do not want to spend time trying to learn the software applications. My client took the feedback to heart and started redesigning the software application around the way doctors work, not the other way around.

This is in contrast to the “Company Computer Guy,” a comedy skit on Saturday Night Live (SNL) where the fictional character Nick Burns will “fix your computer then make fun of you.” In Burn’s world it is never the application that is the problem; it is always the user. It is common for him to mumble, “it’s not the application; it’s not the application” over and over again. The “Company Computer Guy” resonates with anyone that uses a computer.