Business-Savvy TechnologistTechnology-Savvy Businessperson
Business-Savvy Technologist/Technology-Savvy BusinesspersonThe successful professional for the twenty-first century is either a business-savvy technologist or a technology-savvy businessperson, and I am writing for this person. The technology-savvy businessperson knows that his success is dependent on the quality of the information available to him and the sophistication with which he uses it. The business-savvy technologist, on the other hand, is an entrepreneurial engineer or scientist trained for technology, but possessing a keen business sense and an awareness of the power of information. Both of these new archetypes are coming to dominate contemporary business. You can divide all businesspeople into two categories: those who will master high technology and those who will soon be going out of business. No longer can an executive delegate information processing to specialists. Business is information processing. You differentiate yourself today with the quality of your information-handling systems, not your manufacturing systems. If you manufacture anything, chances are it has a microchip in it. If you offer a service, odds are that you offer it with computerized tools. Attempting to identify businesses that depend on high technology is as futile as trying to identify businesses that depend on the telephone. The high-tech revolution has invaded every business, and digital information is the beating heart of your workday. It's been said, "To err is human; to really screw up, you need a computer." Inefficient mechanical systems can waste a couple of cents on every widget you build, but you can lose your entire company to bad information processes. The leverage that software-based products and the engineers that build them have on your company is enormous. Sadly, our digital tools are extremely hard to learn, use, and understand, and they often cause us to fall short of our goals. This wastes money, time, and opportunity. As a business-savvy technologist/technology-savvy businessperson, you produce software-based products or consume them probably both. Having better, easier-to-learn, easier-to-use high-tech products is in your personal and professional best interest. Better products don't take longer to create, nor do they cost more to build. The irony is that they don't have to be difficult, but are so only because our process for making them is old-fashioned and needs fixing. Only long-standing traditions rooted in misconceptions keep us from having better products today. This book will show you how you can demand and get the better products that you deserve. The point of this book is uncomplicated: We can create powerful and pleasurable software-based products by the simple expedient of designing our computer-based products before we build them. Contrary to the popular belief, we are not already doing so. Designing interactive, software-based products is a specialty as demanding as constructing them.
Having made my choice to write the business-case book rather than the how-to design book, I beg forgiveness from any interaction designers reading this book. In deference to the business audience, it has only the briefest treatment of the actual nuts and bolts of interaction-design methodology (found primarily in Part IV, "Interaction Design Is Good Business"). I included only enough to show that such methodology exists, that it is applicable to any subject matter, and that its benefits are readily apparent to anyone, regardless of their technical expertise.
Alan Cooper |
EAN: N/A
Pages: 170