Chapter 6: Data, Reports, and Printouts


Overview

Quiz time: You’re a computer professional. Do you understand your phone bill? Yes, in all fairness, realistically, if you sit down and look it over, you’re perfectly capable of understanding your phone bill. You are, after all, a computer programmer. But what about people who aren’t? Well, let’s start with us computer people. Here’s a look at one portion of one of my recent phone bills. It looks something like this:

Peak

Off-Peak

Weekend

Amount

Current Month’s Airtime Usage

Airtime (minutes)

954

97

303

Promotional Allowance/Minutes

0

77

243

Included

Monthly Allowance

742

0

0

Included

Cell to Cell Allow. Minutes

212

20

60

Included

Current Month’s Billable Airtime

0

0

0

Current Month’s Airtime Charges

0

0

0

0

Total Home Usage and Charges

0

Total Cell to Cell Minutes

233

32

113

Honestly? I can’t follow this bill. And I’m a programmer! The best I can figure is that it goes like this: I talked 954 minutes during peak time, 212 of which were to another cell phone with the same provider, 742 of which were not. During the off-peak times, I talked 20 minutes to another cell phone with the same provider. And during weekends, I talked 60 minutes to another cell phone and 243 to others. And all of this is included in my plan, so I don’t have to pay extra. But I really don’t know what the last line is all about.

But close enough. As a computer programmer, I can safely say that I understand most of this. The last line I don’t understand. But I’m pretty sure I understand the upper part. The top line of numbers is the total amount of time I spoke, and the lines below are how this is broken up among promotional allowance/minutes, monthly allowance, and cell-to-cell allowance/minutes. (I’m not sure why the middle item of these doesn’t say “minutes” on it but the others do. Maybe that’s an oversight by the people who made the bill.)

And I still don’t know what the bottom line means, but that’s okay. I’ll just pay the bill and not worry about it I just realized I fell for it! Do they want me to just not question it and go ahead and pay it? How do I know the bill is even right?

Well, confession time: I once worked for a company that did billing for cell phone companies. And you know what? We weren’t lying. There was no dishonesty at all; nobody was trying to deceive anybody. I can safely say that this bill is correct and honest. So why is it so hard to read? Although the company I worked for didn’t print this bill, they printed similar bills. And I didn’t work there yet when they figured out the layout of the bills, so I can’t say with certainty the steps that took place to come up with the bill’s format. But one clue I can see about this bill is the fact that the left column has these three items, which are not described very well:

  • Promotional Allowance/Minutes

  • Monthly Allowance

  • Cell to Cell Allow. Minutes

The first item has a slash in between Allowance and Minutes. The second item doesn’t even mention Minutes. The third item has no slash between Allowance and Minutes. My goal, of course, isn’t to nitpick the editing (or lack thereof) of the bill, but rather to point out that this bill obviously didn’t go through much of a review. Who actually wrote these three phrases? Most likely it was the programmer. The programmer arbitrarily decided what it would say, and the programmer showed it to the manager, who approved it and who sent it to the client (the phone company) for review, who in turn approved it, without doing a usability study. (I’m only guessing here, but it’s likely what happened.) This is indicative of some larger problems in terms of who the decision makers are. (In this case, the programmers made the decisions and the bosses simply approved them!) And that’s an issue I talk about later on in this book, in Chapter 15, “Book in a Book: A Guide for Programming Bosses.”

In this present chapter, I talk about the issues of not only getting the grammar good—er, I mean right—but also about presenting the data in your reports so as to keep people from getting confused, and to keep them from accusing you of dishonesty, as I nearly did with this phone bill.

And incidentally, just for the record, as I was describing the phone bill, I really was going through the actual procedure of figuring out what it all meant. What I wrote was actually my train of thought. And I still haven’t figured out what that last line means. So the answer to the question, “Do I understand my phone bill?” is, “Apparently not.” After you read this chapter, on the other hand, readers of your printouts and reports won’t have to be intimately aware of your database to understand your reports. Even people who aren’t programmers will understand them—unlike the situation with my phone bill.

REAL WORLD SCENARIO: My Arm Is Tired from the Light Pen.

start example

Back in the early days of personal computers, when people owned computers with names such as Commodore-64 and VIC-20, a fancy new gadget appeared in the stores. It was one of the coolest inventions of all time, and it was called a light pen. A light pen behaved very much like today’s mice, except instead of having a moving cursor that rolled around as you moved a mouse, you would simply touch the light pen to the screen. In essence, the light pen turned your monitor into a touch screen, which is something still with us today.

As soon as the light pen came out, people starting making software that not only supported the light pen but required it. I never actually used such software, because I wasn’t one of the lucky few who actually owned a light pen, so I don’t know exactly what they were doing that required the light pen. But I do know one thing: Soon after light pens came out, people (usually secretaries and data entry clerks) began complaining of extremely tired arms. The act of holding a light pen up to the monitor all day long was just too tiring. And almost as quickly as light pens emerged, they disappeared into the history books and museums.

But what’s interesting is that while the final result of the light pen was to turn the monitors into the equivalent of touch screens, touch screens are still here today. You see them often in POS (Point of Sale) systems. Go to a restaurant and you’ll see the cashiers tapping on the screen to enter the order (which makes me wonder the answer to the Great Question in Life, “How much ketchup can cover a monitor before you can no longer read the monitor?). Go to an oil change center or a hotel, and you’ll sometimes see the same thing. Is this really a good idea? In the case of cashiers, their job doesn’t focus on the computer. They don’t use the computer all day long. So in this case, the touch screen is probably okay. Further, ketchup on a screen doesn’t damage the screen; ketchup inside a keyboard might.

The good news is, then, that while the light pen is left for the annals of science, its offshoot, the touch screen, does still live on, but only in certain situations where the people aren’t parked in front of the computer all day long. If you’re developing software, then, and are considering a touch screen interface, first ask yourself how much time the users will spend in front of the computer. Will their arms get tired? Will it be easier for them to use the keyboard? But on the other end, will a keyboard even be present? These are all questions to consider. But please don’t expect them to use a light pen. Leave that for the time capsules.

end example




Designing Highly Useable Software
Designing Highly Useable Software
ISBN: 0782143016
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 114

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