I look at such beautiful things around us on campus to get out of frustrations!
We hear the frustration about technologies on a regular basis in our business. It is our job to comfort our users and make sure that in the end they are able to get through and accomplish what they need to.
I was at the receiving end of this during the past couple of weeks and let me tell you, what I had to go through was “so frustrating” and I felt the pain first hand. I tell my staff that unless we really experience what our users experience, we are highly unlikely to know the pain that they are experiencing. So, my frustrations provided me a view into this pain. Thankfully, the frustrations I felt were all outside Wellesley 🙂
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The most hyped event of the year is over and the result was disappointing for the Patriots fans. However, it was a good game with a couple of unfortunate calls by the referee and a lot of dropped passes. Well, we had a great time at our home watching the game with a lot of friends. I just realized that I have not written for a couple of weeks because I have been extremely busy with a few software projects that I am working on. I am on Acela express right now, heading to NY City to participate in a Google Apps user group meeting at Google NY. Hope to not run into the ticker tape parade for the Giants and get delayed going to the meeting.
We have been marching along in terms of software development with a slight twist – web applications for the portal which rely on authoritative data stored in Banner and other systems (such as 25Live)Â that look and act with a level of consistency that the users expect in software. As I have written many times over, I favor this approach to “Let us wait for Banner to deliver these services” because we will be waiting for a loooong time! Also, because this framework is under our control, the interface can be manipulated in ways that are otherwise not possible. Also, if the users are happy with the navigational approach and display of data we provide, we can leave that alone for however long the users desire. This is obviously not the case with software vendors. They seem to know what is good for us when! We all know that they rarely do a good job and choose the most inopportune moments to make changes.
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