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February 27, 2003
Real Work Sucks
In response to a CHIWEB post by Merholz the other day, I wrote this response to the list. It's in response to someone's post wondering what the new frontiers of collaboration in work will be, and how we as designers can "transform users and teams in preperation for this new frontier."
Such crap that is. And it's the same old crap. I wrote back basically the following: there are no new frontiers except in the heads of overly disconnected designers who lose interest as soon as they've half-thought out some new idea for collaboration.
Someone (forget who) pointed out that there are years and years of research into collaborative systems and "groupware". I think it was Merholz who responded, yeah? Show me the money. Show me their results. Email, Word, IM, and some other basic programs give me all the collaborative tools I need.
I wrote that these are the "new principles of collaboration" that designers should consider:
-- Many people are lazy or unmotivated in their jobs, at least some of the time.
-- Most work is boring. Automation often just reinforces this.
-- Work is at times necessarily directed towards unpleasant or un-social ends.
-- Many people would rather be doing something else than their job.
-- Many people do not like a good percentage of their co-workers.
Ron Zeno rightly pointed out to me that these are in fact management problems that have been considered by many many mangement experts, like Peter Drucker, for years. Absolutely true, I agree. And it's certainly bad that designers know next to nothing about management's problems or methods.
But thinking back on the jobs I've had over the last ten or so years, I wonder to what degree management theory has made an impact on workplace suckitude. The best managed job I've had was probably when I was a cashier at a big supermarket here in Austin back in 1995. They treated us decently, the director of the place listened to me when I complained about some scheduling problems (and fixed them), and they had hired a staff of basically nice and hard-working people.
My other jobs (in technology and not) pretty much all suffered from at least a few of those principles above. People hated their work, found it dull and uninspiring, had serious personal problems with other staff members, or basically thought the whole environment sucked. I'm sure you've worked there, too.
The point is this: the efforts of an entire field of smart people trying to invent clever new ways to solve old problems probably won't succeed more often than random changes to the work environment.
I'm reminded of Ton van Asseldonk's talk at Doors 7. He pointed out studies that showed that introducing multiple products with minor variations was about as successful as a program of market research and product development in producing successful products. Random changes worked about as well as careful planning.
Posted by Andrew at February 27, 2003 11:09 AM