Street scenes

Matthew Frederick in “101 Things I Learned in Architecture School” learned that an ‘urban infill building should be designed to come out to the prevailing line of the street. (item 91. The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, c 2007). I think this has an association for systems analysis. We programmers tend to think of the software as a thing in itself. And as many programmers on a project never even see the user space, we don’t have any idea of a street line, we don’t know what other software people use. We don’t what their work is, what other physical systems they use. I know when I have to switch from one system to another, the transition can be quite jarring, what must it feel like for users who may have to switch constantly amongst applications in a work day, within the context of a single action?

This is not to argue that we should write all applications with the ‘same’ interface, workflow, architecture, parti (organizing idea). Given the mish-mash of interfaces out there now and the age of some applications, that might be hard to phase into. Also, I would fear the thoughtless requirements to standardize on an inadequate standard (for example, I don’t like forcing web-like interfaces on in-house data entry systems).

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