User programmers

by Joe, on January 4th, 2007

Abhijit at ifacethoughts continues a thread from Mike at Techdirt who writes if the programmer takes the blame for not being a user, make the user a programmer.

This is already happening, and even done well. In Excel.

Making users programmers is exactly what makes Excel so powerful. In many circles it has become the de facto management knowledge tool. And while it lets you use VB, the power of Excel is largely in its ability for users to put statements like “=sum(a1:a4)” into cells.

That is user programming at its finest. The point, imo, is to give users software that lets them simply discover and create as much functionality as they need–and no more than they have to–within that use context.

Do that well, and you’ll find people using your software for things you never dreamed of.

Tags: Digital Life


Abhijit Nadgouda said

Joe, I do agree with you that user programming definitely gives them more power. However, I have also met Excel users who get frustrated when they cannot understand the relative and absolute referencing systems of a cell. Anything more than basics can lead to confusion.

When I think more about it, I feel that there are some users who do not like to play around with the software, they see it as a solution, that will work. They do not like to spend efforts on learning to program. In such cases user programming might not work.


Joe said

True.

There will always be users who get frustrated at complexity and there will always be people who want their clothes hand tailored.

User programming, however, I see as just a way to convert gestures into functionality. The fact that one program’s gesture looks like another program’s code is distinct from the value of giving users the ability to direct the functionality to their own end.

However, there is great value in designing gestures that are simple and easy for large numbers of users. While the relative/absolute references in Excel are subtle (and annoying when you get something other than you expected), the ability to even compute a sum over a range of cells so simply is amazing, try doing that in Word! =)

So, I guess my point is that user programmability is good when it is simple yet powerful, largely because any user gesture that is both simple and powerful is good.


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