Sunday, March 06, 2011

When the System Is Poorly Designed

When an IT system is well designed, the user wants to use it because it makes her job easier or better--any data to be entered is new and unique, and needed to produce the output.. At the next level down, the system is so designed the user has  to use it to accomplish the job, hopefully without frustrating the user too much.  At a lower level, the user can defy management and dodge the system.  Perhaps the worst system is one where data-entry is after the fact.  Those thoughts were inspired by this Government Executive article on an Army mental health record system.  Because the medicos aren't entering data upfront, the paper records are to be shipped off and scanned. 

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