Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2.
If the application is new, the user likely thinks in terms of pre
sent practice and may not be able to envision a system that is
dramatically different.
3.
User needs often change as users become more sophisticated,
businesses grow, and laws change.
Let's consider an application that highlights each of these diffi
culties in writing complete specifications.
Word-Processing Example
If your entire experience with writing involved only the use of a pencil on paper, you
would never have had the experience of a system checking your work for spelling or
grammar. Similarly, if you had needed to break a word over two lines, you always
would have done your own word division and hyphenation. Further, you likely would
not have thought about multiple type fonts and type sizes. In describing your needs
for wordprocessing software, chances are that you would unlikely be able to think
of all the features that now are common in such software. That does not mean you
wouldn't want them; however, they would be out of your realm of experience, and
even a truly innovative person would likely think of just some of them. And, if you
did not think of the features, you could not tell a developer you wanted them.
Extending this example, suppose you were an experienced author, journalist, or pub
lisher with extensive experience in writing and publishing printed works produced
with the traditional typesetting process. In this case, you would be familiar with page
layouts, type fonts and sizes, spacing and paragraphing, tables, and lists. Your expe
rience also would include editing of the manuscript using special symbols (called
proofreaders' marks), the manual setting of type, multiple rounds of proofreading,
and the separate (manual) compilation of the table of contents and index. With such
background, you might want a software package to automate the familiar tasks you
regularly did (layouts, fonts, spacing), but, given your experiences, you might ask for
a mechanism to incorporate the same proofreaders' marks that you use into the
process. You might not think that another process (e.g., comments or annotations)
could be used in place of proofreaders' marks, and it might not occur to you that
software might be able to generate the table of contents or index automatically.
Remember also that we tend to project our most current experiences in our opin
ions, even if we do so unintentionally. Your initial consideration of what you need
in a wordprocessing program, therefore, might take for granted that you would be
writing in your native language (e.g., English). This need, however, could change.
You might, at a later date, either because of a class or a trip, find it necessary to
write in a language (e.g., Russian or Chinese) that uses a different alphabet or in a
language (e.g., Hebrew) that reads from right to left rather than left to right. Over
time, moreover, your vision might also deteriorate, and your needs would change
to include wanting material on your screen to appear at a larger size. With such
changes in circumstances, the software you initially described would no longer meet
your current needs. Your new needs would require a change in specifications.
