Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!shemesh!ittai
From: ittai@shemesh.GBA.NYU.EDU (Ittai Hershman)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware
Subject: Re: why so little groupware?
Message-ID: <6480@shemesh.GBA.NYU.EDU>
Date: 23 Oct 90 22:33:37 GMT
References: <2997@jaytee.East.Sun.COM> <220@awaken.UUCP>
Organization: NYU Stern School of Business
Lines: 25

>     > 		Building groupware is really hard.
> 
> It's interesting that this generality applies regardless of the type of
> groupware.  Ours is asynchronous narrow-band text...

Not to be flippant, but I think that the correct abstraction is:

	Building good software (which takes the end-user into
	account) is really hard.

The parentheses are there because that clause is really one of the
primary components of "good", but not everyone agrees.

I think that we are more sensitive to interface issues, when the
software is a communications medium between/among other people.  When
a computational program is run, interface is relative to other
programs which do similiar things -- we tend to curse while climbing
the learning curve, and then we grow used to using the tool.  When the
software become a medium for human communications (we'll leave
collaboration out for now), we compare it to the media with which we
are familiar.  We are less tolerant of the tool getting in the way.
But it's not because it is inherently more difficult, it's because our
expectations are higher.

-Ittai