I happen to get reminded of this every so often. If you are even in park and see a nice winding path, then you notice there are these dirt paths that cut thru the nice park. Ever wonder why? Well the answer is very simple, people like the shortest distance between two points. If designers were good, they would have created the path where the dirt paths are. I have this picture in my office, and remind people of a class I took in user experience (at that time called human computer interfaces) where we were taught this lesson.

I happen to get reminded of this every so often. If you are even in park and see a nice winding path, then you notice there are these dirt paths that cut thru the nice park. Ever wonder why? Well the answer is very simple, people like the shortest distance between two points. If designers were good, they would have created the path where the dirt paths are. I have this picture in my office, and remind people of a class I took in user experience (at that time called human computer interfaces) where we were taught this lesson.

If a user is given a hard way to do something, they will work around it. In fact, if your application is really bad, people will avoid using it all together. At work, users were so annoyed with a system that was built, they were manually doing thing in Excel not to use the application! The technology team had no idea, in fact it was not until there was an issue with the work-around that anybody even notice it existed.

There is often a challenge where rules (internal), regulations (external) and just bad design that get in people’s way. And as humans we have a few choices, suffer and just use it, find a workaround or shortcut, and lastly just don’t do it. For businesses that last answer means losing business, someone leaving for your competitor, and lost revenue. If you are the only game in town (Cable) it often gives resentment, and people angered, and hoping one day there is any competitor they can leave you.

Governments are in the best spot, or well they think they are. They often put regulations and or processes in place that make people go through hoops to get done. Often the ideas are right, or they are trying to solve a problem that happened once. They like to as we say “Cover their ass” or in some cases, ensure business cover their asses. When companies create internal rules, it is often for the same reason. They are trying to prevent something bad happening, or drive people into a specific direction. But what happens when people have enough, and at what point should people should be empowered to make decisions?

This is another case I ran into with my kids’ school. There was a situation that did not fit a standard process, and left myself and my child frustrated. We were fortunate someone outside the situation who had some power could get resolve, otherwise the problem would have not been resolved. I even explained to this Senior person, who actually understood my analogy. The situation was not something that the law had written, and the people who were responsible for making a decision were so focused on following the rules (cover themselves) that they could not see the correct answer. There was a point, I just walked away thinking bureaucracy once again takes over.

I did step back, and think about some of the hoops we need to climb through on a daily basis, and realize there are three types of the people; those who follow the rules, those who find the shortcuts in everything, and those who pick their spaces. Those who follow the rules often get annoyed and frustrated often. They seem to hit roadblocks, and can’t believe why this always happens to them. They often have friends who just do shortcuts on everything, and are even more frustrated as they know if they were to do the same, they would get caught.

But I think it is more than that. We as parents try to teach our children to do the right thing. We want our kids to not have to lie, cheat or skirt rules to get somewhere. But when schools, companies, and government put overwhelming processes in place people it gets hard to continue to do the right things. I left this situation trying to explain to my daughter that doing the right thing, is still the better way. Being the better person will in the long run pay off. There are times to take the shortcut, and in this case, it was not one of them.

As for what the solution really is, there should be a law called the law of common sense. Yeah, the title of this was condom sense I know, where people should be empowered to use common sense and do the right thing. Many companies empower employees to make decisions without having to go thru hoops, without having to sign 90 pieces of paper in triplicate, call 5 levels of management. There is a place for pretty paths that take you the long way, but there can also be a small path the gets people to where they want to go quickly. Not every path has a Waze app to help you get there the fastest way, it is up to people to solve it. I have no idea where my daughter and I would be without someone who was willing to cut through the tape and solve a problem, but I am thankful it ended up ok.

As for designing systems, we managed to find out why the users were skirting using it, and fixed it. Funny the fix wasn’t hard, was more about timing about the data. And I continue to push my development team to build systems that not only solves a business problem, but makes a user’s life easier.

Go read my world famous disclaimer on other posts. I also don’t have advertising, charge etc for this. I ask you to donate to your favorite charity or mine. http://give.nyp.org/site/TR/DIYTeamRaiser/General?px=1031549&pg=personal&fr_id=1080&fbclid=IwAR1s94AB9DIWbg9HbKok91xODYCuAQJvxYKHHGCNUThp1NCWlXQJWNLxw9I