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was easier to use. The ease of use of the user interface was evidently more important than we at Novell wanted to admit.

Other operational aspects of doing business with Novell prior to 1992, compelled some of their distributors to say, "We love your product, but if there were any other choice we'd go there in a heartbeat because you're so hard to deal with." History's merciless assessment: Novell neglected to consider the customer's perception of value. Before NT Server was released Novell owned the NOS marketplace. Now-and it always hurts me personally to have this fact manifest itself to me again and again-it's as if the term NetWare is spoken only in hushed tones among religious zealots.

Cause of the Problem

For too long technologists have been disdainful and condescending toward anyone "non-technical." "After all," they seem to say, "everyone knows that the non-technical plebeians-marketing staff, technical support, and the great unwashed end-users-couldn't possibly contribute anything useful to the design of a new product." This universal disregard for end-user needs has led to the proliferation of technically superior products which are replete with user-hostile interface design flaws. These product offerings will be used only until alternatives are presented. Given a choice users will move on. As Lou Pritchett, former vice president of sales at Proctor & Gamble frankly said, "customer loyalty is the absence of something better."

Product Oriented Organizations Produce Bad Product

Why do we put up with this nonsense? Techniques for producing quality software profitably have been available for decades now. There's no excuse for producing anything less than exactly what the customer wants. Part of the problem lies with management. Unless the QA vice president has veto power over product releases, and the whole organization is committed to delivering customer value, the testing phase of the schedule gets slashed and the hapless end-user takes it on the chin. Driven by next quarter's bottom line, management is seduced by the delusionary practice of demanding unreasonable deadlines while ignoring the insidious drop in quality.

What Is It?

When designers fail to involve end-users in the design phase of the product, many times because they are given an unrealistic deadline, the results can be disastrous. To illustrate the archetypal disconnect between the high tech designer and the intended user, consider the following hypothetical scenario. Imagine you want to impress

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