[Fwd: Re: [xml-dev] Canonical set of rules for systems?]

Excellent! Thanks Ken.

You are saying that one thing needed by systems is a set of rules for customer satisfaction. These rules are derived from taking measurements on the system. Perhaps we need a Customer Satisfaction Markup Language (CSML)?

/Roger


-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Starks [mailto:] 
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 11:45 AM
To: Costello, Roger L.
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Canonical set of rules for systems?

The main thing that is missing, to my way of thinking, is some sort of 
overall quality metric for user-friendliness.
Informally stated, "Do the  users come away from a session on the system 
feeling happy?"
i.e.   How shall we know - in six months time - that the system as a 
whole is working nicely ?  that its
users enjoy using it ?  

For a web-based system, this can to a certain extent be measured by 
recording mouse-clicks that
reveal false trails or early quitting by the users; or that measure how 
they return to the site; or social-networking
recommendations, etc.
For other systems you might need to build-in some sort of feedback form, 
trouble-ticket system, help line or
whatever, and take data from that for statistical analysis.

I am sure we have all used systems that work according to the designers' 
sets of rules, but leave you
feeling ... well ... (Grr) .. angry. Last week, for example, I bought a 
train ticket online, and the system
insisted on making me jump through a zillion hoops, and asked me a 
zillion completely irrelevant
questions. And it made me go right back to the beginning when I decided 
to take a single ticket rather
than a return  ( ... Grr, Grr ! ).

Please make sure your canonical set of rules discourage that ! To do so 
would certainly be part of
my design brief if I asked you to design a system for me.

Yours sincerely,
Ken.



Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> When designing a system make explicit the rules of the system. These rules include:
>
> - rules that define the system's process/workflow
>
> - rules that define the data validity of documents routed through the system
>
> - rules that define the system's user interface
>
> - rules that define the relationship/taxonomy of the system's data
>
>
> What other rules are there in systems?
>
> Is there a canonical set of rules?
>
>
> Here's a start at a canonical set of rules for systems:
>
> 1. Process/workflow rules
>
> 2. Data validity rules
>
> 3. User interface rules
>
> 4. Data relationship rules
>
> What else?
>
> /Roger
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