Beyond the Monkeys, Information Usability in Application Development

Following the third UAT session on the same application user interface, one of my business counterpart shared a song he heard on the radio during his drive called “Code Monkey” by Jonathan Coulton. It is funny and was worth my $.99 cent investment to check it out. How do we ensure people are not just good developers against specifications, we discussed, but also create a culture where developers really seek to understand the information delivered through the application so it makes sense.

Web sites, followed by mobile applications, put increased emphasis on the User Experience. Do the screen flows make sense? Are the fields, placement of information intuitive? Google search site’s simplicity is often given as an example, as well as the single button and swiping motions of an iPhone.

What about the information we deliver through the apps? Even with the emphasis on the User Experience, many developers still do not focus on data content, perhaps trusting what is in the database must be enough to meet the need or if a business/user representative asks for something, it must not be questioned.

Somehow, it feels like we lost either our curiosity or confidence to look at the results our work produce and ask if what we see makes sense. This seems especially pervasive in reference and master data constructs, where standardization or understanding of common records or semantics require dialogue and are are essential to analytics. Applications that pass system testing per spec yet raising data content concerns by users during UAT both raise cost and delay delivery of value. I believe we need to re-embrace our curiosity.

I am fortunate to have a team of individuals, whether developer, analyst, or tester, that seek to understand what our partners and customers are trying to achieve and question if the specs or code are appropriate. Today, we take a few hours away as a team for a mental break, and have found our new team T-Shirt that embodies a fun philosophy for it. “Input no Evil, Process No Evil, Output no Evil”. Gone are the monkeys of the past. We are responsible for the success of our computing are environment.

Cheers

Mentioned Above, intended for humor or to provoke thought
Wise Robots shirt by SF Bay Area artist Cody Vross
Code Monkey song by Jonathan Coulton