Games as Business
We probably are Doing It Wrong. In the comments, lots of amens, a few trolls, some discussion that maybe SOX or HIPAA compliance is a bit different from sharing photos or 140 character comments, but 2 really good bits were contributed; Patrick Logan’s and Len Bullard’s. After reading all that my first thought was that Google probably runs their HR stuff off SAP or PeopleSoft.
I also remembered the Princess Rescuing Application presentation I posted about last year.
As with most humor, it’s funny because it’s true. Enterprise Applications are designed by “domain experts” which tends to result in impenetrable interfaces with a horrible learning curve, and low-level employees who learn the tiny bit they need to get through their first day on the job and call for a manager to do the hard stuff.
What if game mechanics were used and people had to earn their way to higher functionality? On the one hand there’s a few problems: first, Managers are given super-powers in the system, regardless of experience. They’re hired into the organization with this assumed power. Also, you would want some artificial constraints on employees getting access to managerial functions. Simply being able to figure out how to do managerial stuff doesn’t necessarily mean you should be doing it. The traditional ACL model does this very well, but doesn’t lend itself to answering questions like “is this user competent to do this action”?
On the other hand, I see a few benefits: Managers can easily see what level their employees are at by viewing their capabilities; and employees aren’t faced with the typical “enterprise application” UI nightmare.
Of course, this is all just vapor on my part. It’s a sea change in how we write applications. However, I think it’s something worth exploring.
— Gordon Weakliem
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One problem w/ enterprise apps is the customers can’t leave. You can’t say “expenses only works with IE6, I will fill my expenses in with a different company”. You cant say “ooh, the bank account update site is unusable, let me switch to this new one a friend pointed me at”. And they believe they can lock down the client machines and control things, it’s cheaper than fixing your web sites to work with firefox….
— Steve Loughran · 8 January 2010, 02:48 · #
True enough Steve, enterprise has a “barrier to exit” that acts as a disincentive to innovation. I’m really stunned at how bad these apps are – the timesheet program we use at work, really our entire HR department, the apps I see on the desktop at doctor’s offices, etc.
The point about banks is good, I really hate my bank, except that their online banking is pretty good and I’d hate to lose that. One of these days I’ll get ticked off enough and move.
— Gordon Weakliem · 8 January 2010, 15:11 · #