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Subject:Re: Top Ten Things You'd Like To Tell Engineers From:Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 10 Aug 2004 08:56:52 -0700 (PDT)
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Bruce Byfield wrote:
One thing I've noticed is that, for the most part, the more competent the engineer, the less likely they are to be pompous.
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Jason A. Czekalski wrote:
However, it only takes one member of the group having
a god complex to really make life miserable for everyone else.
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That could be said of anyone, in any situation, including tech writers who feel like they're not getting any respect from their SMEs. I have actually found the above to be more prevalent among parents than among engineers though.
In response to the original post, I'd like to ask engineers how they actually go about learning about their users (not theoreticals). I've found that engineers have a wide spectrum of knowledge and beliefs about their users, from the truly ridiculous (everyone knows C# and programs) to the truly insightful (users won't want to bother with this because it doesn't fit into their workflow). I'm assuming if engineers have taken the time to learn about their users, they would have gone through the same exercises as tech writers or usability experts or interface designers (contextual inquiry comes to mind). But that would be an assumption without any hard data.
I'd be interested in hearing from as many engineers as possible on this and seeing if there are any trends that can be worked out with the ultimate goal of figuring out where some assumptions (that have been expressed to me by engineers) come from. Sure you could point out that it would be an individual thing, and I'd accept that, but I'm sure there has to be some underlying frame of mind at work that would be part of an "engineering culture" that maintains sets of assumptions about users. I'm not putting a value judgment on said culture, just interested in understanding it.
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