Seen and Not Seen has an interesting post about “the tyranny of the average” in the design world.  A good read, worth the time.  If you are in a hurry, this graphic tells the gist of the story very clearly:

This has got me thinking about a lot of things we do in the data world, especially with respect to business intelligence.  One of the more useful buzzwords I have heard lately is “shadow systems“, describing the unofficial spreadsheets and databases that spring up within an organization to allow people to get things done (I have written a lot about them).

Too often, we  create or purchase data solutions that are designed to answer questions that the average user might have, as specified by the program sponsor, project manager, and developer.  The problem with this is that usually this user doesn’t exist at the time the design is finalized, is even less likely to exist when the project is completed, and is virtually guaranteed to be extinct within a year after rollout.

This means that designing for the average user delivers tools that aren’t useful to anyone.  Instead, we need to design data tools that are general enough to fit a large user base, and flexible enough to be updated to keep up with a changing business environment.  We don’t want to move at the speed of business at the time of design, we want to match the changing accelleration of the business over the life of the product.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 9:16 am and is filed under Understanding, Business Intelligence, Reporting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.