{"id":77040,"date":"2021-03-02T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77040"},"modified":"2021-03-01T06:35:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T12:35:13","slug":"jd-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77040","title":{"rendered":"The Design Of Everyday Things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

I send an email which Mitch posted on February 4th in a column called
Surprised, Not Surprised<\/a>. I complained about the Post Office’s on-line
system to request they hold my mail while I went on vacation, which
ended up being postponed.<\/p>

I was informed in the comments by a person who claimed to be an expert
on the subject, that Informed Delivery was a great success and “your
disappointed experience with Informed Delivery is either an aberration
or a result of unrealistic expectations, and is not persuasive to a
larger argument about the post office.”<\/p>

Maybe so but the story doesn’t end there. I finally got signed up. I
rescheduled my trip to Texas leaving February 12 and returning the
22nd. I used the on-line system to place a Hold My Mail request and
then . . . blizzard, trip postponed again. So, I went back on-line and
cancelled the Hold My Mail request.<\/p>

Just checked the box . . . no mail. I can think of two possibilities:
either every junk mailer in the nation suddenly dropped me from their
lists, or the Post Office is holding my mail even though I cancelled the
request.<\/p>

No, I’m not going to call. First, I hate navigating automated phone
trees. Second, even if I got a live representative, the best they could
do would be to put in a Cancel request and by the time it filtered down
to the Rice Street Station, the hold period would be over so my mail
would be delivered anyway.<\/p>

Another aberration? More unrealistic expectations? Maybe so, but they
keep happening. It\u2019s sad, because the Post Office is one of the few
activities the federal government is constitutionally authorized to do.
It\u2019s a shame they do it so poorly.<\/p>

Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When I was in a computer science class in college, the prof – who’d been a software engineer just long enough to pick up some terrible habits and beliefs – declaimed often that “90% of problems with system involve stupid users”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a view that governs a lot of how “systems” people – from technocrats and systems analysts at a high level all the way down to programmers – view the world; “if only our customer was as smart as we. Or me”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The field I work in is the group brought in when the customer – the business paying for those systems, and who realize that actual users just aren’t adopting, using or appreciating their technocrats’ genius – realizes that kind of arrogance isn’t a strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, government is simultaneously very good at adopting my particular discipline (check out the human factors of an F35 cockpit) and really, really bad (the MNSure, MNLARS and “Please give me a vaccine” websites). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

File this accordingly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I send an email which Mitch posted on February 4th in a column calledSurprised, Not Surprised. I complained about the Post Office’s on-linesystem to request they hold my mail while I went on vacation, whichended up being postponed. I was informed in the comments by a person who claimed to be an experton the subject, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77040"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77049,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77040\/revisions\/77049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}