I've been researching traffic engineer Hans Monderman, there's an article below which gives an overview of his work and concepts. What's particularly interesting is that his concepts initially seem counter intuitive but have been hugely successful inspiring similar projects the world over. Removing safety barriers, curbs, signs, lights, etc doesn't feel like it would make roads safer but it works.
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I guess the thing that went through my mind was; what happens if we move some of these concepts from traffic systems to computer systems (or even operational processes)? Do we restrict and clutter our systems with pop ups, control limits, etc to the extent that they actually become more confusing? Do we make our systems so fool-proof that users stop thinking (i.e. if I'm not supposed to do this the system won't let me, and if it does the systems wrong and not me)?
It also made me think about whether faster is really faster? We push to make processes as slick as possible and remove the thinking time but do we introduce errors inherently with that approach?
Very interesting post David, I wonder if anyone has tested this sort of approach with computer systems? Certainly there are an awful lot of cluttered systems out there that try and "help" users by enforcing a certain path but really just make things more frustrating - MS Windows for example. Clutter and fool-proofing also seem to be rife when systems are designed for the lowest common denominator rather than considering different types of user. See any corporate desktop build for example.
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