You get it when you feel it

Somebody asked me recently about highlights in my career in IT. It took a while but something emerged from the depths of the nineties. Or the eighties. Either way, the Jacquard minicomputer used floppy disks. Although it did also have two hard disks with a diameter of about 35 cm that each stored 6 MB of data.

I had developed a small application function to help a membership organisation process a stack of forms that their members sent in by post. The organisation had to register that the form had been received. In the old application, this entailed entering the member ID and waiting for the details to be shown, tabbing down to a field at the bottom of the screen and selecting 'Received', and then saving the changes and waiting for the screen to refresh so that they could move on to the next form. The technology wasn’t particularly quick so it took about 30 seconds per form. Maybe longer.

With the new function, they just had to enter the member ID and hit Enter. 5 seconds max. And it didn’t take much longer than that to code.

So what makes this a highlight? Well, as a developer, I was unaware of the context in which my work was being used. It was just another module. It was not at all challenging or satisfying to design or code, so as such, it was quickly forgotten. Until I was visiting their office and was showered with gratitude from Nel, the lady who had to process these forms. I had absolutely no idea what it meant to her. The penny dropped. There is no linear relationship between effort and outcome, or cost and value.  

It’s an example of something that you can read about (design thinking, empathy, outcomes and business value etc.) and cognitively comprehend, but that you only really get when you feel it in terms of human emotion. Ironically and sadly, I never told her of the reverse effect on me, but a very belated thank you Nel.