Functioning Form: "Design for the Edges"

Functioning Form has a new entry about Design for the Edges: Managing Edge Cases. This is a fascinating topic for me, because in my opinion this is one of the core ways in which designing "enterprise software" differs from designing "consumer software". Enterprise software is not about achieving ubiquity, it's not about being "good enough", it's about satisfying the often very complex requirements for enterprises beyond what the "good enough" products can do. The edge cases aren't something to avoid... they are the core value proposition of the software. For example, Jamie Hoover in the article advises "Make your software as simple as possible. Less complexity decreases the possibility of edge cases in the first place." While this is obviously good advice in general, when it comes to most enterprise software, this is not useful whatsoever. The complexity of the system into which the enterprise software is plugging already exists. That complexity is the source of the requirements. By making the software "simpler", we'd simply be reducing the number of systems in which our software would be useful.

It's unfortunate that so much of our attention as designers has been focused on ways to simplify our own jobs to reduce the complexity of design problem by using techniques that try to find commonality across roles and scenarios... which makes our lives easier but oftentimes does not help our end users, who experience a much richer life that the one we've forced upon them.