Invisible IT

Joshua Porter cites

Five Principles to Design By

which puts the IT business in very clear perspective.

Technology Serves Humans.

Technology serves humans. Humans do not serve technology.

Design is not Art.

Good Design is something that works well.

The Experience Belongs to the User.

The ultimate experience is something that happens in the user, and it is theirs. They own it.

Great Design is Invisible.

An interesting property of great design is that it is taken for granted.

Bad design is obvious because it hurts to use.

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.

[It] is the highest achievement for a designer.

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I have long contended that our stated goal in IT is to be[come] invisible. Recent studies published by important folks in the know have stated that IT is not a competitive business practice. (e.g. We won't gain greater market share because we have a bigger IT department than our competition.) In this day and age everybody has an IT department, in house or out-sourced or BILB (Brother-in-Law Bob). So when it comes to customer service, providing the commodity of IT to the end users, our objective is to make it as simple as possible and as invisible as possible.

Let the users, our customers, be about the work of our business not the busy-ness of IT.

Thanks Joshua