In engineering, there are several key requirements. There are user interface requirements about how people interact with the product. There are functional requirements which dictate what the product needs to do. There are performance requirements about how quickly/cheaply/etc. the product must do its job. There are acceptance requirements about how often and in what ways a product may fail.
From the information I've seen, on each of these points, Diebold either has not done a good job gathering requirements or has done a lousy job meeting them. It seems like the ideal solution would be to hold several reasonably-sized simulated elections, with actual people from disabled to barely literate, and then do an entire system redesign with input from participants at all levels. Unfortunately, what we get is a product rushed to market without proper functionality and usability testing. While this is a natural stage in the lives of many products, something as fundamental as voting technology deserves something more akin to aircraft design than software design.
Now if the software was Open Source and volunteers could suggest improvements...
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 02:22 am (UTC)From the information I've seen, on each of these points, Diebold either has not done a good job gathering requirements or has done a lousy job meeting them. It seems like the ideal solution would be to hold several reasonably-sized simulated elections, with actual people from disabled to barely literate, and then do an entire system redesign with input from participants at all levels. Unfortunately, what we get is a product rushed to market without proper functionality and usability testing. While this is a natural stage in the lives of many products, something as fundamental as voting technology deserves something more akin to aircraft design than software design.
Now if the software was Open Source and volunteers could suggest improvements...