We're always here for when technology doesn't make sense.

I try to make sure that I and my staff spend most of our time teaching faculty some basic rules of thumb that don't change. We try to be less about what button to push than about the meta discussion. Does the tool increase student interactivity? Then try it. If it doesn't, ignore it and focus on something that does. The bigger discussion often gets lost in many IT departments (or in many service calls) where the customer comes in with a question about pushing a button but what they're doing is actually not going to achieve their goals.

Sometimes, though, the tool just doesn't make sense, and then our job becomes overcoming the usability barrier for the customer. I suppose I could look at this as job security, but I don't. I just get angry that the tool isn't easier to use. Twenty years into the computer revolution, a lot of software still isn't as good as it could be.

The question I just got was about iTunes. A frustrated user (and I assume a "user" is "someone who has things to do other than fighting with the computer") had spent hours just trying to put some songs on an iPod. I knew what the answer was and went over to show them. If you can't or don't want to sync your entire music library to an iPod, then you have to make a playlist - at least one, though you could make more - and then click on the iPod device, the Music tab, click "Sync selected playlists", and click the playlists you want to sync.

From a technical perspective there are two problems with this. One is that it is stupid to assume by default that the user wants to sync the entire library. Music libraries are so large now that Apple might want everyone to upgrade to the largest possible iPod to hold it all, but that's not a practical option for most users. Also, people don't always want to be immobilized by freedom of choice on their iPod - maybe they just want to listen to an album this week, and next week have a different album. (Remember when albums were important?)

Second, even assuming that interface needs required the creation of a playlist to be the subset of the music library that is synced, the user should be able to drag and drop that playlist on the device. Everything else on the Mac works by drag and drop. Why not this? It's perverse of the designers to force you to click on the device, then the Music tab, then the "Sync selected playlists", then the playlists. That's four clicks for what should be one drag-and-drop. OK, Apple, you're pissed we didn't buy a bigger iPod, but is this really fair retaliation?

I have other gripes about iTunes. Even though Apple engineers claim to my face that it is 508 compliant, it can't actually be used by the blind to, say, create playlists. You can use it to play individual songs, if you're willing to scroll through all the songs and find the one you want one by one, but that's about it. You say you should be able to type a few letters of the song's name to go right to it? I agree with you - what's the keystroke that toggles between the playlist frame and the search box? Oh. Yeah. There isn't one. That's not usability.

But I'm really only talking about iTunes as an example in the field. Not all software is great - in fact, some software is pretty crappy - and we still all use it for something or other. NPR reported this week that Facebook scored with the cable company and airlines in customer satisfaction. Yet people use it - a LOT of people use it. In fact all the social media sites scored pretty low. Yet "everyone" uses them (not everyone, but a large percentage of the population).

Software shouldn't be bad. People shouldn't need technical assistants to get over shibboleths that keep them from doing what they need or want to do. My staff shouldn't be spending their time helping people over these barriers to entry. But we do, and we have to, and I'm right to be cranky about it - because software among all other things doesn't have to be bad. It is a product of the imagination. Barring some actual constraints (bandwidth and processing power are not infinite), software should be elegant and easy. Obviously, enough people find iTunes and Facebook easy to use that the companies and their products have big market shares. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't or couldn't be better.

Meanwhile, my staff are happy to explain the secret doors and weird handshakes. We will help you make a magical playlist and get it to sync to your iPod. As long as our faculty are willing to meet us on the way - as long as they do learn the things they need to do to be productive - we will always be here to help with that. Some faculty, a very few, want "digital servants" to just use the tool for them. We can't do that - we will never be able to do that - because it doesn't scale. No college or university can afford digital servants for all their faculty. But a college or university who wants faculty to innovate in teaching has to provide staff who can talk about the big picture - pedagogical goals - and still have time to explain how to get the thing to do what you want it to do, especially when that isn't clear at all.

That's what we're here for. Feel free to call us up and ask us how to sync to your iPod. And then tell us how we can help you with the class you're teaching this fall.