The Missing Voice of Our Laboratory Informatics Users
Written by Gloria Metrick on . Published as written. It may not reflect how these systems work today.
One thing that has changed within our laboratory informatics magazines is that I don't remember seeing any user articles in recent years.
Just for one example, "Scientific Computing" used to have articles written by users telling about their systems. Sometimes, the user actually wrote the article, other times, they would work with someone who would basically interview them in order to write the article for them. I remember reading these with some excitement. When I was younger and looking for more experience, I knew that the small number of projects I had under my belt was a drop in the bucket of knowledge, and that the opportunity to read about more implementations was useful for me. For some reason, I specifically remember the article about the system in the Hershey testing labs. At the time, I think I felt hopeful that I would one day get a chance to work with chocolate testing. That still hasn't happened, but "hope springs eternal," is all I have to say about that! ;-)
Times have changed, though. Most companies no longer allow their people to give out information about their projects. These days, the only way to gather customer information is to work on their projects or to speak with them about the project, directly. And, for the junior people in our industry, they don't necessarily have the contacts in-place to just call people up and ask them about their projects.
Granted, there was limited information in those articles and it was almost always the "happy path" story. However, getting an idea of the types of features needed and issues faced by one industry or another was a step in the right direction. Thus, in an age where we have more tools to hear the voice of the user, we also hear less from them in other respects. It's possible that it all balances out.
Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/