Task 10.2

Write a blog entry summarising the major points made by Malcolm Gladwell in the video showed in the lecture (from the Ted conference). Can you relate his main points to some aspect of IT system design - for example, documentation. Value points 2; individual points 2; design points 2.

Malcolm Gladwell made some very interesting points regarding the power of choice and the way the spaghetti sauce industry along with the whole food industry in the United States tried to establish "universals" for each food. Companies at the time (around the 1970's) were trying to find the "best" recipe for their specific foods.

Gladwell explains that although statistically there may be a "best" option for a food recipe, it still leaves a considerable amount of people unhappy with the project. Sure, the majority may be satisfied but what about the others?

Variability was the solution, in this day and age, as Gladwell explained, we look for variability in all things and then try to come up with solutions for a range of variables.

The idea behind the variability in food can be applied to the IT industry as well. There is no one solution in which will meet all other user's expectations, we too in the IT industry must (and do!) harness the idea of variability within products. Which is why a lot of the time a company would rather have a system built for them than purchase an already built program off the shelf.

The assumption in all things is that people know what they want, when in actual fact people very rarely know what they want because they're unsure or oblivious to what is actually available. This is why we use prototyping within the design stage, sometimes a client will not actually realise something is possible within a program or system until we show them.