The Royal We Is Working On It...

I really am trying to get used to the dumbed-down (sorry, I should say "user-friendly") move towards simple language and a less technical description of the options and features in modern software UIs. Messages such as "We're working on it" and "Something went wrong" feel like they would have been programmer's jokes only a few years ago, but now they are the accepted way to communicate with the "average user".

I came across another today on my Surface RT: "We've found new updates today, and we'll install them for you soon." No option to say "Well just do it now" or any indication of when "soon" might be. OK, so I can fire up the old Windows Update dialog from the Start screen and get all the usual functionality. But it's more the use of "we" that I find odd.

In the days when I wrote for Wrox Press here in England we used "we" extensively as a way to involve readers, and help them feel we were sharing their pain when programming or administering software. But when Wrox closed down and I started writing for US publishers I was told that you talked to readers, not worked with them. It was "you" not "we".

So does "we" in the software you use, rather than the books you read, mean something different? Are the programmers who wrote your O/S actually sharing your pain? I reckon the use of "we" is designed to make users think that there's a huge group of vigilant technical operators just waiting for them to turn their computer on and do something.

Maybe it's a bit like you see on those TV programs about nuclear power stations, or in NASA mission control, with hundreds of people fervently staring at banks of computer screens with slowly decrementing counters that determine when "soon" becomes "now" and they can "install them for you". Mike at desk 93 has just hit the big red button to install the latest updates for Mrs. Smith at 17 Willowlessgrove Avenue in Walmington-on-Sea, while Sarah at desk 426 is about to let Mr. Jones in Longleaf, North Carolina know that we've finally finished working on it.

Of course, what I see in real life is that the new simplified interface paradigm actually benefits most average users. And I'm sure that there's been a ton of research and market testing to prove it's only us technical geeks that find it annoying. In fact, I probably wouldn't have been quite so prompted to write this rambling diatribe had it not been for perusing the management UI of my Virgin cable modem to see if there was an update available (more on that next week).

As I was exploring I found the firewall settings page, and decided to check the configuration. Even when you choose "Advanced" mode, all you get is a drop-down list with three options: "Low", "Medium", and "High". And a pop-up help tip that says just "This will set how aggressive your firewall protection is". There's no indication of whether the setting covers inbound connections, outbound connections, or both, and what ports or protocols it affects.

The default aggression setting is "Low" and I wasn't sure if it would snarl at me and take a bite out of my leg if I chose "High", but I tried it anyway. Which resulted in nothing being able to connect to anything on the ‘Net. And on "Medium", everything seemed able to connect to everything (the same as on "Low"). In the end I left it set to "Low" – I've done a penetration test to prove all inbound ports are closed, and I have a configured firewall behind it in the load-balancing router, so I guess it's not really that important.

Mind you, I came across an interesting view on the use of "we" recently when talking on the phone to some sales guy. He said that you can tell the size of a company from whether people say "we" or "I". If it's a large organization, especially one with hundreds or even thousands of employees, the person talking to you will say "I" and "me", as in "send me some details of your interesting new product". If it's a tiny company or a one-man band, the person will say "we" and "us", as in "send us a free sample of your exciting new product" (i.e. no corporate gift policies).

But that's enough rambling from us for this week – we'll be working on it and writing again soon...