Exceptions and rules

This is actually a much more serious issue than many think. I've seen estimates that over 75% of the time spent by knowledge workers is spent dealing with exceptions to business process rules. The psychological impediment you point to is amplified by the bureaucratic inertia of most business organizations. We like to think that bureaucracy is something that affects government only, but it is a universal characteristic of any organization. Add to that the fact that bureacracy lives and breathes in the rules of information technology and the relevance of it to experience design practice seems obvious.

This may be related to how hard it is for people to change their perceptions of themselves. For example, a person who thinks he hates Chinese food (or clowns or New York City or whatever) will find it easy to experience exceptions ("I usually hate Chinese food, but that meal was really good") but very difficult to reappraise his own taste ("I thought I didn't like clowns, but since I found that funny, maybe I do.")

I've had innumerable customer experiences where a company was willing to lose me as a customer just because they had a rule that caused problems, and there was no means to negotiate an exception.

If there is a group that believes that "there is always an exception to the rule", then I would postulate that there is also a group the says "rules are made to be broken". It's when the rules take on a life of their own, rather than being a guide and providing direction, that leads to such abysmal situations as that described by Darrell.

I am always surprised to see how many books, articles, … exist on ergonomics with recipes on what not to do and what to do. However, you can only find very little information on how to do it! It reminds me of the Apple advertisement for the launch of the first Macintosh. In this commercial, people are paralyzed by the standard words they have to listen to. Have a nice week. Marc