Think Like a User

Think Like a User

User: "I forgot my ID to log into the network." Support pilot fish: No problem, sir -- it's just your name. User: "How do you mean?" Fish: Your ID is your first initial plus your last name, up to a maximum of eight characters. User: "But how did I spell it?"

Honest!

Sales guy wants IT manager pilot fish to remove a word from his spell-check dictionary. What word? Lie. "When I realized he was serious, I asked what was wrong with that word," fish says. "He said he meant to type the word like, but he inadvertently dropped the 'k' and the spell checker didn't warn him. So if we took lie out of the dictionary, this wouldn't happen again!"

The Reason Why

This laser printer suffers lots of paper jams and appears to be in pretty rough shape, so it's scheduled for replacement. "Of course, before the replacement was ready, we were called, once again, to fix a paper jam," says pilot fish on the scene. "This time we must have asked the correct troubleshooting question, because the user's response was, 'No matter how hard I hit it, it still won't work.' "

Right Idea, Wrong Part

User gets a new flat-screen monitor, and his old CRT is being handed down for use with another machine. But he's not happy. "As the tech was taking the monitor to its new home, the user insisted that the monitor be 'reformatted,' " says a pilot fish watching it all. "He was concerned that people using the monitor would be able to see what had been on his screen."

Line Dance

Remote user is having trouble with a spreadsheet program. I can't get to the data in one field because there's a picture of little people holding hands, she tells support pilot fish. Little people holding hands? "I kept trying to find out what she was looking at," fish says. "I finally realized her cell had too much data in it and was filled with asterisks in a row that looked like stick people to her -- all holding hands."

Not to Milspec

Pilot fish has worked at small businesses for years, until he's hired as a sysadmin at the Pentagon. "Not long after I was hired, a co-worker and I were working on a knotty problem getting a switch configured," says fish. "After a long struggle, he finally got it solved. I cheered and said, 'Woo-hoo, my man! You are the bomb!' He looked at me and said that now that I was employed in the Pentagon, I might want to be a little more careful about what kind of slang I used."

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