Revisiting the “Software Acceptance Triangle,” Part 1

Back in Nov 2005, I posted about key needs of a ChMS.  At that time, I used the terms Trusted, Used, and Easy. 

Well, "Easy" wasn't the right word.  A lot of products miss the "easy" description, but are still very usable.  Products need to be appropriate to what's expected.  What's a better word?  After tinkering with intuitive, simple, understandable, discoverable, natural, and probably other words, Stephen Wareham through out the word "familiar" on ChMS discuss.  I'm still not sure that's a perfect word, but I like it.  However, I'm going to use "friendly" until something else comes along.  If you like "familiar" better, I'm find with that!

So, now the three terms are 1) Friendly, 2) Trusted, and 3) Used.  I don't know how many times I've drawn a triangle on a white-board explaining the relationship of these three, and started calling it the "Iron Triangle."  Well... other people have used that term, so once again, I needed something else.  For now, I'm going with the "software acceptance triangle."  Yeah...probably not going to win any marketing awards for that name!  (I'm open for suggestions)

The concept of this triangle remains the same: if you don't have all three sides, you will probably have an acceptance problem (at best), or possibly a complete failure of adoption.

Now, the question: does one side need to come first?  And, more to think about, is software acceptance a triangle, or are there more than three parts?

Comments

[Jeremy Hoff]

I wonder of the importance of "complete" with software? I tend to want to find products that are simple and useful, however when there are 50-100 users there is always a feature missing.

Feature-creep is bad, IMHO. But lacking features can put a dent in that triangle, I think!