In last week’s post, I defined humane software and asked for feedback. As a reminder, the definition was: an ongoing endeavor that looks beyond the simple goals of the system at any other results and seeks to expand benefits and reduce harms.

One reader wrote in with some profound thoughts on what humane software is. He said that humane software is empathetic and takes into account the ...

In this blog/mailing list, I have been writing about "humane software," particularly as it relates to medicine. Still, I have never stopped to acknowledge it directly or define what it means. So today, I will address that, head-on, by defining humane software. To increase the level of difficulty, or really to avoid a pet peeve, I'm going to try to avoid defining in terms of what it is not. ...

We had a great meeting today with a group of doctors and nurses who are using our scheduling system. This was the first time we had met with them since they started using it, and you won’t believe me when I tell you all of the nice things they had to say. But I am going to tell you two things because they relate to good software overall.

1. One of the doctors turned to me towards the end ...

I was listening to this old NPR interview of one of my business heroes Yvon Chouinard The focus of the interview is on how Patagonia wants you to buy less, so they create a high quality lifetime product with replaceable parts. You don’t need to continue to buy from them year after year. Because of the high quality and ...

Long ago, you may not even remember the 1980s, when you bought a computer, you had to buy all of your components from the same brand. If your computer had a really fast processor but that company did a really bad job of making keyboards, you were stuck with it, at least for a little while. And maybe that wasn’t so bad, your computer was as fast as you wanted it to be and if you had to ...