I've been back to working at the software factory for the past few weeks making a slide presentation for people who aren't software developers. You know, the real people that really use software and would rather not know anymore than they have to about it.
This isn't easy for someone who works alone in his head which is where most of the real technical work is done. I need some real people that really use the software but they don't exist yet. The next best thing is to put some placeholders on the slides to represent real people so I do that with star people. I use Photoshop to make these little graphical creatures. Of course star people aren't real people but they do things on the slides that are the same things that real people do in their offices.
I learned about star people from a guy I was working with back in the dot.com heyday. I was scrawling a diagram on a white board when he asked me where the people fit into my diagram.
"Just draw a star where the people should be," he told me and he was right.
People do need to have their places around software and software is worthless without people, although Twitter and Facebook would like you to believe the opposite is true too. Some parts of software are just too geeky to talk about, but there are some parts of software that work together with people such as web pages and buttons to click on.
So using the lesson from that dot.com job, I started out putting just one star person on a slide but he wasn't very flexible so I made a couple of other star people in different poses. Then they started to take over the whole show. "Just what do you think I'm supposed to be doing here, Roger," one of the most excited looking star people asked me.
Now I know that they don't have conversations with me because if I think they do then I might be going over the edge. However, putting the question of my sanity aside for a moment, if star people are going to be the representatives of real people using this software they would get their message across better if they did talk.
"I think you're supposed to introduce the image you're standing on," I answer.
"I'll try that," he said. "Roger, I'd like you to meet Mr. Diagram. Diagram, this is Roger, the guy who is under the delusion that he created all of this, but don't listen to him."
"No, no," I object. "That really isn't a diagram. That's just an iconic image for the whole subject. Don't try to explain it. It's just a pretty box on the screen. It doesn't mean anything important."
"Well maybe that's the way it looks to you, Roger, but those people in the audience that are watching me want it to be a real diagram," the star person tells me.
Now this is getting absurd, I think to myself, but then if I wanted a representative for the people in the audience I guess I've got to let him have his say.
"Not only do you dismiss this diagram as just graphical eye candy when it's not, another star person really gets into the details of this diagram on slide 19," this star person tells me.
"That isn't a different star person on slide 19, it's you. It's a copy. You know. I selected you, then hit the copy button and moved to slide 19 and hit the paste button," I explained to him.
"Again, Roger, that may be how she appears to you but let me assure you that she isn't just a copy."
"She?" I ask. I'm starting to wonder if the star people have a water cooler to hang out around that I'm not aware of. And even if they do, how could they possibly have gender and if they do have gender what other kind of mischief can they get into when they're supposed to be standing around by themselves on their own slides.
"Yes, she, Roger. Didn't you know that? If she is just a copy of me, then you're getting a little more addle-brained than I thought," he told me. "You can tell by the way she wiggles her star points," he points out.
No, these aren't animated graphics. No one is wiggling her star points and I just don't know what he's talking about. I move the slide previewer over to slide 19 and indeed there is something slightly seductive about her points.
Oh no. Now I'm calling the star person on slide 19 a 'she'. This human personification of graphical images is all fine for getting the people in the audience to feel personally connected to the software but this is on the verge of getting completely off the point.
"Her points are the point," I hear a muffled voice say. "Move back to slide 1 and stop leering and listen to me." Now whatever these star people are doing when I'm not watching has become their own little private affair. I hope they're not using office hours to get to know each other better. I move back to slide 1 and the muffled voice gets clearer.
"Now this intro graphic has to be a graphic, not a complicated diagram," the first star person says. "I expect that to be fixed in the morning," he goes on with the voice of a hard-nosed boss.
"And I would redraw you with your hands on your hips and tapping your toe," I say with a smartypants voice, but it didn't work.
"No, you won't," he says. "Star people are nice and social, unlike some hide-in-the-closet software developers with no social skills."
"Oh, get a life," I snap back at him.
"I do have a life," he says with a fake sweetness. "What about you?"
