Product Management

Quarter of public cannot spot phishing emails

According to a report in Computing.

How is this relevant to designers and implementors of e-sourcing software?

In contrast to a primarily internal-focussed system like accounts payable processing, successful e-sourcing is all about putting buyers in touch with new suppliers. Suppliers represent the whole spectrum of technical savvy. If 25% of the population has trouble identifying phishing emails then it follows that a significant proportion of the potential supply base, globally, will find e-sourcing systems too complex and unintuitive.

The moral is clear: make your software simpler and clearer. Always keep making your software simpler and clearer. 

It is very easy for software designers (who live and breathe software) to massively misunderstand the comparative lack of technical savvy of the target audience for their software. And also equally easy for buyers of software systems (who are themselves usually pretty tech-friendly) to massively misunderstand the appetite within their organisation for learning a new IT system.

 As a slight tangent: This is one reason why I believe that anthropology has a lot to offer software development: after all, anthropology studies how people really behave in real life. [Disclosure: My degree is in anthropology rather than any IT-related (or purchasing-related, or business-related) subject]

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.