It's so frustrating when people design systems but seemingly have no idea how their designs affect the people who have to use the systems. I'm a retired academic and associate dean. Years ago, my university began to use the educational platform Blackboard, and they allowed users to create an account using any email address. After a couple of years, about two weeks before the fall semester began, IT decided to require users to have a university email account. I had to call an emergency meeting with each of the associate deans, IT and the Provost to explain that graduate students in the business school (which had the majority of part-time graduate students) didn't have a university email account because IT required them to come to campus, during the day, and apply for one. IT was surprised and had no idea why this was a problem. Undergraduate emails were automatically generated for 1st year and transfer students. After an hour or so, we all agreed that a university email account would be generated for each graduate student when they registered for a course for the first time. I ran into this issue numerous times over the years because the people designing the systems never use the systems so they're unaware of the problems.
It's so frustrating when people design systems but seemingly have no idea how their designs affect the people who have to use the systems. I'm a retired academic and associate dean. Years ago, my university began to use the educational platform Blackboard, and they allowed users to create an account using any email address. After a couple of years, about two weeks before the fall semester began, IT decided to require users to have a university email account. I had to call an emergency meeting with each of the associate deans, IT and the Provost to explain that graduate students in the business school (which had the majority of part-time graduate students) didn't have a university email account because IT required them to come to campus, during the day, and apply for one. IT was surprised and had no idea why this was a problem. Undergraduate emails were automatically generated for 1st year and transfer students. After an hour or so, we all agreed that a university email account would be generated for each graduate student when they registered for a course for the first time. I ran into this issue numerous times over the years because the people designing the systems never use the systems so they're unaware of the problems.