Investing in interface

Have you ever wondered why everyone - grandmas, kids, CEOs - can figure out how to use Amazon, eBay, Google but the otherwise-intelligent staff of nonprofit organizations often need extensive support from the companies or associations that provide them with grants management, CRM, web-conferencing and other software?

I'm at the WINGS conference in Bangkok and attended a session on IT where several of the support organizations discussed their desire to provide software to their members but were daunted by the costs of maintaining tech staff to support those members. Even as they saw a potential membership benefit and revenue source, they were (rightly) worried about the costs of supporting the service.

As the session leader noted, "its because the commercial properties invested in interface once, and don't have to provide support afterwards." Amazon et al depend on their FAQs and online databases to answer your questions. Actually, they depend on their interface being useful enough that you don't have any questions. And it tends to work.

The nonprofit/philanthropic sector doesn't have the resources to spend on ongoing support. We need better design and ASP models (which allow the software providers to fix it once for everybody) so we can move beyond "dealing with tech support" and get back to changing the world. Fondazione Cariplo in Milan has built such a system for its grantees - this is the model the rest of us should be looking at.