The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
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Get People’s Attention
S O MANY of my students were incredibly smart. I knew they would
get into the working world and create terrific new software programs,
animation projects and entertainment devices. I also knew they had the
potential to frustrate millions of people in the process.
Those of us who are engineers and computer scientists don’t
always think about how to build things so they’re easy to use. A lot of us
are terrible at explaining complex tasks in simple ways. Ever read the
instruction booklet for a VCR? Then you’ve lived the frustration I’m
talking about.
That’s why I wanted to impress upon my students the
importance of thinking about the end users of their creations. How
could I make clear to them how important it was not to create
technology that is frustrating? I came up with a surefire attentiongetter.
When I taught a “user interface” class at the University of
Virginia, I’d bring in a working VCR on the first day. I would put it on
a desk in the front of the room. I would pull out a sledgehammer. I
would destroy the VCR.
Then I would say: “When we make something hard to use, people
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