Today I have an shocking discovery on a configuration of an initial value setting for OTM (Oracle Transportation Management) status. The initial value is set as Error! It is really amazing to think how this could be an initial value. Of course, valuable hours are wasted to debug an initial value which is actually correct by its initial“error state”.
Happy Path Design Approach
The state diagram is fundamental of engineering and software lifecycle if you are familiar. There should never be an initial value as error or exception. One must alway think of happy path and start with a perfect flow. Starting with an erroneous state gives confusion to users and SME (Subject Matter Expert), as we do not know what is wrong when nothing have started. Be Optimistic and always go for Happy Path Design Approach.
Design by Norms, Think like a Traffic Light
The best solution design is design by Norms and thinking like a Traffic Light. Green is a Go, Red is Stop and Yellow is proceed with caution. Thinking like traffic light greatly reduce learning curve from users and have high system adoption rate. It is one of the best design where users can easily learn with no user manual or training. Do not break the norms and do fanciful solution. You will end up confusing and these type of solution always get discarded due to its complexity.
Danny Kwok 