From 1pm to 6pm I showed about 100 students how to use the new system I wrote for Rutgers, in batches of 16. It's been a long time since I talked 5 hours non-stop. Tomorrow I have about 40 more students to show the system to. From Monday about 200 people will regularly use the system and over 1000 documents will be created. From the reactions in the training room today, I am certain the last two months that I slogged @ work making this system easy/simple/efficient/fast were worth it. Due to confidentiality reasons, I can't talk anything specific about the system, except that 200 people will use it to document the residence life of over 8000 students who live in Rutgers Housing. However I can definitely say with confidence that EVERYBODY loved it - even people who hate computers, simply cuz it makes their lives so much more easy.

So now 5 of my systems running in Rutgers, making over a 1000 people's lives easier and simpler. That's a good feeling. People ask me what I want to do when I'm done with college (6-7 years from now). I say I simply want to add a lot more zeros at the end of it - from 1000 to 10,000,000 or who knows even more. Systems - the best ones are easy, simple, and efficient for the users, and complex but evolving for the designer. The worst systems of course are those that take days and even months for the users to adapt to, and are static and bulky. Maybe someday I'll write a book about it. I have a LOT more to learn.

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