THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700


September 24, 2000

04 00067 61 00092401


Eric Armstrong
eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com

Subject:   Usability Learning Curve, 000825

Dear Eric,

Saving time and annoyance by reducing clicks is important, as you set out in your letter today. It cost $100K last year when NSF refused to click to discover SDS is not theory, but a reality. So it is a big issue right now, but will likely recede as more people get faster Internet access, and gain familiarity with using Knowledge Space. Experience shows that making this front end investment to use Knowledge Space saves a lot of time correcting mistakes from handling daily working information by conventional means. Doug explains in a 1992 paper that this is a big part of adding intelligence to management, see the review on March 27.

Action items are available from a link in the letter to you on September 21. On September 22, Jack Park, also, concurred a meeting on action items would be helpful, so I will propose this to Eugene and Doug.

Now that we have worked through the link issue (keeping in mind it will likely come up again), did you intend to comment on Peter Drucker's contribution to advancing KM, which was the original subject on August 9 that got sidetracked to discuss links.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY



Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net