So if you want to get it to work, you ask the end-user what would be needed in a 'price-is-no-limit' dream solution - but you do NOT let the end user cloud the issue by considering the cost. Then you see whether there's an appropriate COTS application available which could be ruggedised and might then satisfy the end-user when suitably modified. Then you employ an expert end-user to consult with the software team and aircraft designer so that you end up developing the COTS solution to a form which your consultant's expertise indicates will satisfy the end-user. You don't merely ask 'what' the end-user wants, you ask him 'how' he wants it to be done!
What you most certainly don't do is just to ask a remote-from-the-coal-face-it-won't-happen-in-my-tour Ministry desk-sucking blotter-jotter to attempt to specify the need and then to let a bunch of software nerds lose on it to produce something which, whilst ostensibly meeting the so-called spec on paper, is so user-unfriendly that you spend years trying to get the solution modified to the form the end-user would have wanted if you'd bothered to ask him in the first place!
An example? A famous fighter-bomber was designed with a clever opening canopy-cum-extending step because the nose was too far off the ground to use conventional kick-in steps. But the RAF used little stepladders instead - because when kitted out with full flying kit it wasn't possible for a pilot to climb up the step. "Bug.ger", said the designer, "if we'd known that we wouldn't have bothered with the step at all and that would have saved us lots of money and weight!".
Last edited by BEagle; 21st May 2002 at 21:31.