Automating Tasks with Software

Right now I am developing a piece of software that will automate some important data collection for the future of Redshift Wireless. It is a task that I have done before, and a task that I will need to do a LOT more times. The problem is that the first time I did this data collection, I needed to record about 250 data points, and this took the best part of a day or so. Truth be told, it was probably closer to two days. Since I will need to perform this task with every piece of equipment that I interface with, I quickly worked out that this type of effort was not sustainable.

So, there comes the software to automate the data collection. Part of the problem with the first time I did this task was that I needed to put a heap of thought into each data point I collected. This, I decided, was too much effort. This time, I would collect the data, and only attempt to understand it enough to recognize that the data was valid. Also, my processes in the past involved a piece of paper and a pen. This time I would have some software to record everything for me. Which comes to the point of the post.

The process requires me to record sequences of information in a row. I had been planning to be smart about this, and have the software automatically tell me what the next item was that I needed to record. But what I found was that I was getting the occasional error in the data collection, and would need to re-record the sequence, which was going to be a pain. And this was even before I had actually tried to automate the process.

Then in writing the software application I started using the mouse in one had, and controller in the other hand, specifying the data collection point with the mouse, followed by using the controller. I was only ever intending to use this for testing whilst developing the software. But you know what? I found that this was just as fast as a fully automated version, but was far more flexible. I could go back one step in the sequence without a complex user interface. Things suddenly became fairly simple.

There is a quote suggesting that designers should make things simple, but not too simple. Once again, this seems to be good advice. As for the software, well, it seems to work fairly well. More work is done, and it may not ever get released into the wild, but you will soon see the results of the data that it collects.