CRUD vs Task Driven: Are You Losing User Intent?

What happens when everything in your system just becomes an update?

You need to cancel an order: change the status. You need to approve something: change the status. Some workflow completes: just change the status.

Everything becomes an update.

And it can feel great because it is simple, but you have lost one really important thing: intent.

You know what changed, but you do not really know why it changed. You can try to infer it, but you do not really understand what the user was trying to do and why they were trying to do it.

That is where things start to fall short.

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Are You Updating Data or Performing an Action?

Imagine a shipment with a pretty simple edit form. We can change the status, pieces, weight, dates, and so on.

But then the customer calls in and says they want to cancel the shipment.…