False Positives & Trust

What are false positives? Does you spam filter ever put a email that you wanted in your junk mail folder? When you spam filter does this, it is called a false positive. A program that generates false positives will cause a user to loose trust in a product. It is a clear and present mistake that stays in the users mind and erodes the viability of an app from doing a particular job.

This action violates the "Holy Grail" of usability:

• the desire to recommend a product to a friend
• trust of a user to stay with a product, a brand, or a routine
• buy-in of a product
• the promise of consistency

False positives directly violate the trust of a product. Cindi Farmer, a good colleague and friend, said it perfectly on how to earn trust:

Trust really is gold.

Trust can never be taken lightly. It cannot be given, it must be earned. False positives is the fastest way to violate this trust.

Note

Q: Why did Microsoft Vista fail??

A: Because of poor usability.

Feedback

Just like in Alcohol anonymous the first step is to accept you have a problem. It is the same with usability. This is done by removing assumptions where ever possible. Your enhancements need to be guided by research and feedback. I have a strong sociology background so this may give a understanding why I lean towards this so much.

There are a lot a ways to get feedback. But I believe taking the simple approach and learn from things around us is always. I found Apple did something I really liked on the topic. Apple is not a premiere company on usability. I actually believe there ability to lead is hampered by elitism. But they do create good things from time-to-time. The feedback function on their new Safari beta app is a great example.

Immediate feedback is a good source of usability. Like surveys after a training, or clickers during a class. What Apple did was integrate this into a software app. They added this button in the top right of the beta app:

The button takes you to this window:

If you click on "More Options" you get this:

That is what I call usability in action.

1. Clear, simple, and nimble way to get an opinion.
2. Easy as picking up a pencil.
3. The taxonomy/structured content is the second option, not the first.

Like a bird...

Need Documentation....

I now believe the request for documentation is the first sign a system has bad usability. Documentation is what people go to first for a product that is not intuitive or easy to use. It is also the first response we give people. . .

"Did you follow the directions?" they say.

Putting lack of usability on the user is horrible and only makes people upset and frustrated.

....my working definition I found on the web

Usability is the idea that software or website features should be designed with the user in mind. Don't make blind assumptions about how your users will interact with your product. Inform your design decisions with data based on user testing of a variety of sorts.

The most important part of this idea, of course, is determining who your users are. Based on a number of types of information and research, you must try to come up with a user type, or possibly one primary and one secondary user type. From there, you create personas, sort of a character sketch of your user. This becomes the building block of your usability process - you keep these personas in mind when developing initial design ideas, and when recruiting the kind of people you want to test those designs.

The image of the quest.....

I took this photo with my phone on 5.18.2007:

Yes.....I've been thinking about this for a long time. Especially on how we can communicate efficiently. Some do it "in your face" as photo above, others want to use a more subliminal "nudge'' to advance values.

• But how much is too much?
• When is it too little and leaves people feeling lost?
• How do you find the most efficient method or circle of a target population?
• How do trends and stats play a part?
• How does diversity influence this?
• We have recently seen the explosion of social networks on the Internet. How does the human desire for community and affinity play a part? (Click here then on the '2009-4-5 Viral: Community' video podcast of a service I attended.)