Take it Easy

In the bus ride in this morning. A person exiting the bus said this common formality to the bus driver , "take it easy." He responded normally and said, "you take care now." I never really though about the saying "take it easy" until now. I always felt it was a salutaion you can say sometimes, but today I realize it has a lot to do about Usability.

Technology needs a "TAKE it easy" approach. To many times we give technology like medicine. You asked for it, you need it, it taste horrible, but you need to take it to do your job. Yes we try to camouflage the flavor it with bubble gum and other things. But if you want it to help, you have to take it as it is given to you.

If we had a "Take it easy" approach to technology we would focus on making a technology simple, easy to adopt, and easy to grow with our needs. What makes this hard is that this is competing against legacy needs, and business process developed by lack of "easy" technology.

So I say to you "TAKE it easy." I will now have it in my salutation in every email. Technology, should only be taken easy. If it doesn't, then we need to push for a better version. By doing this we make technology more usable; the more usable it is, we accomplish our goals faster with better results.

...oh yeah. I strongly believe that the less stressful it is, the better we can do our job and advance our goals.

Usability Testing

Quote

"To do a common thing, uncommonly well, brings success." -- Henry John Heinz

Tag Cloud

When used with a purpose, I like tag clouds. It is a powerful visualization of words used to communicate a message. I went to www.wordle.net and created a tag cloud of this blog:



This is a great tool. Creating this tag cloud hits several major principals of usability. It is effective, efficient, and with a quick user satisfaction ( just look at it to immediately understand it.)

Sustainability

I don't have to tell you that technology changes fast:




So I believe a way to help us keep up with how fast technology changes is by adding the objective of Sustainability to Usability.

• Sustainability: change management

I don't want to ask for directions!

I was fortunate today to have a chance to talk to one of our new students at ASU. While waiting for the Flash bus (a bus used by most ASU student to get from lot 59 to around campus), she asked, "How do you know where the stops are and communicate to the driver were you need to get off?" I can see how a question like this by a college student could trouble many. But it made me think, was it about her, or was it was it the scenario show was put in. One expectation we have entrenched in today's generation is that if you have a question, it is your responsibility at ask.

"Their are no stupid questions," we say.

To support this, we need to be clear on how one will learn a task. Yes she would have learned what to do and be ok by just riding the bus for a few seconds. So in her case she would have learned by experience. But assuming to do the same thing with software can be deadly. People need to know if its best for a person to learn by reading instructions, or is it easier to understand by intuition and experience. Making people feel at ease will allow people to focus faster on getting the results they want.

Men have been attacked on this for years:

"Read the instructions", "ask for directions!" they say.

I believe most men are working from two facts:

1. The balance between, "You don't need to read the instructions if it is easy enough," (and pride).... "I am smart enough to figure this out myself."
2. I have more control of what I am doing and gain better experience than to follow someone's opinion.
   

We do learn everything by two things: By reading the instructions, or by experience. To better communicate a product's usability, we need to direct a customers expectations on the best way to engage a product. This can be the difference between creating a fan, and a raving fan.

Today's definition.

I found that my definition of usability scope gets more defined each day. Today, this is my scope of usability. The application of it, is another story.

1. A clear defined path from newbie to result.
2. Use of intuition to foster use.
3. Clear communication of default.
   
4. Clarity to
   
1. customize an application to ones needs
2. see the line between what the app has and needs for future development
3. what is the best way to influence development. (Basically, to be heard.)
   

Changing of the tag line

"If it's not usable, it is inexcusable."

...has been this blog's tag line now for a while. But it has been my experience so far that many people use it to put usability in a box. Humans tend to do that with information to handle stimulus. But in this case, I believe a change is necessary to keep the focus not on what usability should be, but what it can do. So here is my new tag line:

"Bringing information into our world, on our terms."

I got the inspiration after hearing the last words said on TED Talks David Merrill demos Siftables presentation.

To truly understand usability, it needs to be seen as ubiquitous.

Six Sense blurs the line between people and technology

Changing the Rules during the game

Google has been horrible about this. It is their two-sided sword. They are great with innovation, but they change usability of their software so often that they leave user's frustrated.

Example.

Today, a friend came by my cube and asked me to help her troubleshoot why she couldn't share a Google spreadsheet like she always has done. We found out two things with her use case:

1. A new message pops-up when a person trys to share a Google doc with someone. It says that the user does not have a Google account. "But we are a partner, shouldn't my work colleges have one? If they don't, why not have the system send a message saying to the recipient, "A Google doc has been shared with you.You will need to create a Google account to see the document." The person sharing the doc is Google's prime viral customer. If anyone should receive this message it should be the user that wants to see the doc.
   
2. When we try to share the spreadsheet with more than one person, a "captacha" screen now shows that says, "Type in what you see in the image." Funny. The graphic of the image is missing and doesn't show up. I bet they added this feature for security purposes. People forget too fast that when security is added, the usability must remain as constant as possible.
   

I have a tough time convincing people to use Google docs. I believe stuff like this is the reason why. Right now, no one knows if it is really a WYSIWYG environment, and no one knows if you can do the same functionality tomorrow as you do today.

Scope of Usability

1. To reduce the complicated to the simple.
2. Manage expectations.
   
3. Adding & Removing features without drama.
4. Making an app default as legitimate.
5. Making sure feedback is heard, and result of it clearly seen.
   
6. Clarifying and communicating the "Concept of One" path through an app to successful resolution.
   
7. Timing
8. Finding sweet spots.
9. Understanding "Popularity" and managing trends.
10. Closing loops.
11. Understanding user routines for efficiency and identifying sustainable results.
12. Identifying: use to assist growth path of product.
13. Abreast of the current Zeitgeist of technology to assist on understanding the scope of users expectations.
14. To advocate Accessibility, Sustainability, and User Experience as part of development.
15. To always refocus needs back to new users.
16. To reduce documentation, Training, and Support needs.
17. To create raving fans.

Laziness

Why is usability important? Why don't people just use the "Command line" to do a task? It's just laziness I tell you.

I hear this argument all the time. One thing I do agree with is that laziness is the problem. But it is not of the user, it is from a developer making the interaction of a app. Yes.....making a complicated process simple is not easy. Look at the computer you are using to read this article. Windows, Mac OS, Linux..... these are all operating systems that are big, bulky, and to some unnecessary to use a computer. Obviously the sheer numbers of GUI users reveal the necessity. But many developers hate, shun, and try to avoid them.

I'm sorry, I'm guilty.

I do not want to translate what I want into another language when I want something. You know they call it a language for a reason. How do you say, "Where is the bathroom?" in Italian.

What "User Experience" means to me

"User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.

Eggs and Heat

I was cooking eggs this morning, but I was having problems as usual. Every time I try to make eggs I end up burning a lot of it. I even tried cooking it at a low temp. But I get impatient, turn-up the heat, and end up with 1/3 of my eggs sticking to the bottom on a non-stick pan. For years I was wondering what I was doing wrong. I even gave up and just let my wife cook the eggs. But today I realized the level of heat dictates my user experience.

When I had the heat too high, I believe I had to watch it all the time and stir it. I ended up with a result of being stressed, frustrated, and much of my eggs sticking to a bottom of a non-stick pan.

But if I cooked it too low, I got an equally worst result. Inpatients takes over, my stomach ask, "why is it taking so long?" I then turn-up the heat. I feel better for a moment, but it gets a bad result fast and adds a unwanted instability. The amount of Heat in cooking the eggs dictates my usability of eating eggs, and my user experience in making them.

Just as heat can affect a cooking experience. The level of stress around a technology enhancement can have a drastic affect on its use.

Heat:

• No tracking of progress of work. (Too little heat.)
  
• "Too many cooks in the kitchen." (Too much heat.)
  
• Not lead by business processes. (Changing heat.)
  
• Not communicating the impact of one's feedback. (Not knowing when to take it off the stove.)
  

Many times having too much heat cannot be controlled. That is an option when cooking, but many times it isn't a solution with technology. One way to help control this heat is by usability.

Two main development usability areas to help control heat:

The default setting:

1. Simplistic and clear on how one will quickly reach a result.
2. No apparent need for customization, but options are clear and simple to make the app your own.
   
3. Focus placed on the "path most taken" to success.
   

The burn-in stage:

1. Every adoption of an enhancement must be vetted, and knowledge gained added to lessons learned(history).
   
2. One enhancement will always generate request for others. This is the time to start a transparent list of request. Maintenance of this will be the version control of the app.

Paradigm Shift: Usability vs. User Experience

I have to say, reading and taking in the last post has been tremendous on how one looks at usability. It makes this whole process appear a lot more clear. To facilitate and understand the difference between Usability vs. User experience, I started this comparison.

Cross over:

• Timing
  
• value
• Simplicity
• Consistency
• Marketing
• Communication
• Excellence, Access, Impact
  
• Prune Concentrate
• amazon.com-ification
• Accessibility
• Feedback
  
• Expectations
• user centered design
• Raving Fans
  

Usability: sparked by Customer Care

• Ubiquitous computing
• Routine
• Stability
• Sustainability
• Invisibility
• Function to form
  
• Core vs. Context
• The digital divide
  
• Adoption
  
• Statistics of use
• History and revisions
  
• Change control
• Effort Reporting
  
• Navigation, Tagging, and Taxonomy
• Annual events
  
• Enterprise development

User-Experience: sparked by Development

• Complexity control
• Beta Testing and focus groups
• Fighting against assumptions
• Form to function
  
• Design
• Trends
• Flair
• CSS
• Annoucements
  
• 1:1 development

I will come back to this blog often to add more to the list.What would you add?

Article: The Battle Between Usability vs. User Experience

I found this article today. It really adds focus to usability. It highlights the difference and why they need to be different, and the strength of both:

http://www.baekdal.com/articles/Usability/usabilty-vs-user-experience-battle/

The Battle Between Usability and User-Experience

The main reasons why it is so hard to create usable products is that there is a conflict between a high-usability level and great user-experience. You might think this as strange, but there is a important difference between the two.

Usability

Usability is about the "ability to use" something. The aim for a usable product is to make it easy to use.

A product has a high level of usability when:

• It requires less mental effort to use
• the frequency of mistakes using it is less, or when the mistakes are less disastrous
• it is more powerful, where "more powerful" means that it can be used to do more or do it faster
• it is more learnable, that is, when a person can figure it out quicker

(source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Making usable products is thus fairly simple. You have clear metrics you need to achieve, and you can analyze how to get a good result.

User-Experience

User-experience is not like usability - it is about feelings. The aim here is to create happiness. You want people to feel happy before, during and after they have used your product. To do that you need to take all kinds of things into consideration. Things like:

• Environment
• Colors moods
• Smell
• Touch
• Audio feedback
• Visual feedback
• Trust
• Branding
• Show-off effect
• Usefulness
• Practicality
• Coexistence
• Emotional effect
• Etc...

This is much much much harder to achieve. None of these things can be accurately analyzed. It is a touchy feeling kind of thing.

Why, for instance, does a Audi S6 give you a much better user-experience than a Ford Focus? I mean, in terms of usability they are pretty much the same.

The difference illustrated

Take roads. A Usable road is one that is wide and straight (less mental effort), with no oncoming traffic (less mistakes, less mental effort). One that enables you to get from A too B as fast as possible (more powerful) and one that has a consistent and clear use of signs (high learnability).

In short the most usable road is a freeway. But, a freeway is also directly boring in terms of user-experience.

A road with a high level of user-experience is completely different. It is a twisting mountain road (visual). Now you got great scenery (visual, emotional), the smell of nature (smell), the excitement from the climb (and the sheer cliff only feet away). You got little friendly signs put out by the local, who sells fruits along your way (show-off effect). Every city is slightly different (branding, emotional, environment). You feel happy when you see the locals wave when you pass by, and you stop let a sheep pass (emotional, trust, coexistence).

But a mountain road is far from a usable road. It is much harder to drive on, it is difficult to learn, you can't go as fast and the risk of making a mistake (taking a wrong turn or cashing into a sheep) is much greater. But, a mountain road will give you a much better user-experience than any freeway could ever do.

Creating synergy

The reason why we have so few great products is because of this difference. Most developers try to find the right balance between high usability and high user-experience. A bit like trying to turn a mountain road into a freeway. It simply does not work. You end up with mediocrity.

Instead you need to create a synergy. A Synergy is when 2 + 2 = 37.

This is not easy. It requires a bit of luck, a great deal of intuition (female intuition is helpful), a great sense of humble pride, and something called "usable happiness (*)".

Flickr, The Sims, Apple iPod, Ta-Da list, MySpace, Google Picasa, Virtual Earth, Audi S6, Mac Mini, any Pixar movie, and iRobot Roomba are all great examples.

* Usable happiness: is a product that is simple to use, and makes you smile every time you use it.

Make it easy to be happy

It is far from easy to create a great product on demand, but it is possible.

First of all, do not focus on usability or user-experience. Do not directly try to achieve to create synergies. Do not try to create a great product. None of these things will get you any closer.

Focus on making it easy to be happy, and usability, user-experience and greatness will come all by itself.

Instead of making a product management web application, make it easy to finish great projects. Instead of making usable instant messaging, make it easy to have interesting conversations. Instead of making a powerful web writer, make it easy to write exciting stories.

The result is that you use usability to take away all the things that distracts you from happiness, and you use the elements of user-experience to empower what people can do.

... and now you got a great product.

See Also

• Usability Analyzer (Baekdal.com, June 2006)
• Definition of User Experience Revisited, (justaddwater.dk, June 2006)

One more quote....

"Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple." -- C.W. Ceram

Researcher terms mobile usability an "oxymoron"

Checkout this article on mobile phones. Usability is finally starting to get noticed:

• http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/43309/145/
  

Versioning

These days you cannot open a computer app without seeing signs like this for an upgrade. What is this all about.
The frequently you see this upgrade notices is a sign of usability. It is a good thing. The cause is usally by one of these reasons:

• A problem was found in a current feature.
• A new feature has been added to improve functionality.
• A security problem was needed to be fixed.

All these reasons are about the the usability of the app. The security problem is addressing a "usability" loophole found by use of the app. Hakers may have found a way to take advantage of new or found usable capability.

Seeing through the eyes of a child

"But Daddy, I don't want to park here for 3 hours." - my 4 year old son.

We have signs everywhere to help on usability. But many times we make assumptions within those signs. This was a very legitimate question from my son. Because the sign is based on the assumption that you are aware that you do not have to park for 3 hours, it is up to 3 hours. We make assumptions everyday. This is a major part of us taking in the information we get day to day.

But to assume people can figure it out, or to throw stuff out their as a "right to passage" is unnecessary. To increase communication, simplicity, and adoption we need to remove assumptions from what we do. The worst of all is correlating your assumptions to the intelligence of a user. Doing this in technology is sadly seen way to much.