Daniel Hardy

The often forgoten user

Often in usability the focus is on the “lowest common denominator” which is to say the least experienced user.  This is because generally people only consider something usable if they (an unexperienced user) can pick it up and instantly be a power user.

The problem with this is that when looking at something complex like large scale system management the user is required to have some background knowledge on how the system works.  If you where to design the system for a user with no knowledge you will most likely be hampering the systems ability to complete its tasks. You may also make it more difficult for experienced users to access the functionality they desire.

On occasion a company will say “Minimize the novice user’s experience and maximize the experts experience” and by doing so find great success.  I would argue that a great example of this is Adobe’s Photoshop.  There are lots of products that are considerably easier to use yet Photoshop has become the gold standard of image processing software.  This standard is not only in the professional world but runs deep into the amateur/home-user world as well.  Most people who have any interest in digital image processing have a desire to own this application even if they have never done it before and may not find it easy to use.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe Photoshop is a difficult program to use but for a completely novice user it is bound to be intimidating and have a fairly steep learning curve.  But by choosing to focus on the advanced user Adobe has ensured that their product is the best one.

Searching for the Impossible Experience

There are two concepts that everyone in the usability field should learn early. First, some things by their very nature are not simple and straight forward and no matter what you do they will be difficult to understand. Second, you can never make all of the users happy all of the time.

The first concept is one that I continually struggle with as it begs the question of, “when is enough, enough?” For every product and designer this point is different. Sometimes you may have the resources to continue to refine it over and over. Other times you may need to make the decision to stop grinding the wheels and move forward with the application.

For my self I find that doing a complete design of something more than three or four times becomes counter productive. Typically somewhere in those first designs is the core of what the interface should be. From there it can be shaped into the best solution possible. But this shaping can only happen with a clear and detailed direction. Once that disappears all design work should cease. If the stake holders still have concerns they should provide a detailed direction for the project and refinement can then resume. If they cannot provide a detailed direction then the product should be reviewed by users (assuming time allows) or released to the public with the understanding that some fast fixes will need to follow.

While the second concept seems obvious it requires you to ask a few questions. The fist one that is often asked is, “is it better to make all of the people happy some of the time or some of the people happy all of the time?”  I would argue you cannot do either of these. The best you can hope for is to make most of the people happy most of the time.

The tricky part then becomes defining what “most” and “happy” means. I believe “most” is as close to 95% as economically possible. “Happy” is really a measure of contentedness with the product in question. Again the issue becomes relaying this information to stake holders who would like to see all customers happy all of the time.

Similar to the first concept, refinement work should cease when detailed direction stops flowing from the stakeholders, even if there are still members who feel the product isn’t “ready”.  This is because it is not productive to simply say something is wrong and not provide any explanation of why it is wrong or more importantly how to fix it.

Finally the hardest part about both of these concepts is that they feel like an admission of failure.  You have to stop work when you may feel like it could be better.   If you are anything like me this is a hard pill to swallow.

Building Expectations

One difficult aspect of overhauling an application is the loss of a preexisting mental model held by users.  This is to say that users have developed an idea of where items are located and how they generally look and act.   Often a major overhaul will cause these things to change a great deal.

Form the users perspective, one day they log out from an application they may love or hate and the next day the log in to a completely new application.  Sure the data may all be the same and the end goal of the application will probably remain the same but for the user this is effectively a completely new application they must now learn.

There are several ways that an organization can bridge this gap and make the transition a little smoother.  One way that I have recently seen and is quite simple, is just placing a notice on your screen announcing the upcoming changes.  This should link some final comps of the upcoming look and feel.  If you have a bit more time you can do what google did and offer the user both interfaces during a trial period.  This method allows the user to become familar with the new interface while having the ability to fall back on the trusted version should the need arise.  The danger with this is many users will never try the new version.

No matter what method you divise it is important to start building the expectation of change.  This will give the users a chance to prepare.  If done correctly it can also create a bit of buzz as users discuss what is to come.

Know your peers

A List Apart had a great article today about “who” is in the world of user experience design. The article and corresponding PDF are a worth while read for anyone in the industry.

Improving the user experience of usability

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the User Experience of Usability. Since then I have been consistently thinking about ways to improve upon usability’s user experience. As I stated in the previous post every organization is different so the methods to improve the user experience are going to be different.

I do believe there are somethings usability professionals can do as an individual to improve the experience of working with usability. The following list contains few ideas I have come up with and are only backed by my personal experiences.

Become and industry professional

Do not just stop with knowing the usability side of your industry but branch out to learning about the development and infrastructure sides as well. By doing so you create a deeper respect and understanding for what it takes to build those beautiful designs you created. It also can help build respect from the development/infrastructure group by allowing you to speak at their level regarding the various development/infrastructure problems.

Become an active user

Use as many applications as you can and more importantly use them regularly. Do not just use the product(s) you are assigned or even just the product(s) your organization creates. This will keep you up to speed on the problems arising in the industry and more specifically your genera of products. It will help you see problems before you are asked to find a solution and can give you an idea of features your company may desire.

Consistently seek new interactions

Always be searching for new innovative interactions and tools that facilitate the construction of said interactions. This will help you create a mental library of various solutions. Utilizing this library will allow you to be more responsive and shorten your design time. Any time you save means more time for other members of the project to complete their work. Building a library of tools can come in handy when overcoming the “We cannot build that because it is not possible.” argument. It also allows you to lead developers towards a tangible example of how you want the widget to function.

Use research to build your case

Remember that when you are an expert in a field that others probably do not share your knowledge. This lack of understanding causes the stakeholders to not follow why you created the design as you did. To over come this you may need to explain in detail and provide research backing your decisions. This consistent validation can be tiresome but it has been my experience that stakeholders will learn that your decisions are not made on a whim and start respecting your decisions.

Choose your battles wisely

This might be the most important thing to remember. It is extremely rare that usability is the primary concern of the stakeholders. In many situations the stakeholders’ concerns directly conflict with creating a strong user experience. Each conflict can create a rift between you and them, therefore it is important to choose only the points you feel can make or break the experience. This will minimize the rifts creating a stronger relationship between you and the rest of the team.

These are just a few ideas I have come up with to help increase the user experience of usability. Many of these ideas may seem like second nature or old news but I find complacency comes quickly and easily. Therefore taking a moment to reflect on them is always a good idea.

User Experience of Usability

What is the user experience of usability? This question has been rolling around in my feeble mind over the last several days and I am yet to find an adequate answer.Usability is like cellphone production. The primary stake holder is not always the end user. Cellphone manufacturersrarely sell their phones directly to the public. Instead they sell them to a service provider who in turn sells them to the public. Usability functions in the same way in that, those who usability must answer to are generally not the customer. More often it is the business group or development leadership for that application that ultimately prioritizes the value of usability.

This creates an interesting situation where the primary concern of a usability specialist (end user) is often not the primary concern for the person making the final call. The difficult piece is that users generally don’t understand all variables that go into building a product. If usability gets cut to meet a deadline or for simplicity in production the end user may get a lower quality product. In the end, the user doesn’t directly care if it was easier to build or makes it to market three days sooner. All that matters is that the product works as they desire.

With this in mind can the user experience of usability be improved there by improving the end product? I think the ultimate answer to this is – it depends on your companies protocol and priorities but there is always some room for improvement. Realistically usability must strive to find a harmony between what is right for the user and what is right for the business group. In my opinion this is the definition of a usability specialists. They become a mediator attempting to balance what is best for the business while safe guarding what is best for the end user. Unfortunately these two often conflict making the usability specialist the outsider when it comes time to deal with the stake holders.

What can be done to improve the user experience of usability? This is hard to say and perhaps a topic for another day.

The magic of a good update

As I have previously stated I have been using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn since it was in its Beta phases. I was hoping to give back to the community and notify them of any bugs I encountered. The beta period has now finished and as many people know, they released the official version on April 19th. Unfortunately I wasn’t much help to Ubuntu as I did not run into any problems save two small “glitches”.
The first small bug I had was with the GDM login screen. For some odd reason it would not size correctly. It would take my wide screen resolution of 1440×900 and attempt to cram it into a standard 4:3 format. This wasn’t a big problem as it only seemed to occur on the GDM login screen and once I logged in the system would display at the proper resolution.

The second problem was from one of the patches/updates they had released. The 2.20.14 kernel wouldn’t boot. The funny thing about this glitch was that by the time I had realized it I simply booted back into 2.20.13 and updated to 2.20.15. Since then it has been smooth sailing.

For the first bug I placed a bug in launchpad. I now realized that I messed this up by adding my problem to a bug from long ago that had since been closed out. The best part of the story is when I started up the machine today the problem had been fixed! It appears that my update from yesterday some how remedied the problem. It is also important to note that now when I boot I get the proper Nvidia splash screen as I am currently using the nvidia-glx graphics driver.

Just another great reason to use Ubuntu!

The final thought is I am still scheming was to give back to the open source community so be looking for my resolution in the very near future.

InnoTek’s Virtual Box

Recently, while digging, I stumbled across an article detailing the installation process of InnoTek’s VirtualBox. After seeing how easy it was to install this virtualization tool I figured I would give it a shot.This isn’t my first experience with virtualization software as I have recently found the joy of VMWare. With this in mind I was shocked at how simple VirtualBox was to install. In VMWare you are asked all sorts of questions that can be a tad on the intimidating side, although generally the default is the correct answer (how am I supposed to know that?). VirtualBox on the other hand was as easy as installing the pre-requisites (available in Ubuntu’s package manager) and running the .deb file that I downloaded from Innotek’s site.

After the install the application is almost ready to start, but before you can get to far into it you have to add yourself as a user to the newly created “vboxusers” group. The program does a great job of pointing this out and does so with out letting you move too deep. The downside of this methodology is that I am forced to log out for the changes to take affect. This isn’t the biggest pain as it isn’t a complete restart but none the less a minor inconvenience.

From here the application really gets points in my book, particularly when you consider the price tag of $0 (personal use only). It uses a clean simple interface that is full of context style help. This tactic was very refreshing from VMWare which doesn’t provide much inline help. It seemed like any question I had was quickly answered by simply mousing over the questionable item. Some where on the screen (this was on multiple screens) a text box would change and fill me in on what the item was for and what could/would happen if I changed it.

The overall look and feel was clean and easy to navigate. One thing to note is that it didn’t follow my theme. Instead it had a gray and blue finish. After giving this some thought and looking at some of the files I installed, I believe that this is a QT based program, not GTK. This would easily explain the appearance. With this in mind it still looked great. The icons are large and colorful and easily understandable.
The overall layout follows the task flow nicely. The individual virtual machines(VM) are located vertically on the left with each receiving an icon based on its OS type. On the right you can view and edit the details of the selected VM. When a VM session is initiated a new window opens and the VM is started. This could be done a little better by following in VMWare’s foot steps and running the VM’s in individual tabs. One positive note to the new window is that there is no surrounding items to take up valuable space.

The final piece of the pie for this application comes in how it works. So far (1hr of use) I am batting .500. I was easily able to run the OLPC’s Sugar OS but as of right now cannot get Mandriva One 2007 GNOME — Metisse Inside! to fully boot. It appears to make it all the way through but then it just sits idle with the active cursor at a blue screen (pre-login phase?).

Even with the small hiccup in Mandriva One I am sure this is going to be a great program and with a little more playing I will easily be able to get it up and running. I will try and write an update as I continue to play with this great new program.