What if a major corporation were charged with creating stop signs?

This is courtesy of @kmakice on Twitter:

User Friendly ≠ Usability?

Whenever someone asks what I do or what I’m studying, and I see his or her eyes glaze over when I launch into a definition of HCI, I usually resort to saying, “I want to make things like web pages and software applications more user friendly.”

Most people understand that term because they can relate.  They’re users, and they like things to be friendly.

We are currently in between projects in the Usability Lab where I work.  So, I’m passing the time by catching up on all those things I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t gotten around to. (Well, not ALL of them, but a few anyway!)

I’m finally reading Nielsen’s Usability Engineering in its entirety (instead of the few chapters that were assigned for a class discussion).  Neilsen gives us five attributes with which to measure usability (learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction).

He then states (emphasis is mine):

Even if you do not intend to run formal measurement studies of the usability attributes of your system, it is an illuminating exercise to consider how its usability could be made measurable.  Clarifying the measurable aspects of usability is much better than aiming at a warm, fuzzy feeling of “user friendliness” [Shackel 1991]

So, after reading that, I began to ask myself just what exactly does “user friendly” mean?  I did some quick Googling, and I discovered that not many people really know!  It does conjure up a “warm, fuzzy feeling” doesn’t it?

When you last used Orbitz  to book a flight, did you feel warm and fuzzy afterward?  Probably not.  You may have been satisified with your interaction, but, did you really think that Orbitz was “friendly” when it showed you all of the flights from O’Hare to San Fran on one particular date?

So, I’ve decided that I now need to find another way to explain what I do and study.  How about, “I want to make things like web pages and software applications easier to learn, more efficient and satisfying”?

Anyone have any suggestions?  How do others explain what usability is to their non-HCI family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers.  Please leave a me a comment if you are so inclined

Is it so hard, really?

<rant>

I made an online payment recently. It was a farily simple, and straightforward process.  I filled out a typical form with the CC # and payment amount.  After I clicked submit, I received a confirmation page.  Two days later while online banking, I saw the total subtracted from my checking account.  All was right with the world.

Except, yesterday when I got home from work, I had a voicemail telling me that my payment was due last Friday and since I hadn’t made the payment, I was now being assessed a fee.  What?!

I call the customer support line.  Once I get through the automated prompt and explain the issue, it was resolved quickly.  In fact, as soon as I finished telling my story, the CS Rep said, “Oh, I bet I know what happened…” Then, she proceeded to tell me that if you put a dollar sign in the field for the payment amount, their system doesn’t process the transaction properly.  I asked her if that happens frequently, and she said, “All the time”.  After resolving the problem, she ended the call by saying, “Remember, next time you make a payment, don’t use a dollar sign.”

Ummm.  Ok.  First, why was there no note by the field that said not to use dollar signs…or maybe even have a dollar sign right in front of the box?  Second, why no error checking when I submitted the form?  And, third, but the most obvious…if it happens all the time, why not fix your form??

</rant>

PS…If you’re a fan of Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly), or Sci-Fi, or comics, or musicals, or just good comedy, you MUST check out Dr. Horrible!  http://www.drhorrible.com/

PowerPoint: How it should and should NOT be used

An amusing use of PP:

How NOT to use PP:

Overwhelmed

Side Note:  Obviously, I’ve been away from blogging for a little while.  I discovered that working full time and attending grad school full time, and planning a wedding all at the same time was quite overwhelming. So, blogging about HCI took a backseat for a little while. But, yesterday, I started a new job as a “Usability Consultant/Information Architect”.  So, now I am immersed in HCI in both work and school.  So, I think I’ll be returning to blogging

For the past three years, I’ve worked for Indiana University (IU) in a tech support role (I’d been in tech support for 10 years prior to working at IU, as well).  One of my duties was to administer a certain web app.  When I took that role over, I was thrown into a project of designing a new app to do the same functions as the old one.  About two years ago, during the design process, we had the university’s usability lab conduct user testing.

I watched the testing and was fascinated. Here was an app that I thought had been designed very well and would pose hardly any problems to users, and here were users who had problems!  I found it kind of exciting to be wrong. It was eye-opening to see users use the application in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

I had no idea that the field of Usability existed before those tests.  But, while I was observing those tests, I remember thinking to myself, I want to do that!  I want to walk people through tests of applications and tools and find out how to make them better!

As I got to thinking about it, I realized that all of my experience in tech support was leading me to this point.  I had made a career of helping people use poorly-designed yet functional applications and tools.  But, after the tests, I realized that what I had been doing was a bandaid.  To truly solve people’s problems with those applications, the applications themselves needed to be redesigned.

So, I began to do a little web-surfing about usability.  I discovered that IU had an excellent HCI/d program, so about a year ago I applied and began my stint as a grad student.  I decided from the beginning that I wanted to work in usability and made that the focus of most of my classess and assignments.  And, secretly, I wanted to work at IU’s usability lab, because I already loved working for IU in a different department.  So, what could be more perfect than doing usability at IU?

After my first semester, a graduate assistantship position with the usability lab opened up.  I applied for it, was intereviewed, but didn’t get the job.

Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago.  I had finished my first year as a grad student, and had another year to go until I had a degree.  A full-time job opening at the usability lab was posted.  I figured I wasn’t qualified since I didn’t have my degree yet.  But, I figured there’d be no harm in applying, and if I could get an interview, then at least I’d keep myself on the radar of the people who worked there, so that when I did have my degree and another position opened, I’d be in a better position to get the job.

So I applied.  And, I interviewed.  Four days later, I was offered the position.  And, yesterday, I started the job.

In the past three weeks, I’ve said goodbye to a job and coworkers that I really loved, I’ve switched platforms (from Windows to Mac) and am learning all new apps, and I began what I thought was my unachievable dream job.  Plus, I’m still going to be going to school full-time come September.

And, I thought I was overwhelmed before!  But, this overwhelming feeling is a good one.  I’ve been doing more in-depth web-surfing on usability and discovered a whole new level of overwhelmedmness (yes, I just made up that word!)

There’s just so much out there to read and and so little time….

Participatory design in commercials

Last night I was watching my beloved IU Hoosiers beat (in double overtime!!) Illinois on ESPN and saw the following commercial (note, it’s embedded in the Cisco page, so you’ll have to press play…it’s apparently too new to be on YouTube yet, though I did find the Spanish version there):

http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/smb/index.html#~acc~connect_employees

Is that not participatory design?!

User Reflections and Expectations

During my first semester, one of my instructors was constantly telling us that to be good designers (or usability practitioners, as is my goal), then we need to be constantly reflecting on what we’re doing and learning in school. We had a class blog, and he encouraged us to keep our own blogs for that purpose. And, one of the books we read for class was Thoughtful Interaction Design, which also encouraged being reflective. Another instructor from this semester said the same thing. Hence, that is why I started this blog and named it “HCI Reflections”.

Well, I’ve been thinking that maybe us designers and usability practitioners shouldn’t be the only ones who are reflective and thoughtful. It would benefit users to do the same!

I am getting married in 5 weeks. My fiance and I are trying to finalize our honeymoon plans. I had made flight reservations through Orbitz , and I needed to call their customer service line last night.

At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to the experience (there’s that word again!) I had while I was talking to their CSR. I remember being a little annoyed when she placed me on hold for several minutes, but after she answered my question and we hung up, I continued the vacation planning with my fiance and didn’t give it much more thought.

I later checked my email and had received a message from Orbitz asking me to take a survey about my experience calling their CS line. So, I did. And, as I was doing so, I began to reflect on my experience, and I realized it was a pretty darn good one, and it was exactly as I had expected it to be. Their IVR system was very easy to understand and use and I was immediately routed to a live person who could answer my question. The person was knowledgeable, helpful, courteous, and professional. And, I was satisfied with the answer I had to my question. When the survey asked if I would recommend Orbitz to friends and family, my first thought was, ‘Yeah!’. But, then I realized that if I had never taken the time to fill out the survey, I may not have reflected on and remembered the good experience I had. And, therefore, I may not have ever recommended Orbitz.

So, I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but that survey seemed to have two purposes–it helped them conduct their user research, but it also caused me, the user, to be reflective. And, because I was reflective, I will be a repeat customer.

This also brings out the fact that people tend to remember and focus more on the bad experiences they have. Had I been put on hold for more than a few minutes, or if the IVR system had routed me around and around, or if the CSR couldn’t answer my question, I probably would have lamented over that experience for several minutes or hours after I hung up.

But, because I got what I wanted in the way that I wanted, I almost just brushed that experience aside. Does this mean that as designers or usability practitioners, we have to strive to create and experience that doesn’t just meet the users’ expectations but exceeds them?

I think it does!

Smash Lab (a designer’s perspective)

My fiance and I are huge fans of the Mythbusters TV show on the Discovery Channel.  If you’re not familiar with it, the premise is a team of special effects experts put myths and urban legends to the test to see if they could be real.  But, basically, it’s an excuse for them to just blow a bunch of stuff up on TV.  Good, clean fun! 

For about a month or so, during Mythbusters, Discovery has been advertising a new show called Smash Lab that will air immediately after Mythbusters.  Smash Lab is supposed to be about “a team of maverick engineers as they take on everyday technology and apply it in revolutionary new ways.”  Of course, since it promised crashes and explosions, we decided to check out the premiere this week.

As I was watching it, I was struck by one thought:  This is just another design challenge show!  It ended up being two teams that each competed with each other to design something while under some sort of constraint. Last semester, in my HCI Design I class, we watched an episode of Project Runway, where individual fashion designers were given constraints and had compete to design the best dress.  While Smash Lab didn’t have near the drama that Project Runway did (Thank God!!), the premise was strikingly similar.

This week’s show started off with them talking about aerated concrete (concrete mixed with air), which is used at the end of runways at airports to help slow and stop planes that may overshoot the runway. Then, they presented the challenge/constraints to the 4 members of the “team of maverick engineers” (One of the team members is a designer, btw): Use the aerated concrete to prevent a car or bus from crossing a median and smashing into oncoming traffic.

The first thing they did was set up a test crash so they could measure the forces involved and see how cars react to the crashes (and of course show some gratuitous smashing up on camera).  I equated this with the Research phase of the design process.  If we follow the PRInCiPleS framework set forth by Drs Blevis and Siegel, I would go so far to say that this research helped them develop their Insights, though they never really talked about Predispositions.  Afterwards, they developed two Concepts.  Two team members ended up following one idea and the other two followed another, so it ended up as sort of a competition as they developed and tested their Prototypes.

The Srategies were never discussed, but I kept telling my fiance that their cconcepts had serious problems with sustainability and weren’t very practical, so I doubt they could come up with a strategy.

Maybe the most interesting thing about the whole show is that both concepts failed!  It was slightly refreshing to me to see these people put all their hard work into creating and testing concepts only to have them fail in the end.  It happens even to people who are on TV! LOL

I think I’ll watch this show again.  It was actually pretty fun to analyze it from the designer’s perspective.  But, there was one thing that really annoyed both me and my fiance about the show.  They did not admit that one of the concepts had failed.  They played it up as if it had worked a little bit.  The aerated concrete did not stop or slow the bus down.  The bus only slowed when the brakes were applied! They seemed to gloss over that fact.

Anyway, the last thing I want to say about it is evaluating the show from a designer’s perspective was not my intention at all when I sat down to watch it last night!  I just wanted to be wowed by crashes and smashes and explosions.  But, I guess you can’t really control your designerly ways of thinking when you’re fully engrossed in learning the subject matter!

Hence, that is why we blog about! 

Designing the Gambling Experience

Last month, my fiance, sister, father and I spent a day at an Off Track Betting site in my old hometown about 2 hours away.  For those of you who are not familiar with OTBs, they are places where you can go to watch–and, more importantly, bet on–whatever horse racing tracks are running around the world.  I’ve been to a couple of race tracks (Churchill Downs in Louisville and Arlington Park in Chicago) where you bet only on the races running at that track and enjoyed them tremendously, but I’d never been to an OTB before.

It was an experience, because according to Dilthy and Bruner, was “distinguishable, isolable sequence of external events and internal responses to them”. While for the most part it was quite enjoyable (though I’m sure it could have been even more enjoyable had I left there a big winner , there were some things that we felt could have been improved upon.  As my fiance and I were driving home that evening, the only thing we talked about was how we would improve various things, in essence, design our own personal gambling experience.  We didn’t talk about how much fun we had or how great it was to see my dad and my sister.  Even now, when I think back on the experience, the memory isn’t all that positive.  I first think about how some of the TVs were in need of repair, or how I couldn’t hear the callings of the races, or how I became easily confused because many races were running simultaneously.

In his Having An Experience essay, Dewey wrote “Experience is limited by all the causes which interfere with perception and the relations between undergoing and doing.” Reflecting on my OTB experience has helped me to understand what he means.

I had fun at the OTB, but I kept thinking things like, “I wish I could hear them call this race and not that race” or “I can’t see that race very well because the TV is too small or the contrast is too dark”.  And, the reason I had those thoughts was my only previous experience with the horse races had been at an actual track where the TVs are all in pristine condition and the calling of the race is piped throughout the facility.

So, I was comparing the experience I was having (the OTB) with one I had previously had (the actual track). I wasn’t experiencing the moment at the OTB.  I had predispositions, if you will, of what the OTB experience would be like.  I was limiting my own experience with my perception that an OTB would be the same at an actual track.  As Dewey said, there was “interference because  of excess on the side of … receptivity”.  This “unbalance blurred my perception” and “left the experience partial and distorted”.

Now, if only I could understand what the other 21 pages of Dewey’s article meant! LOL

IU HCI Blogs

So, while I’m not new to blooging, this is the first “official” blog I’ve created specifically for school. Blogging has been highly recommended by several professors and students in the HCI grad program. Several of my IU HCI collegues have blogs as well. I was going to try to collect them all and create links to them, but I found out that someone else has already done that. (Thanks, Kevin!)

So, if you’re interested in reading the musings of other people from IU on the world of HCI, here is a list:  http://uxnet.org/archives/359