Blog: Observations on Design + Usability

I am becoming more enamored of single purpose web sites, probably because the single purpose apps for the iphone are so handy. One service that fits the bill on the web is Write or Die. This service is aimed at people who want to write but find themselves easily distracted. In the age of twitter, facebook, blogs, email, IM, etc. that is a wide net to cast.

You simply put in a goal for your writing, either word count or a time count, or both. For instance, perhaps you want to write a blog post of about 200 words in 15 minutes; you enter those goals in the window. You can also select the mode of ‘corrective behavior.’ Gentle mode presents a pop-up message if you haven’t typed in twenty seconds whereas normal plays annoying sounds. The killer mode for now (since electric shock doesn’t work) is kamikaze mode. In this mode, if you don’t type for twenty seconds, the words start to auto-delete. There is a brief youtube clip on the service here.

A single purpose site, done well, helps you, the user, to get something done. Write or Die does just that.

The team from 37signals has a post from The Getting Real series entitled Embrace Constraints. It’s a short article and a good read.

My family just returned from vacation, visiting national parks/monuments: National Arches, Grand Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite, Devils Tower, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands. The trip was wonderful, the sites powerful and majestic. The sites vary in their size and stature, but we enjoyed each one for its own unique reasons.

One aspect that did not vary was the quality of the Park Rangers. I am still amazed at this. No matter who we interacted with or where, Rangers at the visitors center, Rangers giving walking tours, Rangers emptying garbage, to name a few, they were pleasant, knowledgeable, and made us feel like they were thrilled to have us in the park.

What were the traits that made the interactions so positive? It’s not rocket science, yet, it is rare enough in the service industry to be amazing when they come together:

1. Be Happy


We did not interact with one ‘grumpy’ Ranger. Think about when you interact with a salesperson, cashier, customer service rep on the phone, etc. and how you feel when they treat you as a bother. The Rangers either are, or act as though they are, happy in their jobs. And not every Ranger is doing glamorous work; there is garbage to be emptied, rude people to deal with, etc. Yet, we were always greeted with a smile and genuine interest.
 I believe some of this comes from the fact that the Park Rangers are allowed to have a personality. Southwest Airlines is always used as an example of a company doesn’t want their employees to check their personalities at the door; I would say we can add Park Rangers to the list of good examples.

2. Have a story to tell


The history of the national parks, both collectively and individually, is a great story. Just as important though, the Rangers know the stories. We had a wonderful Ranger at the Grand Canyon who gave a 20 minute discussion on the natural history of the Grand Canyon, including his humorous 2-second explanation “The river cuts in and the sides fall down.” 


3. Be Informative


The Rangers know their parks. They know where the bison have been spotted, when the next Ranger program is, or where to find the next gas station. I could have called this item ‘be engaged‘ because if you don’t care about your job you are not going to take the time to know all the little things. We never left with a question unanswered. 


4. Involve new customers


The National Park system has a Junior Ranger program for kids. Each park is a little different but usually involves learning at the visitor center, then something involved in walking around the park. When they are done they get a Junior Ranger badge. My kids are already talking about going back to parks. 


5. Meet my needs


Most people come to the visitor center with similar questions. Yet the Rangers listen to your specific needs as if it’s the first time they’ve been asked. Have a young child and want a short trail? They will tell you. Want to go off the beaten path and see some wild life? They will point that out. When we arrived at a park, we found a Ranger, told them our timeframe and what we liked to do, and each time the Ranger gave us recommendations.

Take these attributes, apply them to your people, your service, even your software or website. Are you leaving your customers thinking about your service in the way I’m thinking about the Rangers? Why not?

Yesterday I attended Minnewebcon, a one day conference held at the University of Minnesota. The event was a success: great speakers, ample networking time, terrific food, etc. One item that stuck out for me as a positive was the strong wifi reception.

Last year I attended Minnebar, an unconference, also held at the U, and the wifi was spotty, marring (for me at least) an otherwise great day. This year, whether because it was a different building, different conference, or just the fact that it was a year later, the wifi was wonderful, and I could focus on the conference and not my frustration with wifi access.

Now, apply that to your product or web site. What ‘thing’ of seemingly minor importance is ruining the experience for people who use your product or visit your site? I’m not talking about lack of features here, but minor distractions that frustrate people.

How is your login process?

If you are a restaurant, do you have your hours and address on your home page, and can people view your site on mobile devices?

If your application is internal, what steps in the workflow of your employees makes them want to pull their hair out (hint: it’s usually something small in importance but high in hassle)?

Watching people use your site/product will reveal these items of seemingly minor importance to you or your marketing team but of major hassle to your users.

Over the holiday period, my wife and kids and I and traveled down to Columbus, OH from Minneapolis. We drove back two days before New Year’s. With less than four hours left in the trip, we hit a whiteout near Tomah, WI. I don’t know if you’ve ever driven in a whiteout but the name is as apt a name as any weather related name can be. We could barely see the taillights in front of us. There was an accident ahead of us, a truck swerved in our lane, and before you can say ‘move to Florida’ we were in the median ditch between eastbound and westbound I-94.

The kids were shocked and a more than a little scared (we all were) but the van was upright and we had heat. The state troopers picked us up and took as to a truck stop and told us it would be several hours before a tow could get us out as there was a slew of cars already in the ditch ahead of us. Five hours later the tow truck got the van out (it was fine) and we drove for another hour before stopping off at a hotel.

The next morning we had several options, one of which was to get in the car, get breakfast on the go, and get home. But my wife and I decided to take another approach. We had a nice big leisurely breakfast in the hotel, then noticed that there was an ‘Action City’ next store. Action City had mini-bowling, laser tag, rock-climbing, go-karts, bumper cars, and video games. Without hesitation, we ponied up the cash and bought a day pass for us all, and had a blast. Later in the week when the kids were talking to the grandparents, my daughter said, “I’m glad the car went in the ditch, we had a great day and I’ll have a great story to tell my kids some day.”

Whether you are a customer service department, or a 404 error page, or a family on a vacation, you can choose how to deal with a bad turn.

November 13th is World Usability day this year, and the theme this year is on transportation.  I’ve written about some travel experiences here and here tangentially.  In Minneapolis we have a terrific UPA chapter, and the chapter is engaged in some fun and interesting activities around World Usability day.

Business is good right now, so I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to participate in the local event, i.e. I do not think I will have time to make the poster.  That said, I thought I would write in this blog post my idea and contribute to the discussion in some small way.

My thoughts on transportation relate to airline travel.  There are two ways to tackle what is for most people a consistently poor, and sometimes horrific experience.  One way is to look at the large systemic issues the airline industry has and attempt to resolve those, e.g. getting a state of the art Air Traffic Control system that will more efficiently manage air traffic.  Some of these issues are massive and will require either billions of dollars or thousands of hours in committee to resolve.

The other view is to acknowledge that delays and cancellations are going to be here and look at how to make people as comfortable as possible at the airport.  From a user experience approach, there are many opportunities here.  I recently was in the DFW (Dallas Fort-Worth) airport.  They’ve done a wonderful job of upgrading some sitting areas with new chairs, tables, and TV’s for viewing.  Yet, where do you find many business travelers?  Sitting on the floor, back against a wall, near a power outlet.  And if there are flight delays and cancellations, people huddle around these outlets the like the survivors in the movie Titanic huddle in their lifeboats.

If an airport were to engage a user experience designer to observe people in an airport, the layout would be much different, but some of those differences can be accommodated today with little expense or infrastructure change.

1. Add as many outlets near seating areas as possible where this can be done.

2. For any new construction, outlets should be accessible from any chair.

3. Free wifi: while this will definitely has a cost, the upside to the user experience would be amazing.  I used to fly to Moline Iowa and everyone would talk lovingly of this airport because of the free wifi.  The ramifications of free wifi are many, from allowing people to do work (who wouldn’t pay for wifi) during delays, to bringing people earlier into the airports prior to flights (since they can continue working).

4. Provide power strips.  When I travel I often have my laptop, a phone, and an ipod.  Others have four or five devices, and they cannot always charge via the computer.  Allowing usage of power strips at gates is also a stopgap to numbers 1 and 2 above.

5. Go Green.  I am not certain about the feasibility here, but this should be easy to do as a test case.  Virtually every gate at every airport has plenty of window space.  Airlines should put up solar chargers with various input interfaces for people to use to do a quick charge on their devices.

People will occupy themselves during delays and waits, if they can access the internet, talk on the phone, watch movies, play games, and listen to music.  If their devices are dead or dying, watch the anxiety rise.  You only have to go into the Airline Club lounges where outlets abound (as well as comfortable seating) to see the difference.

What are your thoughts for improving the user experience of transportation?  Leave a comment here, or go check out the World Usability day site and get involved.

Recently I had a conversation with a prospective client about the user experience of internal applications.  The question was about the ROI of having a good user experience of an internal application.  While I may write another article on the math side of the ROI question, the conversation revolved around how the ‘internal’ application and experience isn’t always internal.

In my last blog post, I wrote about the need for your software / personnel / any customer experience to provide a consistent user experience. I wrote about an airline attendant who was less than helpful to me.  That said, this rep was saddled by a computer system that clearly made it difficult for her to do her job.

David Armano wrote a short piece about Randy Pausch’s $100,000 salt and pepper shakers, and quoted Randy:

“If I sent a child into one of your stores with a broken salt and pepper shaker today, would your policies allow your workers to be kind enough to replace it?”

To paraphrase that, “if a customer called your call center with a problem today, would your software allow your workers to take care of the problem.” This is my single biggest reason why I believe the user experience of internal applications are so critical.  Very few applications today, whether ERP systems, time sheets, or CRM systems, are so silo’d that they only impact the users themselves.  A bad user experience, e.g. rigid rules, antiquated systems, disconnected systems, bad data, etc., for a user of the system, rarely impacts that user only.  If that user has to interact with the customer, make decisions on behalf of the customer, or provide customer data to a manager, then a bad user experience will have downstream impacts on your customers.

The next time you are thinking about whether to improve your internal systems, ask yourself how internal those systems truly are.

I just finished up a solid month of travel, and my experiences during my travels led me to write this post. Whether a personal user experience or an online one, the consistency of what you present to the user is critical.

I had flight plans with my son set up in March. Two weeks before I was to leave, I had to reschedule the flights to a day earlier, and use some frequent flyer miles to offset the large increase in price. I called the reservation desk and spoke to a customer service representative. The call took a painful 45 minutes for her to accomplish the task of rearranging my flight and applying the frequent flyer miles, but here is what she did during the 45 minutes that made what could have been a painful experience a bearable, if not pleasing, experience:

* She was pleasant. It is amazing how far this can go to help.
* Several times she had to put me on hold, but I was never on hold for more than 5 minutes before she would “check-in” on me and let me know she was still there, and still working on my request. This is critical. Think about when you are stuck on a plane and the pilot says “it will be about 5 minutes” and 20 minutes later he has not come back on the PA to let you know what is going on. Users do not like losing complete control whether on your web site or in any interaction. Her simple act of checking in with me calmed me down because I knew she would be back on in another 5 minutes to give me an update.
* She sincerely apologized. Not every time, not for everything. But for the amount of time the process took and for having to place me on hold for so long.
* She didn’t blame her company, her manager, her software application to try and get me on her side. Because I am like most users, at the end of the day, I don’t care about who is to blame, I just want my request fulfilled.

So I began my trip feeling very positive towards my airline. Those good feelings would not last the trip. On my return flight there was bad weather. The flight was delayed and I had a connecting flight. The gate agent would not provide any updates at all and said we needed to go back out to the ticket counter to get updates and reschedule. I dutifully went to the counter, waited one hour in line, and waited another 30 minutes at the desk with the agent. She was rude, and acted as though I was the problem. In addition, while I gave her all my information she could not or would not provide me with any information whatsoever about my connecting flight.

Photo owned by specialkrb (cc)

I went back to the gate (having to go through security again) hoping that my connecting flight would be delayed as well. On a whim I called my wife and asked her to do some additional research for me. It turns out that my ‘connecting flight’ was the same plane that I was on, i.e. if my plane was late, it didn’t matter, because the same plane was taking me home!

The frustration here is that either the gate agent or ticket agent could have spent one minute, looked at my information and told me that, and I would have had no anxiety because I would know I was getting home.

Now I’m not here to tell my airline horror story, everyone has them, and it’s a tough business. My point of this story is that it is not enough to have a good user experience here and there at your company, or on your site or your software application. The goodwill can be easily washed away if the consistency of the experience is dramatically inconsistent.

Occasionally I’ll take a detour on the blog and point out another site that I think is doing a great job. This is the first post on that topic. I discovered InspireUX a month or so ago and look forward to new postings.

InspireUX is “a blog that posts quotes relating to user experience (UX). Every quote on inspireUX focuses on the impact that user experience has on people, business, or the world.” (from the site) How? By asking for input from us the readers. If you know of a good user experience post, you can add that quote to the site. If that were all the site did, it would be worth a view. But the site focuses not only on the content, but the design. The quotes themselves are put into colorful blocks laid out very well, and that show up in a blog reader too.

In addition, you can print off the quotes and post them up, or share them with your team. They can be great conversation starters.

Give http://www.inspireux.com a try.

I had the chance to attend my first BarCamp, which in Minneapolis is called MinneBar.  A BarCamp is a conference about technology topics that have a very loose, informal feel that some call an unconference.

All attendees are asked to contribute either by being vocal participants in sessions or by hosting a session themselves.  I decided to dive in head first host a session.  The topic was  the continuum of the user experience.

I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the session and really like the format.  I viewed my role as facilitator more so than session speaker.  Yes, I led the talk down certain paths, but the value is in the conversation.  We had great questions by several people, and several others chimed in with examples and answers themselves.

I have no slides of real value to post although if anyone asks I’ll put them on the MinneBar wiki.  I’m an anti-powerpoint guy, so my slides included several gapingvoid.com cartoons, and some favorite Kathy Sierra charts from her blogging heyday.

I started the talk with a discussion about what a field study is and the desire to visit users of your site/software/interface in the environment in which they actually use it.  The room (about 50-70 people, I’m a horrible judge of this stuff) was split in thirds around "I don’t know my customers at all" "I know them a little" "I know my customers very well" in terms of usage of the user interface. 

As a group we talked about what we do with that collected data, from creating personas, to focusing on specific issues.  There were some tangents, good tangents, about where content falls in the user experience (hint, it matters), and about what tools you can use to gather stats, e.g. click tracking on other analytics.  Everyone agreed that these statistics cannot be the only tool, and you have to decide what they mean.  For example, someone pointed out that length of time on a web page may not be a good thing, it may mean the user cannot find what he is looking for.

After we talked about field studies we moved on to the value of paper prototyping or quick online prototyping. The value here is in including customers during this process and the iterative process of this stage.  The other benefit of intentionally informal sketches is a participant doesn’t get hung up on something like colors at this stage when you are really trying to see if you’ve solved ‘flow’ problems.

We finished up on usability testing, from detailed studies, to remote tools like morae, to hallway usability at your firm with people not on your project.  The short answer is that something is better than nothing, and you should always get some usability testing in before you launch.

The back channel was working well I think, i.e. people were twittering the session.  Part of the nature of the BarCamp is you can get up and walk out if you like.  And while a couple folks walked out, we had a lot more wandering in and had people standing in back by the end.  The group made it a great session, as I mentioned, and every step of the way, people were adding their own examples of usability testing, or talking about the challenges of companies that don’t ‘get it’. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the day, will write up a post on the overall BarCamp over on my personal blog, and look forward to more great discussions like this in the future in Minneapolis and Milwaukee.