January 26, 2005
Errrg. Common Usability Misunderstanding
From an article in Internet Retailer.
Most developers of e-catalog technology conduct usability studies to find out what shoppers want from their e-catalogs. However, RichFX’s Creanult says usability is not always as important as what improves sales. “We’re not always looking for what is most useable to the shopper as much as what sells the most product,” he says. “We’ve found that customers will sometimes say they don’t like certain features, but we often find the features customers say they don’t like actually sell the most product.”
And this from Jared Spool
In a recent usability test, I once again witnessed something I’ve seen a hundred times before: a frustrated user claiming he knows exactly what is wrong with the interface he was fighting with. What was his suggestion? “These guys need to make this thing a lot more intuitive. The problem is that this program isn’t intuitive enough. It needs to be more intuitive!”I think he used the I-Word no less than 25 times during the session. His frustration was real and his desire was great. So, why wasn’t the interface ‘intuitive’? Well, it’s probably because it’s really, really hard to do.
This is what I thought when I read the last quote. “‘Why wasn’t the interface intuitive?’ Did you ask him what stuff meant, what things would do and why? Because that’s how you find out.”
When I’m conducting a usability test, my goal is to observe behavior, not listen to opinion, and this is what bugs me about these two quotes. Jared describes something he “witnessed” but he’s talking about an opinion he heard. In the Internet Retailer article, a user’s opinion is treated as a measure of usability, but they’re totally different things.
It’s not that the user’s opinion is irrelevant, it’s just easy to come by and does not require a usability test, and it certainly does not correlate directly to usability.
Here’s a common scenario; a user completes a task quickly with no errors or misunderstandings. This is the fourth one in a row. The user turns to me and says, “I can do this, but other people, they’re going to have trouble. It’s too difficult.”
So what should I write in my notes? “Task too difficult – need to write an essay,” or “Task makes users feel superior to their peers.”
This is what I would jot down, “User completed the task quickly and easily with full understanding. Consider art direction to give a less complex appearance.”
I’ve seen the opposite situation even more. A user goes though a task clearly clueless about the meaning of the interactions or results they would get. I ask them, “What does that mean?” “What does that do?” The answers come back wrong, wrong, wrong. At the end they turn to me and say, “That was great! Really easy and intuitive.”
In that case my notes would read, “Bravo me! Good interface designer! Next!”
Posted by dme at 01:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 19, 2005
It's Music. Music is the Metaphor.
A mouse is one finger that can point, and touch. While computers have added orders of magnitude more memory, speed, storage, screen pixels, color, and networking, people are still using one finger. Point. Point. Poke. Poke. Drag. Drop.
More specialized inputs are being invented for video games, but I think musical instruments are the better metaphor for future input devices. Video games are reactive and competitive, and they have a short design history, a few decades, much of it reacting to new technology. Music is collaborative and creative. It is more like work. People have been designing musical instrument interfaces for centuries. Much of that history is a collaboration between craftspeople, musicians and composers. The sophistication of a saxophone or piano interface beats any video game.
Anyway, I saw this wonderful interface and it got me going. This video especially.
Posted by dme at 10:33 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack