It’s Time For Forever Web: Forever Learning, Changing, Learning, Improving

Written by Russ on June 20, 2008 – 1:18 pm

Sub-title: Beta is BS and Users Deserve Better

“Always in Beta” is one of those latest phrases that does a really good job of getting under my skin. Beta implies to me that something is purposefully not yet complete and that there are going to be some mistakes.

Some companies, like Adobe, do a really good job of utilizing a beta release program to snuff out issues that real users find and that are not in a “control” group of their selection.

That is a good thing.

However, launching a website and slapping a “beta” label on it often seems like an excuse to put garbage on the web very rapidly (in order to prove a business model, have a prototype, start to engage users, show to VCs, etc.). A “live” beta online often seems to be a mash-up of incomplete thoughts or a good reason to shrug shoulders and let issues fall off like water on a duck. Live beta mistakes are often paid for, in spades, by the users.

That is a bad thing.

We need to rid ourselves of excuses, take ownership and admit to users that, while we are relentlessly pursuing wickedly-awesome user experiences, we can make mistakes. Users need to know this and in return, they should realize that all mistakes made in the pursuit of a good user experience will ultimately lead to a correction of the mistakes down the road.

That, however, is not a beta, nor an excuse. It’s an honest, persistent state of being.

If You Build It Poorly, They Will Leave

We’ve all heard it before. There is a really good chance that many of us have said it before: If the user experience is bad, users will leave.

We’ve said that users who cannot find something are users who believe “it” does not exist.

We’ve said that we have to engage our users. We have to test our designs. We have to get to know our users to find out what makes them tick. We have to be committed to our users.

We have to do all of those things—OR ELSE.

Frankly, we say a lot of stuff and we stomp around with our “clients just don’t get it” hats on and the attitudes that all of this stuff is always right.

Maybe—just maybe—we’re not entirely right.

In fact, I think we are missing the mark more than just a little.

Crazy Talk? I Don’t Think So.

First, there are somethings we need to acknowledge and, in some cases, come to terms with.

We, as User Experience Practitioners, are NOT entirely right with all of the things that we say, all of the claims that we make and all of the preaching that we do. Even so, there is some good news…

Clients are starting to get it. It has been a slow coming, but more and more, we have jobs that are in demand. We have clients who want to make “things” better and more usable. We have clients and companies that think that an “Information Architect” or a “User Experience <something>” or a variation of those titles is something that is essential to their core process and that they need to hire those types in order to start things moving in the right direction.

Sure, often times they think we’re the cure, but much like launching a website without any sort of promotional efforts, we cannot simply happen in a vacuum, right?

Right.

There is a shift. Conference attendance appears to be up. Conferences appear to be happening every week and weekend in cities across the globe.

The tide is turning.

Value—or perceived value—is beginning to be majorly associated to User Experience Practitioners.

We are in demand.

And a lot of us are arrogant.

And a lot of us think that whatever we think is right.

Which is even more arrogant.

The User is ALWAYS Right

Nope.

Neither is your UXD Team

I am so sorry to tell you this, but the user is not always right. Of course, I’m also not naïve enough to actually think that I’m the first to put this copy. I’m not making an effort to be controversial—there is no controversy about it. It’s a fact—and even though we strive to provide users with what (we think) they want, they often do not even know what they need. For more case studies on this, well, look around the space you are currently occupying. Nearly everything in that space around you has an 800 number associated with it to a call center that deals with all kinds of customer requests (thank you, Mark Dronen). There are a lot of calls received to those call centers from people who need some assistance or support—and a lot of calls are also receive from people who have misused the product (let’s leave intention out of this for the moment).

Users often are the culprits of innovation as the mis-use something that was intended for another purpose. In the case of Flickr, companies may adapt. In the case of someone trying to use a hammer as a weapon, well, it’s not supposed to be a weapon. So, you know, the user is not always right.

Obviously, however, neither are clients.

Neither are you

Neither am I.

Can you swallow that? You’d better. At the core of all of this is something that we, as User Experience Practitioners, live in every minute of our professional lives:

The User Experience Never Ends

We all agree on that, right? We’ve all had someone ask us this in an interview as they’re trying to be clever and weed out the (ahem) fakers amongst us. If you have not experienced this, well, maybe hiring companies are finally figuring it out that we can all guess the correct answer to the question by now.

So, if the User Experience never ends, then we need to come to grips with the notion that the design process never ends, right?

Right.

It also means that we are forever striving to meet any number of objectives that are allegedly for our users and also happen to meet business goals and/or objectives, make stakeholders happy and make the people who sign the checks continue to sign those checks.

It means that, while we serve many masters and we must ALWAYS remain ever-diligent to our user goals/needs/objectives (and, ahem, that’s our one true master, right? Right.) and we do our best to accurately interpret them—nay, sell them—to our clients to deliver what is often perceived as a lesser evil, or that which is least wrong. Right?

Right.

As long as we’re being honest here, let’s remember that we’re very much steeped in the world of throw-away work (or “tries”) and iterations (“near misses”) that get us to an eventual sign-off (“conditional” or “x level” of “approval”) in order to get us to the point where prototypes (more “tries”) can lead to revisions (“post-approval enhancements”) prior to ever getting beyond development (“serious commitment”) and going live (“really serious approval”) where real users will give us real feedback that we will (should) turn into enhancements and improvements (“deviations from our best guesses and influenced decisions”) which can lead to another new project (“try, try again”).

Whew.

So What?

Now that’s the big question that should always be asked—and answered. No one should be surprised this heading is here as long as I am the author.

Everything we do when it comes to user research and user testing is done from a sampling. We do this to make best assumptions as to what behaviors are and what feedback is that can drive our projects/products to being the best that they can do for the largest possible audience.

So, we have to admit and be willing to accept a few things:

Some of those users are wrong. We need to either convert them, provide them with something that is useful to them or we simply need to find the right way to get rid of them. Sometimes users are not right for whatever it is that we are doing, and that’s okay.

We have to be willing to lose some users. We have to accept that we cannot be all things to all users and any change will bring about a risk in losing users. Because of this, we have to set an expectation to users that we are working very hard for them; we are evangelizing a never-ending user experience on their behalf and, by gosh, sometimes we have to get it wrong to get it right.

We have to get companies to admit that, along the way, there may be some mis-steps and there may be some mistakes and there may be some things that tested well but fail upon delivery. We have to get companies to talk about the fact that they are actively striving themselves to try and meet the moving target of user needs and that sometimes something goes a little wrong.

We have to talk about it. Our community needs to be able to educate our clients that this will happen.

We have to get clients to talk about it. Clients have to not only admit all of this to themselves, but to their users, as well. And no, they cannot call it BETA. Or my head will explode.

And we have to get customers to understand that one mis-step—maybe even two, or three or “x” mis-step isn’t a deal breaker. It is not enough to leave a company, a brand, a product for.

In fact, an acknowledged mis-step is all the more reason to stay with a company, a brand, a product.

Why?

Because, in my humblest of opinions, any company that is willing to make mistakes—and claim those mistakes as their own—in order to make “something” better for its users, is a company that a user should want to be connected to.

Really.

Keep Doing What You’re Doing. And More.

So, dear User Experience community, keep up the good work of educating your clients and evangelizing the never-ending UX Lifecycle. You’re doing a great job and I’m right there beside you in the thick of it all everyday.

(Really—I am!)

Do not forget, however, to educate your users. Help them understand that improvements and enhancements (or modifications, adjustments, tweaks, etc.) are being done their behalf.

Help them understand that we, and our clients, are learning from them and that every engagement they have with our clients is an engagement that we are all learning from—for them.

We may will make mistakes

We may make a left at Albequerque when we should have taken a right.

We may really, really make some wrong decisions on their behalf.

But it’s on their behalf, and that is important—because if we weren’t willing to make mistakes on their behalf, we would not be willing to learn from them so that we can better serve them.

We are constantly in flux, Some places claim to be “always in beta”. That’s lame—the intention may be to put out the message as I have been describing, but it’s also an excuse to never deliver a complete thought to users, and that is not what this is about.

Users are not stupid

Live Beta is the lie that is used to “go live” with mistakes and incomplete thoughts. It is an excuse to let someone else, sometimes users, write the requirements. It is a scapegoat that ensures that no one has to fully take the blame for an idea gone wrong. It’s “beta”, after all.

(There is a caveat here—some companies, like Adobe, Microsoft and others engage in live beta product releases that are successful and that are close to completion. They get a pass for certain cases.)

And to clarify: Beta releases are for a select group or for a select period of time–or both.  Mini-releases and updates are just that: mini-releases and updates. They do not constitute a beta, they constitute making improvements, enhancements and updates.  They fix something broken.  The beta should be over by then, so let’s just stop the lie.

Forever Web is the truth we use to let users know that we have though through all that we’ve learned and we’ve navigated the numerous corporate political battlefields to put forth the best that we can deliver. Forever Web let’s our users know that we are willing to make the mistakes on their behalf to move closer and closer to providing the best experience.

Oh, and that we’re going to keep doing it as long as we’re around.

Posted in Rant, Usability, User Experience, User Experience Design | 4 Comments »

Face the Money

Written by Russ on April 3, 2008 – 2:01 pm

I worked at a Burger King in high school for 2.5 years.  It wasn’t a terrible experience (for me)–I came out of my nerd shell quite a bit and learned a lot about a world outside of my front door that I probably would not have otherwise experienced.

The lesson I learned that I keep with me to this day came from one of my least favorite bosses–a woman by the name of Sandy.  I’m sure Sandy didn’t really give a crap about a bunch of high school kids who were more interested in flirting and planning parties than in keeping her restaurant clean and all that, but one time when she caught me hanging out in the drive-thru trying to hide from her view, she fired-open my cash register and took a look.

I’m pretty sure that gave me a good scare–it seemed like there was always someone taking money from the tills and subsequently getting fired.  That person was never me; my parents would have killed me–regardless of anything a police officer or cell mate could have done, that thought was one that terrorized me.  Plus, I made minimum wage, drove a ‘76 White Chevy Impala and gas was a helluva lot cheaper than it is today.  I had it all.

Sandy looked at me with a bit of a disgusted look and told me to “Face your money”.

“Huh?”

She told me I should face the money–even if this wasn’t a career for me, I should be taking some pride in my work and I should make sure that all the money was facing the same way.  Not only would it make the job of counting my till a lot easier for me (and her, of course), but it would make the customers feel less concerned about a pimply kid handling their cash when it came back neat and orderly.

“Okay.”

Simple enough, really.  But Every. Single. Day. I think of this.  NO ONE faces the damned money today. Unless there are a bunch of fresh, crisp bills from a bank, you very rarely get your money back facing the same way.  Cab drivers may be the exception to this, for what it’s worth.

I’m sure this is one of those “oh whatever” types of things, but wait until the next time you grab a coffee or a lunch when you’re not using a debit or credit card.

Every time I pay cash, I find myself being the slow poke in front of the line trying to straighten out the bills so that they sit right in my wallet–the more valuable in the back, all the way up to the singles.

Blind people take their money and apply folding patterns–think of what this means to them.  Think of how this little batch of organization of money helps you out in so much of your daily life.  Think about how little effort it truly requires for that cashier to keep their money “faced” so you don’t have to slow down the line, risk dropping your wallet/purse/fanny pak, whatever it is.

My point today is simple:  Identify simple tasks in your life that you’re over-looking and find ways to make them work outside of your sphere of reference.  I’m not a cashier anymore, but every time I have to face the money, I think about Sandy and her lesson, and where I am today.

Sure, Sandy didn’t make me the stunningly mediocre UX Practitioner you read about today, but she did teach me that you don’t have be overtly anal-retentive to be organized and to have a downstream impact.

Start small.  The big stuff will follow.

Posted in Usability, User Experience | 1 Comment »

How Comcast VOIP Penalizes The Majority

Written by Russ on December 16, 2007 – 11:36 pm

I was one of the first to adopt Comcast’s VOIP when it came to my area. (If it would have been a midnight event at Best Buy, I would have stood in line for it–that’s just the kind of geek I am). For the most part, I do not notice that I have VOIP instead of a traditional telephone service, which, ultimately plays into Comcast’s favor. There are times, like when the cable service goes out that you realize that in order to call to report the problem, well, you have to use your mobile phone, but that is also a known risk.

There are also great benefits–like a voicemail system that is kind enough to send you an email and that allows you to access your messages online. Since the Comcast system will only store my password for 24 hours and I don’t feel like Im able to navigate their system quicly enough, I mostly dial-in to listen to my messages.

About 6 months ago, Comcast upgraded their voicemail services.

Upgraded?

Okay, let me rephrase: They upgraded their voicemail system.

The degraded their VUI (Voice User Interface) for the voicemail system, in my humble opinion.

Wikipedia has blessed me with some information that I’ve found useful:

Although the United States currently has no official language, English has long been the de facto national language. Government agencies in most states and at the federal level can commonly be contacted in Spanish. Many states such as California require legislated notices and official documents to be printed in Spanish alongside English and other commonly used languages.

And:

The United States does not have an official language, but English is spoken by about 82% of the population as a native language. The variety of English spoken in the United States is known as American English; together with Canadian English it makes up the group of dialects known as North American English. 96% of the population of the U.S. speaks English well. On May 18, 2006, the Senate voted on an amendment to an immigration reform bill that would declare English the national language of the United States. The immigration reform bill itself, S. 2611, was passed in the Senate on May 25, 2006, and now has to go back to the House of Representatives in conference to make sure amendments are agreed upon.

The Spanish language is the second-most common language in the country, spoken by almost 30 million people (or 12% of the population) in 2005.

Here are my key points to Comcast:

1. I live in the United States
2. American English is the most spoken language in the country

That said, the Comcast Voicemail system previously worked as follows:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system (otherwise listen to bizarre message that allows you to enter in a phone number and leave a message for someone on the system–huh? The voicemail number is not a publicly known number)
3. Press your phone number
4. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you (learned by trial and error, thank you very much)
5. Press your password
6. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
7. Enter voicemail system, do voicemail-related things

Upon implementation of the “system upgrade”, something broke. Much like the blasted soda machine in my office, I still get tripped up by this change.

The change has caused a slight-looking shift (see bolded text below) in the way the voicemail system now works:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘1′ if you wish to hear your prompts in English, ‘2′ if you wish to hear your prompts in Spanish (Pressing anything else ie ‘#’ results in you listening to the English/Spanish message all over again)
3. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system
4. The rest is the same

This seems minor, right? Simply adjust my thinking, unlearn what I’ve already been using for over a year, realize that there is an extra button press and accept that Comcast is attempting to serve a broader customer base. The thought itself is not problematic. The implementation is. To me. And possibly to those whom I assume are in the majority of their user base.

I do not take issue with that, but I would not expect to check voicemail in France and have to identify myself as a French speaker EVERY TIME. On the contrary, I would expect to listen until I heard something in English and then press the corresponding number that would allow me to listen in my language. If France had more than one primary launguage–like Canada (see the humor?)–, then I would expect to be able to choose my primary language in my voicemail set-up, including the option to select my language at each login. For Comcast, this does not happen–although I am allowed to set my languages in my Administrative options. You’ve probably guessed it: My language preferences are all set to English.

Still, I am an English-speaking American, and I am in America. For whatever reason (okay, for statistical reasons, even), I feel as my language should be in the majority. I feel that spoken prompts of a VUI should be in English automatically and I should not have to listen to a prompt that forces me to select the option to hear prompts in English. Instead, I should be able to quickly bypass the system and get right to my voicemail, which is all that I care about to begin with. Comcast, you may have fixed something that was not even remotely broken.

However, that 1 extra keypress repeatedly frustrates me and repeatedly trips me up and more frequently than I’d care to admit, causes me to redial voicemail and try again. Or wait until I get to computer and login and listen to an audio file.

In my mind, the system should work like this:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system
3. Press your phone number
4. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
5. Press your password
6. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
7. Enter voicemail system, do voicemail-related things

Does that seem at all familiar? It should–it’s the same system that was previously in place. Before the system upgrade.

I wonder if this change was tested on an appropriate sampling of their user base? I’ve got a hunch it probably was not.

Perhaps a better enhancement to the system would be to perform an overhaul that could be used across all of Comcast, so there is a familiarity whenever you need to call in to one of their phone numbers. By gosh, even better would be the notion that there could be some VUI globals, well, globally.

Beloved Apple hung up on me today because I tried to hit ‘0′ to get a human and find out store hours, instead of just listening to their pre-recorded information. I think it may have been a ‘5′ that would have let me do that, but I was impatient and instead, I received a friendly “Good bye”. Somewhere in the world, someone is chuckling that the VUI was unforgiving and that I was too impatient. To a degree, that almost seemed rather Steve Jobs-ish, eh?

Regardless, the United States is a melting pot, and I’ll happily admit that. The Spanish language is ever-increasing in usage and there is a large population that needs to be served in voice systems. In fact, if nothing else, this emphasizes to me that a function needs to be dedicated on systems to change back and forth between languages.

Example:

1. 1-6 – used for standard “options” (each is task-specific, otherwise, by the time you listen to 9 or 10 options, you’ve spaced-out and missed the one you needed or invariably someone has distracted you and you randomly push a button anyway)
2. 7 – paginate backward through options
3. 8 – swap language (English / Spanish)
4. 9 – paginate forward through options
5. * – system help
6. 0 – Operator
7. # – “Enter” or “Finished submitting” or a bypass for when a system offers the option of your account, phone number, etc.

Maybe I’m not exactly breaking new ground with my frustration points here. I doubt that I’ve come up with a world-class solution at this point, but I don’t think I’ve met a person who enjoys any of the VUI systems in place today. It may be time for an overhaul.

And don’t get me started on the systems that force you to be conversational with them.

Posted in Rant, Usability, User Experience | No Comments »

The Usability of a Soda Machine

Written by Russ on December 5, 2007 – 10:52 pm

I like to think that I’m a trainable monkey; I feel like I can pick up most things, particularly those that interest me, in a fair-to-fast amount of time. However, without fail, I will walk to the company soda machine, insert my coins for that Diet Mountain Dew that looks like an ideal thirst quencher.

There is generally a 50% chance that I will end up with said beverage, of course.

And, of course, I press the Diet Mountain Dew button firmly, staring at it to look for that little orange light (that I still think should be somewhere on its face to let me know that a circuit has been connected, that my beverage is about to be dispensed) and hold on to a moment of hope that my thirst is about to be quenched.

50% of the time, I hear a familiar buzz and humm, a shifting of some hardware and a chucking sound as a delicious Diet Mountain Dew makes its delicious way through some cold, dark tunnel, past that little cold-stopping flap and safely into the basket that someone has placed a couple of folded over paper towels into, allowing our delicious beverage treats to come to rest safely and without harm.

The other 50% of the time generally results in me feeling fairly ridiculous.

When I press the button firmly, still staring at it for that little orange light…

Nothing happens. Well, nothing on the button.

SOLD OUT, at the rapid pace of about 1 second per letter, scrolls right to left across the LED display that normally tells me the proper amount of coinage to insert for a tasty beverage treat. Without fail, I press Diet Mountain Dew again, perhaps several times as if I’m impatiently waiting for an elevator and thinking that pressing the button repeatedly makes the elevator show up. If I have my wits about me or if someone else is in the room with me, I will quickly shift gears and press a secondary choice–either that tantalizing Gatorade in a 12 oz can or one of those mini little bottles of water.

Without fail–and even though I’ve been using this machine for nearly a year now–I continue to press the dispense button, even though the machine will not allow any other actions to occur until all of the letters of SOLD OUT have scrolled completely across the LED.

The flaw here is simple, and one that has no real impact on the vending machine creator; my money is in the machine and I’m going to buy something (most likely). I’m going to press another button, even if I have to wait another 10 seconds to find out just how empty the machine is. I will most likely return the next day and will most likely repeat this until my situation changes.

However, everyday, I’m going to sit and think about this soda machine and how foolish I feel for repeating the same mistakes. Everyday I’m going to add a little bit more loathing–until I begin to consider that a 12 oz Diet Mountain Dew that I should be able to get instantly has lost some of its lustre. Maybe, instead, the $5 coffee (Chicago proper has a tax of about 10.25%, I believe) gets my attention–or the <competitor brand> vitamin watery drink gets my attention, as does the elevator ride down, the walk around the building and the return, which costs me (and possibly my employer) all of that time.

Perhaps the real cost is to the employer, or the place in which vending machines are placed–with the exception of small town hotels; the vending machines there are often times the only dinner a late worker can get. The initial cost of the beverage is insignificant. The cost to my ego and pride is minor, but has sort of a cascading effect as I eventually get fed up (with myself?) and take my business (sometimes) elsewhere. I certainly do not reward my employer with the return of an extra 15ish minutes tacked on to my normal departure time.

Anyway, this diatribe should be wrapped up with a simple solution:

When a type of beverage is empty–hell, if it’s at X left–show us on the outside. I’d love to know when a machine is at capacity. The odds would seem high to me that the beverages are possibly warm since the machine was potentially refilled recently. When that number gets lower, I may be convinced to purchase two to ensure that I can have enough beverage to get me through a giant, spicy burrito. When that number is at zero–you guessed it–I’m going to go for my second choice, my third choice, or the phone to call the person responsible for calling the soda-machine-filler-person. Even better–add a wifi card in the machine, let it on the wifi network and have it send a nice little message when the machine reaches a certain level of dispensed beverages and the soda-machine-filler-person can get an SMS, email or some other nice little notification.

And me, well, I get to not dwell on this topic any longer, at the very least.

Posted in Usability | 1 Comment »