I recently ran across this video again, and there is no clearer example of who you should really be thinking about when you are building a website or web-based software. Watch the video and we will catch-up after.

I know, right! Granted this is a Google Chrome advertisement, but it is a very real look at very real users. These people are not web designers, or developers. However, they are everyday people who use computers all the time and still have a hard time understanding the concept of a browser. When designing a product that is easy to use, you must make design decisions base on more of these types of users than any other kind. So keep these users in your mind, your heart, and keep this video around for inspiration in the future.

Now I need to find that big E to post this to the Internets through my AOL broadband…

As those of you on our e-mailing list know, Tuitive is embarking on a campaign to become sought-after public speakers.  While presenting in front of a large group scares the daylights out of most people, for some reason our motley crew is really excited by the chance to get out and share our expertise with the world. 

So in order to prepare for this adventure, we’ve each been developing presentations on our area of expertise as they relate to Tuitive’s core mission – then giving the presentations to each other.  I spoke at my high school graduation and I’ve taught dozens of courses all over this lovely country, but this little group made me more nervous than most.  Something about the fact that they all know my strengths and weaknesses, I'm sure.

I'd worked diligently on my presentation (with the thrilling title “Your Client’s User Experience”), including talking extensively to Jon (our boss), digging up relatable stories, writing notes, rewriting notes, rehearsing, and even learning Prezi (new-fangled presentation software for those unfamiliar).  I put several weeks into it.  But no matter how much thought I put into it, no matter how many hours, I was still bored by the damned thing.  And that boredom came across when I presented to the Tuitive team. 

We have a policy of being brutally honest with each other about our performances.  Not cruel, mind you, but honest.  Our philosophy is (1) it’s better to hear it from a teammate than go out in the world looking like an idiot, and (2) what each of us does in the name of Tuitive reflects on us all.  So they let me have it: it felt rushed, there wasn’t enough audience involvement, there weren’t enough images, and so on.  They were all 100% right.  And I could have handed everyone a list before I even turned on the projector telling them exactly the same things. 

My disinterest in my presentation came through.  It’s not that I didn’t believe what I was saying, but it all seemed so elementary and common sense – like something you could find easily in 20 different business self-help books at Border’s.  It didn’t feel useful and therefore I had no passion for it.

A couple months back, however, I had given a presentation to the team that I was passionate about: grammar.  No laughing – I love grammar.  Perhaps it’s because it’s been hammered into me since I was old enough to talk, but I have a passion for it, and it makes me absolutely insane to hear the English language butchered regularly. 

You might assume that a presentation on grammar would be far more boring to the audience than one about creating a positive client experience, right?  But no, the team really liked the grammar presentation – we spent well over 2 hours going through it and discussing it, and it’s definitely changed everyone’s writing and speaking styles.  Although we still have the same technical skill sets we had before the grammar lesson, we all now sound more intelligent and competent in our writing and speech.  

So why did this presentation have more impact than the one about client experience?  Because I was able to put myself into it.  I'm passionate about educating others on this subject.  (I'm passionate about client experience, too, just not about educating everyone on the subject!)  My enthusiasm was infectious, the audience got involved, they remembered what they’d been taught.

The irony of the poor user experience I'd created for the attendees of my presentation on improving client user experience was not lost on me.  So I'm keeping that client user experience presentation, working on improving its content, getting the audience more involved, slowing down, and finding my passion for educating on that subject as well.  But for the moment, the grammar presentation is out front with me, ready to educate the world about the difference between “that” and “who.”  

Amanda is available for speaking engagements, and would be thrilled to give her presentation “Grammar: Common Pitfalls and Mistakes (Or ‘How I’s Be Larnin’ to Rite Good’).”  Contact her at amanda@tuitivegroup.com for more information.

Disclaimer – Despite the fact that I first learned personal computing as it exists today via an Apple, I have long since drifted away from Mac as my preferred computing format.  I switched to Windows OS in college, but tried to return to Mac in 2008.  I did not enjoy the experience, finding it too restrictive.  That said, I have been an iPhone user for nearly 2 years now (as I patiently await the release of Windows Mobile 7).

Travis, you ignorant slut.

While I do agree with you that the App Store is not working, I believe it’s because of a lack of options, not an overabundance.  Specifically, the lack of options and functionality surrounding search.  Perhaps I'm spoiled to the search functions of Microsoft products, such as Outlook, that give me options of what to search and how to search, but I find the App Store’s lone search box woefully lacking.  I have no opportunity to select options such as “show by rating,” “show by relevance,” “search only last 6 months,” “search only the utilities category” – you get the idea.  Granted, under individual categories, I have some options, but that doesn’t really help when I'm searching for a very specific app type.

Recently, I attempted to find a task list program for the iPhone that would allow me to use task lists on my iPhone.  (That’s right, non-iPhone users, there’s no native task list functionality on the platform.)   I wanted an app that allowed me to schedule recurrence, set a deadlines, use multiple lists, sync with Outlook, categorize, and send me reminders.  But all I could enter was one little search box.  With those criteria, the search data returned was maddening.  A little more than half of the results returned were actually focused on task lists, others included grocery lists, note taking apps, and even a sketching app or two .  I tried a variety of search terms such as “business task list,” “outlook task list, “ and “selectable task list.”  No dice.

Thusly I began the arduous task of wading through all the options out there.  I wanted to read other users’ reviews, but I didn’t want to restrict myself to only checking out the apps that popped up first in the list.  But reading reviews after selecting “show me 25 more” multiple times is exasperating.  After finishing a reviews for a specific app, the App Store returns the user back to the initial list of 25.  Heaven forbid you’ve made it down to app #210 – you’ll wind up selecting “show me 25 more 8 times before getting back to where you left off!  Argh!  Had I been able to better whittle down my search by specific criteria, I could have saved hours.

Now I know, Travis, that you oppose the free apps, but after my experience, I say thank goodness for the free options.  Most quality developers provide a free mini version of their apps, so I was able to try a dozen or so before actually paying for anything.  I would have been furious if I'd had to pay even 99 cents for every app I tried.  Yes, the iBeer app and others like it are pointless.  But remember, this is not a business phone (or it would have a native task list app), but a general purpose phone.  That means frat boys are going to want their Virtual Lighter app, teenage girls will want their Hairstyle app, and someone with too much time on their hands will want the More Toast! virtual toast app.

I know it will come as no shock to you, Travis, that I can’t stand the Apple “we know best” way of thinking.  I totally understand that it makes some people feel safe and comfortable, but the last time I tried owning a Mac, I nearly went out of my mind not being able to customize my computer the way I wanted to use it.  

 (And for those who are curious, I wound up buying and trying 3 different apps over the course of 2 months before finally giving up altogether.  Now I use a combination of Outlook’s task lists and Post-its.)

Disclaimer- I have been an Apple user since my childhood. I have been using Macs exclusively since 2001, and I don’t plan on ever going back to Windows … ever.

After finally moving to the iPhone, I can now talk intelligently on the iTunes App Store, and more specifically tell your why it is not working.

The App Store is the antithesis of Apple. Apple is providing a platform, the iPhone, and allowing anyone to create software to run on the platform. The App Store represents the “Microsoft-ing” of the iPhone platform. This is exactly how Windows has been operating for decades. Since its inception Apple has been providing a limited product line-up, which they control from creation to retail, with a “we know how to innovate” attitude. This attitude is highlighted in this article where Steve Jobs admits that Apple doesn’t do market research, and essentially they could care less what their customers have to say. This attitude might not be the best, but many people are excited about the innovative products Apple creates. With the App Store, the control to innovate is being taken away from Apple and given to the masses.

There are many reasons why I enjoy living in Apple’s world, not least of which is I am tired of having to make so many decisions about electronics. People have too many important daily decisions to make about food, shelter, and transportation that they really don’t need to be deciding on which of 12 video cards they should buy. For example, I have been looking to buy an HDTV for the better part of 2 years. I know the specs, I have the cash, but there are too many choices, and the choices keep changing. It is too much for me to take. People say they want as many choices as possible, that they don’t want to be fenced in, and they want options. This, friends, is simply not true. People only say they want options so they can shift blame to the choices, and away from their ability to choose correctly. “I thought this was going to be the best HDTV, but there are too many choices; how was I supposed to know?” This mindset is more of a defense mechanism than a true ideological stance.

The Apps Store brings too many choices to the iPhone. To make matters worse, gathering information on all these apps to make an informed decision is practically impossible. Let’s try an experiment. Please search for a utilitarian app, something that serves a purpose and the iPhone is perfect for: a grocery list app. I’ll wait … for those of you without iPhones here is a screenshot of what you get.

In total there are 112 apps that come up when you search for “grocery list.” Admittedly, some of the apps are not relevant, but the majority of they are. How do I know which one is the best? Apple used to tell me what was the best, or at least there were only one or two options. Now Apple makes me wade through dozens of apps and go through a clunky download process to see if I will like the app. And because there are so many apps, I am always wondering, “Well is there another app that is a little better out there?” Now I have to think about which grocery store app to use, and not something more important, like feeding my dog – which I am sure there is an app for, but how do I know it is the best one for my dog and me? Will I ever know?

Now some of you might be thinking about the App Store approval process, where each app is carefully screened, and only the good ones make it. (Warning, from here on all links will open in iTunes) To that I would say, “Raspberries!” There is an app in the App Store called “Hold On.” It is an app that records how long you can hold down a button, and it now has multiplayer functionality via Bluetooth (no, seriously).

Really? This was rigorously approved? Come on … and let’s not even talk about all the flatulence apps. So in the spirit of offering solutions with my complaints, here is what I think should happen:

1) Apple should create more apps in-house. This will allow them to continue to innovate, and create better apps for their platform.

2) All apps should be $.99 or more. The free apps are the heaviest weight pulling Apple into the mud. If the application is good enough, people will buy it.

3) Focus apps to match the strengths of the iPhone, portability, multi-touch, accelerometer, geo-location, and the Internet. The iBeer app does not really leverage any of these strengths well.

In conclusion, Apple – please stop pandering to the masses. I know the revenue is nice, but you were already a successful company and the iPhone already has a HUGE profit margin. The iPhone has gotten you into more houses than ever, but is this really the company you want to be keeping? You are who you associate with, and I can’t see this going anywhere good. You have been warned …

As web power-users, things that often seem wildly obvious to us, can be just plain confusing to everyday users. Several years ago we made heavy use of Flash on a jewelry website redesign. We were quite careful to use Flash responsibly and created easy-to-see navigation on the page.

But after the site launched, we found that visitors thought they were looking at a dreaded Flash intro. Some even emailed the site owner asking where the “skip intro” button was. Inexplicably, very few people saw the rather large navigation buttons at the top of the page, which we so lovingly put in place.

Many got stuck.

Visitors fled.

Sales plummeted.

This behavior was the last thing we expected during design and development. But it was a valuable lesson learned: users rarely use a website or web application in the way we expect.

Usability testing for the cost of a pizza

That jewelry website lost a week of online sales before we fixed the problem with a simple, strategically placed “view jewelry” text link. I’ve always wondered how things would have gone had we employed some user testing before launching (or even building) the site.

What if we had simply ordered a pizza and had the pizza delivery boy browse the site? Maybe we would have seen the problem then.

What if we had invited our office neighbors over to devour the remaining slices? Maybe they would have uncovered this issue while trying to place an order.

Had we done either, we may have avoided a big headache for us, the jewelry website’s owners, and its users.

Here’s the take-away: if you have any say over your company’s next web project, be sure to do some usability testing before it’s released into the wild.

Some guidelines for home-grown user testing:

• Recruit a handful of coworkers, parents, spouses, neighbors, or anyone willing to help to be your test subjects.
• Assure each participant that they are not being tested; they are helping you test the website and make it better.
• Observe each participant individually as they complete various website tasks.
• Bite your tongue and keep to yourself inner monologue thoughts like “Click the BIG BUTTON…IT’S RIGHT THERE…HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT??”
• Note the tasks that were completed with ease as well as those that were confusing and need rethinking.
• Refrain from beating yourself up over the things that are now obvious that a few moments ago were not.
• Rinse and repeat.

This is guerilla-style, but you will be surprised at the insight gleaned by watching someone with a fresh set of eyes wade through your website or your web application. Better to have test subjects find the flaws than would-be paying customers!

The wife and I went out for dinner last week at a Scottish Pub (MacNiven’s if you must know). We like the food, and the beer selection is outrageous. With our meal they brought an assortment of condiments, both American and from the UK. My favorite UK condiment is called Brown Sauce. It is brown, and it is a sauce. Period. No fancy description or label. It says what it is, and it is what it says (sorry to get Dr. Seuss on you there).

Well what does this have to do with usability or user experience? I thought you would never ask.

The next day I was looking through my Twitter search (follow me @travisbsmith) for “Usability” and the following tweet jumped out at me. It is from @jdgraffam (how exactly do you cite a tweet?).

“In the UK, do you know what they call the brown sauce? Brown sauce. We should do that more often when labeling things online for usability.”

This idea of calling things what they are is huge for usability, information architecture, interaction design, and user experience. Users need to be able to understand what is available to them on a site, as well as where links are going to take them next. Links and titles should be understandable and logical to users. Users who cannot figure out where they want to go next will simply go to another site that speaks to them in language they can understand.

So how do we choose titles and labels that are understood by everyone?

This is one of the great mysteries of the web. There are some titles and labels that are becoming more universal such as, about us, blog, and portfolio. The only way real way to know what your users are looking for is to ask them first. User Research on the front end of a project can give the rest of the project more insight, and a better understanding about what you users want to see on the site. This user testing can be done with an existing product, with prototypes, or even with a simple card sort. The main idea is to find out what users expect to see in terms of labels, or what they think a label means before releasing a product into the wild.

Sure, you will not be able to ensure that 100% of users will understand every label or link, but doing user research and user testing will allow you to be sure that more users will understand your site, and that their overall user experience will be positive.

So until next time, keep it usable, Internets (or World Wide Web if you want to call it what it really is).

Last time on the Tuitive blog, I talked about doing one thing well. Today I am going to expand on that. New technologies, especially on the web, have to play well with other programs.
The days of proprietary formats, and disconnected applications are numbered. As more and more applications begin to move to the web, being able to share information and users is becoming vital to success. The idea of making user stick to one tool or another is starting to backfire.
Users want freedom.
“I want to be able to update my tumblr blog with photos from my Flickr account, and then tweet about my new photos and update my Facebook page. Oh, and I want to be able to do it from my cell phone…”

This sounds ridiculous when you type it out (but it is nicely illustrated above), but many of us are doing it every day. I will not take the time to update each of my accounts across all my cyber hangouts. Instead, I want the systems to do it automatically.
Users want to be able to choose their own tools and services online, and they want these tools to work together with services they already have chosen to use. Users want to know what other services will work with a specific service. This interaction with existing services is no longer a luxury feature - it is a necessity. I am not going to sign up for a new online tool if it will not work with my existing Facebook page, personal blog, Twitter account, and my cell phone.
Users also want the ability to move to a new tool whenever they want, without loosing their existing content or the time they have put into that service.
The use of open API’s has helped users weave their preferred services together. The best web services are beating their users to the punch. Flickr, for example, has a blog-ready photo widget you can create and then paste into our blog. When you update Flickr, your latest photos are now on your blog.
In order for a web service to survive, it has to be able to play well with others.

Until next time, keep it usable, Internets.

As my mother always said “If you are going to do something, do it well.” This sentiment seems lost on many different technologies and websites that many of us encounter every day. Sites and software that are cluttered and difficult to navigate abound on the web and on our computers.
I am writing this post in Microsoft Word (gross, I know). Just in this Word window alone there are approximately one gazillion different buttons (approximately) and options I can choose from, only a few of which are labeled, and even fewer are actually relevant to the task I am currently trying to complete. I am including a picture of my Word window, which I may have intentionally complicated to prove my point.

Now Word does what I need it to do, but it does not do it well. I don’t feel good after completing a Word document. In fact, I usually feel like a have escaped an early demise, and I quickly need to move on to something that does one thing very well, Google.

Now Google has taken the idea of doing one thing well to the extreme. They are a search company. This is very evident on their homepage. All you can do from this page is search. They are so good at searching, and google.com is so easy to use that Google has become synonymous with Internet searching.

I understand that comparing Word to Google is not really a fair comparison, but it helps me make my point. So just to be thorough lets also look at Google’s closest competitors.
Yahoo!

and MSN.com

Yikes. I was going to search for something on msn.com, but then I watched that hula-hoop video… and bought a computer. I sure wish I could remember what I was going to search for.

So what does all this mean?
The idea of doing one thing well should serve as the foundation of all technology. When technology starts to try and be everything to everyone, it becomes nothing to everyone (sorry, I totally stole that from someone else). There are many examples of technology doing one thing well, Twitter, iPhone apps, facebook Facebook (in the beginning). All of these technologies had a specific purpose and they implemented their focused functionality very well.
Twitter allows you to broadcast short messages to your friends. That is all. The core functionality is still the same, and the ease of use is astonishingly simple.

iPhone apps are another great example. Each application does one thing, and many of these do it very well.
Facebook was born as a way to connect and communicate with people you already know. It is easy to setup, and easy to find people you know. The Facebook team may have strayed from their core functionality with applications and other features, but the core functionality is still there. It is interesting to see if Facebook users begin to jump ship to the next super-simple social networking site that comes around (Twitter), the same way that people jumped from the ever-cluttered MySpace to the super clean Facebook.

As technology moves away from the “kitchen-sink” model of development towards the user-centered model, users are beginning to change with it. In the future, it will be essential to do one thing very well, and be able to integrate with other one-function technologies. This way users have complete control over what technologies they are using, and also how they choose to use those technologies together.

Until next time, keep it usable, Internets.

I’m sure you’ll all be excited when I reveal that my husband gave me a humidifier for Christmas. It’s not a sexy gift, but I was genuinely happy to get it (my static-laden cats were happier than me– in theory, at least). The humidifier is lovely – tall and thin, and fits subtly into any room. It keeps the upper floor of our house nicely humidified (to the cats’ delight), and only goes through a tank of water per day. Despite all these wonderful features, I discovered a huge usability flaw the first time I went to fill the tank.

It has a lovely handle on top, as you can see:

But when I removed the tank to fill it, my user experience became a lot less delightful. The bottom handle is actually the lid to the opening for filling:

When I remove the lid to fill the tank, where do I grip it? Instead of a convenient handle to hold while I fill the tank, I’m left with a few less-than-ideal options. I can hold it by the water-delivery stem, and pray that it won’t get wet and slip – or become overly stressed by the weight and snap off. I can set it in the bathtub to fill, resulting in a great deal of overspray (to the cats’ dismay). Or I can hold it by the lip of the opening (which is kind of sharp). I generally opt for the later, resulting in less mess than option 2 and less danger than option 1. (That’s not entirely true - I generally opt to have my husband fill it, but that really is how he holds the tank.)

Perhaps the humidifier’s designers believed all their users would set this tall tank in kitchen sinks to fill. Nice idea, but I’d have to carry the tank downstairs every day to fill it. And like most consumers, I’m inherently lazy; an extra trip down the stairs every day isn’t appealing. That leaves me to choose between a deep bathtub and a shallow bathroom sink.

Grumble.

So aside from being irritated daily, what can I take away from this humidifier lesson? Requirements.

If a project team doesn’t fully flesh out requirements in the early stages of a project, and doesn’t keep revisiting requirements as the project progresses, that team will end up with an unfillable humidifier.

Or an unusable website.

When starting a project, it’s imperative to take the time to fully consider requirements. Most project teams are eager to get a project rolling – to jump right in and start seeing results. That’s great; we all love results. More importantly, though, we love successful results. Without fully identifying the objectives, scope, and end users, any project’s risk of failing to meet the project’s goals skyrockets. The impact of missed requirements can be huge, and that impact only increases as the project moves through its lifecycle.

That’s why it’s key to hold a team kickoff meeting. To document objectives, scope, personas, and site architecture. To review every deliverable with the team. And to test the product with end users. Because without knowing requirements, how can any project team accurately build any product for anyone?

In the last post Travis talked about managing user expectations by providing helpful information back to the user.  The idea is to keep the user informed so they feel in control, but too often I see status messages that are either confusing or just plain rude.  This causes the exact opposite effect: feeling out of control.  Here are just a few examples I’ve collected in the last week:

While syncing my Google calendar with my Outlook calendar, I received this message. I love that it warned me before taking a seemingly drastic action, but how do I know which 136 events it’s even talking about? I’m guessing it was referring to one or two reoccurring events that got moved or rescheduled, but the point is that I wasn’t sure and had NO way to find out. I clicked “yes” hoping it wasn’t 136 client meetings. (Fingers crossed…)

This geek-speak gave me a chuckle while I waited for my computer to begin its back-up. (My computer is either extremely slow at “reticulating” or has a crazy amount of “splines.”) Perhaps I shouldn’t complain – the back-up went fine – but this unhelpful message had a be-quiet-the-adults-are-talking tone that I found a bit pretentious. I don’t like when technology talks down to me.

This bizarre message from Outlook surprised me. No apology, no explanation, no suggestion…just a curt refusal to perform its intended function and one lone “OK” button for me to acknowledge its belligerence. Fine. But no, Outlook, it’s not ok.

At the end of the week, I thought I’d leave all these techno-hurdles behind and go fill up my gas tank. I pulled up to the pump, swiped my plastic, and waited for the electronic nod to begin my part of refined oil consumption. Instead, I was accused of some apparent “invalid loyalty.” Maybe that was just more geek-speak for a bad card swipe, I thought, so I swiped my card again. Invalid loyalty. What was going on here? Had I broken some solemn vow to Speedway? “It’s true,” I was prepared to tearfully confess, “I’ve been seeing other gas stations!” Turns out, though, that the pumps were simply set to align with the company’s current “loyalty card” marketing push. What a great example of marketing and engineering teaming up to complicate what should be a simple transaction.

As an aside, I was surprised that I couldn’t solve this pump problem on my own (I had to ask the attendant for help), but I was more surprised at how my expectations—my mental model—of how I thought a gas pump should work blinded me from considering other alternatives. But in my defense, I think it’s reasonable to expect things to work the same way they worked the previous 100 times.

It’s interesting to note that, other than Outlook refusing to send my email, the technology at hand worked exactly as designed: my Google calendar reconciled my events, my online back-up ran faithfully, and I drove away that day from the pump with a full tank of gas. Yet the user experiences were needlessly clunky. And as this blog demonstrates, that’s what we remember.