Why is technology so hard to use?
At war with the soda machine
Working here has made me infinitely more aware of usability in everyday things. Some days I think my hubby’s ready to throw his shoe at me if I say “that’s just not usable” one more time. We had one such encounter over the weekend when we stopped to get a soda from a conveniently located machine. (I apologize for the bad resolution – there’s only so much you can do with an iPhone in a shadowy hallway.)
Take a close look … if you put your coins in that machine, where would you instinctively want to push to deploy your soda? The big shiny button picturing the actual bottle of soda, right?
But no! There are still old-style buttons on the side that have to be selected for purchase.
It’s a small detail, but considering that soda companies are now using both functionalities, it made me pause before I actually made my purchase – it wasn’t automatic. If I had put my money in, pushed the button and gotten my soda, I would have thought nothing of this interaction. I wouldn’t have growled and said “this is bad usability.” My husband wouldn’t have rolled his eyes. And so on.
But the fact that the machine didn’t do what I thought it should at first glance made me feel like maybe I was doing something wrong, or maybe I was too old to understand these new-fangled machines, or maybe even the machine was broken. But none of those were true. And in the end, it just made feel like I should have bought a Coke.
I deleted my Twitter account!
I accidentally deleted my Twitter account last week. Yes, yes, I know—that’s like accidentally driving one’s car off the road or misplacing one’s pants. So how did I do it? Glad you asked.
Like many folks, I manage more than one Twitter account. For example, I have my personal Twitter account, a business account for Tuitive, and then a couple extra accounts related to some side projects. I mistakenly thought I was logged in as one of these extra accounts when I made my way to Twitter’s account deactivation screen, as shown here:
Notice anything telling in the above screenshot? I didn’t either, and that’s the problem! While this screen does a great job of describing the dire, irreversible nature of deactivating a Twitter account, there is no indication anywhere as towhich account I am logged into and about to deactivate. I assumed incorrectly and pushed the button.
I was pretty shocked when I realized I had deactivated my personal Twitter account. To add insult to injury, Twitter would not let me create a new account using my previous username or email address, meaning it wasn’t really deleted. It was just caught in some sort of Twitter purgatory, stuck between the world of the active account and that of the deleted damned.
Fortunately after a few days of pleading-via-email, Twitter support had mercy on me and restored my account. (It came with a polite admonition, however, that this was a one-time favor.)
So, happy ending. Crisis averted. Problem solved. But what a waste of time and energy, both on my part and that of Charles at Twitter support. Here’s a super simple usability tweak to the HTML on the Twitter account deactivation screen that I’m sure would have prevented this issue from happening in the first place:
The best part is, in the time it has taken for you to read this, a Twitter developer could have implemented this and perhaps prevented another careless fool like me from making a similar mistake.
Like many usability tweaks, simple changes have huge impacts that can prevent a lot of heartache. And we all know that an ounce of prevention is worth pounds of tech support.
It’s not about you
Are you about to take on a big website redesign? How about rebuilding that clunky-but-critical software application? Before you dive in, remember that the final arbiter of quality is not you, it’s your users. Here are a few steps to better understanding their needs and behaviors before you spend any precious programming dollars:
Do your user research
Start with any quantitative data, such as analytics, that you already have to see what your users are (or aren’t) doing. For additional insight, you can user-test the current site or software to see firsthand what delights and what frustrates your users. Talk with colleagues in sales or customer service to learn current and persistent user issues. Even if this research data already exists in a report somewhere, make the time to talk. The empathy engendered from an actual conversation with people “in the trenches” will naturally equip you to make more user-centered design and development decisions.
Build a prototype
Actually, make that “prototypes” (plural)— no one creates a perfect prototype on the first try. But that’s the idea: to fail as quickly, as cheaply, and as often as possible knowing that each iteration gets you closer to a solution worth building. Certainly you can build effective prototypes with HTML or Flash, but Acrobat, Powerpoint, and even paper and pencil are still excellent tools to get your ideas into a tangible format. In doing so, you can better communicate, evaluate, and test your ideas. Speaking of testing…
User testing
When some think of user testing, they imagine white lab coats and clipboards. Unfortunately, many also imagine delays and extra expenses. When forced to choose between this and no user testing at all, most choose the later. For shame! On smaller projects or those with a wicked-tight deadline, take the guerilla approach: find 6 to 10 coworkers, parents, spouses, neighbors (whoever is willing to help) and observe them individually as they complete one or two of the most important tasks on your prototype. This won’t give you all of the insight or fancy reports that formal usability testing provides, but testing even just one person is 100% better than testing no one. The results might surprise or even frustrate you, but better to know these things now than after the project is otherwise done.
The right design
It’s true that we human beings like shiny, pretty things. In technology, nicely designed interfaces are perceived as easier to use than non-designed ones. This doesn’t mean your project should be a beauty contest, however. For example, imagine if Google’s screen design utilized rich imagery and elaborate screen transitions. While this might be appealing in another setting, it would be a complete nuisance on a search screen. For Google, and indeed many others, the most “beautiful” screen design is often the simplest.
It’s worth it
We know very well the pressures on a new project to quickly “get to work” building something. It’s unfortunate when steps like user research, prototyping, and user testing are the first things to go when budgets and timelines tighten. The irony is that these will often save time and money in the long run, and ultimately keep you from unwittingly rebuilding a merely better-looking version of what doesn’t work.
Hey technology, where are your manners?
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.
