interface this

I wrote in another place that the more I see those “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads the more I think I’m a PC. This forthright narrowmindedness has meant that I didn’t enter the world of keystroke application launchers until earlier this year. That was when Launchy came into my life and ever since then the way I use a computer has changed out of all recognition.

ALT + SPACE opens the Launchy pop-up. Type in a couple of letters and it suggests what you are looking for, learning from what you chose before, click enter and away you go. I use Launchy not only to open applications but to go to my bookmarked websites and navigate my file system. One very obvious change can be seen on my desktop:

There’s nothing there! All my shortcuts are in folder that Launchy indexes. Any files that appear on my desktop are things that I am working on now or need some attention. My desktop acts like a to-do list or inbox. Once I’ve done what I need to do I file them away somewhere. And if I can’t remember where, Google Desktop will find them next time.

Navigation using the keyboard is fast and very satisfying. So much so that I wish I could zoom around in my favourite apps the same way. Of course in the good old days you could, it was all function keys and hierarchical menus. But webapps are all about clicking, breadcrumbs and the like. Breadcrumbs are all very well if you want to find your way out of an enchanted forest. But this is the space age baby, why can’t we teleport? Some people have started already: there are keyboard shortcuts aplenty in Gmail.

I’m not for a second arguing that we don’t need well thought out, Fitts friendly, intuitive interfaces first up. The value of keyboard navigation is for the power user, the person who feels mastery of the tool and the way it works clickwise. But what an important user community and what a powerful version 2.0 feature! Release your application soon, with your well tested interface, get it working in production and realising business value. Then work with the users to make it better. You’ve probably got a backlog of great features you want to get working on, but the chances are you released with the main functionality already there. Making it faster to switch between projects, view the story tree, look at your other accounts, add items to your shopping basket can make for a compelling experience which differentiates your product from the market or saves your people time.

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UX eye for the BA guy

Last week my excellent colleague Cristin Witcher and I presented to the International Institute of Business Analysts (Calgary Chapter) on the subject of user centered design. We had a big crowd and it went down very well – in fact we’ve had two further bookings on the back of it.

The focus of the talk was on Personas and Lo-Fi Prototyping, based on a case study of a recent project that Cristin worked on. To be honest Cristin did all the hard work, I just brought a much needed bald white-guy angle to the proceedings. The bit I liked the most were the examples of good and bad design from the real world that she had found.

One of her examples of bad design was a shot of the interior of a Chrysler PT Cruiser. The challenge was to open the window. Because on the door where anyone who has ever been near a car would expect to find the window controls there was nothing. Instead you had to go hunting (or open the door if you prefer). It turns out the window controls are in the middle of the dashboard. The designers have sacrificed ease of use for originality or creativity. Big woo! All in all a great example of how standards and conventions help us when navigating an interface in the real world or online.

On the up-side was this shot snapped in TW’s favourite Calgary coffee shop, Bumpy’s.

Want to take a spoon, which side do you go for? My suspicion would be the one with the handles sticking out, just asking to be grabbed. This is a brilliant example of Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” principle where even without trying to read the labels you can get a good idea of what does what. The interface helps us achieve our goal more quickly.

My main contribution to the proceedings was a shot of the interior of my apartment here in Calgary. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, and it’s got one of those massive North American fridges that makes ice and everything. Trouble is the fridge is directly opposite the broom cupboard and you can’t stand in front of it and open the door at the same time. From anywhere in the kitchen getting something out of the fridge involves the following steps.

1. Open the fridge door in your face
2. Close the fridge door
3. Walk around the fridge
4. Open the door again
5. Take item
6. Close door
7. Walk back around the fridge

I’ve put a photo in the presentation below that makes it a bit clearer. The point I wanted to make by all this is that the Customer who pays for our service is very rarely the User of the finished application. In this case the Customer was the property developer building the condo block. To the developer a big fridge and a broom cupboard are all good things to have in a kitchen and the builder delivered to the specification. The User of the apartment however has a completely different set of goals. Some early user testing of this configuration would have soon pointed out the problems.

Analysts/Designers need to develop workable applications for users, whilst still satisfying our customers who will be paying the bill. This can be a difficult balancing act but the user-centered techniques described in our presentation are a way for us to try and manage this process.

IIBA presentation

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Batch-it Job.

I bank with smile, largely because they are called smile (and the ethical policy keeps me warm at night). Their online banking experience is OK: it’s a bit boring but I get things done. Their phone help, however, is outstanding, the best experience I’ve had with any organisation. This week they came to my assistance again all because of an email I’d been sent.

On Wednesday I got an email from smile. It began “Your current account statement is now ready. To read it, access your
account and click onto statements.” So I accessed my account and clicked onto statements. My most recent transaction was dated the April 24th. But today was the May 2nd. My current balance was £300 less than the balance at the end of what I’d been told was latest statement.

I was confused, and a little bit worried, so I rang the telephone banking. Turns out I was the victim of a batch(-it) job. The operator could see my latest statement on her system, only they didn’t appear online till “later on”. I’d only discovered this because I’m in Canada and an email that is usually sent in the middle of the night (UK time) arrived while I was online. Typically users find this in their inbox first thing in the morning and if they are motivated to look at the details they will find the statement ready for them to view. My first thought though was why not make the communication follow the fact and not precede it?

It may be that there are processing reasons that compel this approach and that for the greater good it may be worth surprising those few customers logging on from overseas or lonely obsessives online in the middle of the night (I realise those groups are not mutually exclusive – hem hem). But I wonder… it seems to me a relic of an “overnight batch-processing” paradigm that an internet bank should not be reliant on. Moving to the web means shifting thinking patterns in all manner of ways. Satisfactory user experience means keeping your promises – including (especially?) the small ones.

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Continuous Improvement

I bought myself an iPod shuffle this week. You’ll never guess what I’m most impressed by…

“The size?” Nah – I knew it was small when I bought it.

“It’s smashing orangeyness?” Nope, that’s nice but it’s not impressive.

“Some otherwise invisible technological marvel about which you are poised to enlighten us?” Er.. No.

It’s none of that. What’s really impressed me is that Apple have made it easier to put on the headphones!

Now maybe you are thinking that you have no problem putting on headphones thanks very much; where headphone putting on is concerned you are up there with the best. Maybe you are the Roger Federer, the Sidney Crosby or the Tiger Woods of headphone donning and you are secretly hoping that putting on headphones is included in the 2012 Olympics (at LEAST as a demonstration sport) because you KNOW you’ll win gold. Well bully for you! To be honest I’ve never had a problem putting on headphones either. What’s so impressive is that Apple have made something that’s already simple even easier and as a result I (the end user) am delighted.

Can you guess what they’ve done?

Unlike any pair of headphones I’ve ever owned, especially in-the-ear headphones, they have put L & R on the inside! The place you’re naturally looking at when you try to put them on. And they’ve made the letters BIG, so you can actually read them, echoing Fitts’ Law. It’s a classic usability improvement where someone has observed how people use a product and changed the way things are done to accommodate how people are. In the days of old school “Cans” putting Left and Right on the outside made sense. That was typically the easiest place to print it and read it. But as headphones have evolved the emphasis has been to make them smaller and lighter, not easier to use. Kudos to whoever decided to change that.

I’m well aware that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill here but the point that there’s value in making simple things more simple is worth remembering in software development. Think about the apps you use or you are developing, what’s the simplest task? Chances are it’s something people do often, maybe without thinking too much about it. What if you made it even easier?

What’s wrong with a little peace, love and delighting the customer?

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