Thursday, December 8, 2011

#ThinkKit11 Day 8: Inspiration from the Everyday ...

Thursday, Dec 8: Inspiration Spaces 
When you need inspiration, where do you go? What place really did it for you in 2011?

Now this one is deep. As in full-pot-of-coffee deep ... or two.

As a usability and user experience designer, where do I find myself being inspired? To be honest, it is not necessarily in a specific place, but in the everyday. I know that sounds nuts, perhaps even calls for a straightjacket fitting, but hear me out. Not trying to avoid the question, but it's worth delving into. Three quick, but funny, stories:

Usability Design - of a physical computer

When I was in grad school - back in the late 90's for my M.A. in Computer Science - the primary method of transporting documents between computers was the 3.5" floppy disk. Those were the days! (... slips into daydream for 5 min. ... )

Anyway, back in those days, many computers didn't have the electronic eject systems of today, but rather they were the physical mechanism eject buttons. One would really need to press that eject button to kick the disk out, but the harder/quicker you pressed the button, it would physically shoot it completely out of the computer box itself. Thus, if your reflexes were good, you could press that button hard, and catch the disk in midair. It was really impressive if you could do it.

Many of the computers in the computer lab at the school were older computers, probably HPs, Packard-Bells, IBMs, or combination thereof. If you were to look, they would have their power buttons located in the top-right corner of the physical computer front.  Unfortunately, in some stroke of brilliance, some of these engineers decided to reuse the same physical button for the power as they did for the disk eject mechanism

Now, I'm willing to give this oversight a slight pass ... but ... when they put both buttons on top of each other, so that the power button would be at the top, and the eject button was underneath (by appx. 1") ... well ... you can see where this is going. One quick glance at the buttons, a quick hand working off reflexes, and .......

Back in those days, if you hit the power button, there was no stopping it.  It was a hard power down, equivalent to cutting the power. No 4-second delay, no reset. Poof. And there was minimal automatic backup processes by software packages back then.

Hearing students crying their lungs out because they had lost hours of work because they hit the wrong physical button on the computer - heartbreaking.

Usability Design - of Walmart Self-Check System

Back in 2009, I had just moved to Indianapolis and was becoming comfortable getting around town. I found myself one day at Walmart on the NW side - 86th & Michigan, to be exact - and needed to pick up some basic staples for home, including a loaf of bread from their bakery.

Usually, when I only have a handful of things I'm purchasing, I'll use the self-checkout scanners, and this was one of those times. So, like normal, I start scanning my items for purchase, making sure the bread was last (because no one likes a squished loaf of bread). When I scanned the bread, the system flashed "Item not recognized". Boy, that was odd - it's a loaf of bread, for Pete's sake. I tried again - same message. So, with a touch of embarrassment, I signaled for help.

The register clerk, a sweet older lady, came over and informed me it wasn't anything I was doing wrong. The loaf of bread I was scanning had the barcode printed on a foil wrapper, which was reflecting the infrared beams incorrectly. You could tell she had seen this problem before.

Well, that was Usability Fail #1, but Usability Fail #2 seconds later was the kicker!

The clerk then proceeded to enter her passcode into the self-check system to enter an override code. Once she entered, she paused a second, and then said "This is going to look funny on your receipt, but it will be all right if you don't mind." I had no problem with it - but I was curious why she stated what she did, since it was, after all, a loaf of bread.  She typed in the price on the touchscreen, and then started typing in the description, pausing after pressing "B", "R", "E", & "A".

The self-check system computer programmers had forgotten the "D" on the touchscreen keyboard.

To this day, I'm still scratching my head on that one. I mean ... how in the ... the "D" button?!? Are you kidding?!?

Usability Design - of a coffee mug

I love coffee. I love everything about coffee. Period. Except the teeth staining thing, but I digress

The first week I lived in Indianapolis, I purchased a coffee mug from Einstein Bros. in Broad Ripple. I was in grad school - 99-cent unlimited coffee per visit - SCORE! That night, I gave the mug its first wash through the dishwasher and found a label on the underside of the lid:



OK, so it's an innocent enough message, stating "CAUTION! Contents may be very hot." Fair enough - good message. In this sue-happy world we live in, Einstein Bros. don't need to jack up bagel prices because some fool dumped an entire cup of coffee on his/her lap without being warned the contents could be scalding hot.

I looked at this label, and thought about it some more. And then it hit me.  It wasn't the message that was flawed ... it was the LOCATION of the message that was flawed.  Why would you put the warning label that contents may be hot on the underside of the lid, rather than on the top-side of the lid?  In other words, when the lid is secured on the mug - after you have poured hot coffee or other beverage into the mug - where's the warning message? Well, unless you have those fancy X-ray spectacles you ordered through the comic books ...

Moral of the stories - Improving usability is what I do

When you woke up this morning, what did you do? I'm going to guess you worked with an interface - smashing a Snooze button into next Tuesday. Some engineer had the audacity to put that Snooze button right where you KNEW you could press it over, and over, and over again. Is the interface usable? Of course - perhaps TOO usable, but that's another story.

Every day since starting down this journey of HCI & Usability, I have looked at the world from a different set of eyes. I look at the mundane, the common, the "simple" - and I look at the interface a person would have with it. I look at things from how my 6-yr-old niece might work with it. Or my youngest sister (mid-20's). Or myself (mid-30's) or my parents (recent retirees). Or my great aunt & uncle (mid-80's). Where would they use this interface? How would they use it? Why would they use it? Would they understand how to use it, or would they invent their own way?

Software, web sites, and now, mobile devices are no different. They, too, have an interface which a "user" must be able to interpret data quickly and properly in order to proceed. If you don't understand something on a web site, is it your fault? Is it the physical computer's fault? The software? The data? A combination? That, to me ... that's fun. I love those type of puzzles. That's why I went into usability & user experience design. And that's what I'm looking expand on for my career.

Try something this week. During your normal day, look at the mundane. Perhaps on the computer, perhaps it's the computer itself. It could even be your microwave or toaster. But look at it from a usability perspective.
  • Did the manufacture or company label a button wrong, or used a more complicated word, rather than a simple word?
  • Did they make their product whereby if you did one action you thought was right, but it performed something completely different?
  • Did they use a icon or metaphor in the wrong way (i.e., did they use a flashlight, binoculars, or a magnifying glass to indicate "Search" - why did they choose that icon?)
  • Who was the intended audience for the interface? Can all people use the interface or just a select demographic?
If you find something that you think is odd or peculiar, how would you change it? And then, if you had the power to actually change it, how would you confirm to worldwide audience it was the right change from their perspective?

If you think of something, post it in a comment below and start the conversation! Who knows, inspiration can spurn creativity. That's how and where I find inspiration. Blog ya tomorrow!

No comments:

Post a Comment