We sometimes struggle to communicate why user experience and user interface design is so important in software development. As usual, Adaptive Path says it so well in Subject to Change:

Customers rightfully have little appreciation for the technical workings of a product. Beyond the interface, everything else might as well be magic. Think about a light switch. You flip a switch; a light turns on. How many of us care how it works? Or you put things in the refrigerator, and a day later, when you take them out, they’re cold. Magic. You pick up a handset, press seven or ten digits, and are talking to someone far away. Magic. (page 23)

This is very true, from the perspective of what the customer “thinks” he or she sees. But in reality, the interface is much deeper than this. Don Norman said it well when he expressed this:

Problems arrive at interface, any interface, be it person and machine, person and person, or organizational unit and organizational unit. Any place where two different entities interact is an interface, and this is where confusions arise, where conflicting assumptions are born and nourished, where synchronization difficulties proliferate as queues form and mismatched entities struggle to engage.

The user interface (human to computer in a software application) is of course very important. If this isn’t right, or easy, or intuitive, users will find another way to do what they want. But there are other interfaces that are important too, that can trip users up without them even realizing why. The interface between the presentation layer and the data layer, the interface between your database and someone else’s, the interface between your user’s healthcare data and the secure vault in which it’s stored - all of these should be carefully architected, optimzed, and planned for scalability, connection failure, and overload.

It’s not enough to simply focus on UI design. Underlying systems and interfaces, and those who create them, must think about customer experience as well.

We’ve all been reading the new book by Adaptive Path’s Peter Merholz, Brandon Schauer, David Verba, and Todd Wilkens, called Subject to Change. Adaptive Path is an organization we have long admired, because they have been so successful at evangelizing customer experience and in fact creating a brand around their expertise in that arena.

Over the next few days and weeks, we’ll post quotes from the book that are particularly interesting or particularly good at articulating concepts we also practice and evangelize. One of the reasons I like this book is that is concisely explains ideas I sometimes struggle to communicate to clients, business partners, and even my friends and family.

Today’s Quote:

Aiming to be better at an activity that everyone else has already mastered isn’t a strategy. Strategy is about tradeoffs — purposefully choosing tactics different that those used by your competition. Strategy means saying no to some activities so you can excel at others. And the result of these strategic tradeoffs is products and services that are clearly distinguished in customers’ minds, with meaningful differences that can’t easily be replicated by others. (page 18)

This sentiment echoes our philosophy of user-centered software development. To us, it isn’t enough to just create software. Anyone can do that in today’s market. The differentiator, which gives our clients a competitive advantage, is that we help them truly understand their customers’ abilities, needs, and desires, and build software products to support those things.

I just spent the past 45 minutes listening to my husband as he grew more and more frustrated with offshore tech support from our cable provider. Who likes offshore tech support - raise your hand? I thought so. Everyone is doing it these days, so the cost-savings advantage it brings has essentially been eliminated. Customers hate it, so why does anyone use it? Apple Computer doesn’t, and that was the initial reason I bought a Mac laptop that was significantly more expensive than a comparable PC. I didn’t care about the price tag anymore. After sending my PC back to the manufacturer 4 times, and spending countless hours on the phone with offshore tech support, I made the conscious decision to go with good customer service over price savings.

Apple has chosen not to play the parity game, but to focus on good design and good support. They certainly got my business.

I was reading a nifty article today on Vitamin and found a nugget worth sharing: The Squint Test. Its purpose is to determine quality of design layout for a landing page. From Amy Hoy:

“I always use the Squint Test to evaluate landing pages. It’s as easy as saying “if the wind changes, it’ll stick that way”:

Close one eye and make the other go all fuzzy. Can you still identify the key parts of the design? Give special consideration to important areas of focus and the download/call to action button.”

This reminds me of similar tests we did in college with oil paintings. We would stand way back from the painting, to see if what we had been scrutinizing from 3 inches away made sense from 20 feet away. I like doing this type of thing with foreign language sites too. If I can’t understand any of the words, can the design still lead me down the correct path?