I just finished paying some bills online, but before I could do it, I had to go through a rigorous new security setup with my online bill pay. I had to choose an image (which doesn’t work so well in FF for Mac), name the image, and choose five security questions and answers. It seems to me as though the planning for this new level of security didn’t include any user experience research.

My husband and I both use our online banking site and I doubt we’re unusual in this. But how is he supposed to remember the make of my first car (he didn’t know me then) or my favorite teacher? Luckily four of the five questions were things we would both know, but I had to pick a personal one for the fifth, and just tell him the answer.

Next I used two of my new nifty questions and answers to log in. I’m assuming that they’ll rotate with every log in. I can see all kinds of problems here. One of the answers has a hyphen in it. What if I forget to put it? Will I be able to log in? What if we move (since this question is geographically specific)? Can I change it? A favorite thing of mine has a weird spelling. What if my husband misspells it? What if our pet dies? The security questions are fraught with issues, especially because they involve the input of free text. Seems like these work a lot better on the phone.

This reminds me of a bank application problem someone described to me once. You get three tries to log in before you are “blocked out.” But someone isn’t careful with the implementation, and three erroneous tries over a period of several months leave you blocked with not much understanding of why. Ugh, bad planning!

I’m all for security but it has lots of gotchas. When I see people’s printouts of their passwords taped to their desks, I know something could have been done a little better. Maybe I should just tape a printout of our security questions and answers to the fridge, so we don’t mess up.

UPDATE:

Well, I knew it. On his first login, my husband got us locked out of the account. First, I couldn’t remember if my favorite animal was a dog or a black lab. Then he got the location of our rehearsal dinner wrong! (I do understand…could the answer be the hotel? Or the city? Or the state?). So I call the help desk, and this nice lady informs me that no, I can’t change the settings…this is all very important to keep people who want to phish my account out (no matter that I can’t get in). Then she says, “why don’t you just print the questions and answers?” Oh right, because that is so secure! Geez. :)

User experience is a term often heard among those who create and use software. Though it is presented as something novel, it’s actually a pretty old concept—something considered explicitly at least since Xerox Parc—and perhaps even before that (for example, consider the obvious beauty of Babbage’s Difference Engine in the figure below). In spite of this, I am struck with what seems to be a growing buzz associated with ideas such as ‘usability’, ‘user-centered software’ and ‘passion for the user’. Microsoft and Google are gobbling up user experience engineers as fast as universities around the country can churn them out. Peers in other software shops are all playing the ‘we do usability too’ game. As things start to reach the frenetic level of ‘movement’, the skeptic looks for the snake-oil salesman hawking his miracle elixir.

Recently, I finished reading Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World,¹ by several authors from the venerable flagship of ‘product experience, strategy and design’, Adaptive Path. One may take Subject to Change as a manifesto of sorts for the software experience/user-focused software movement (note Adaptive Path would probably object being placed in so narrow a category as ‘software’). In order to support their claims, the authors of Subject to Change rely on inductive reasoning: they describe a number of anecdotes and observations that confirm and support their theories on the value of user experience to companies and the marketplace. The problem with this approach is that it tends to obfuscate the outliers, or the exceptions to the rule (which tend to be more interesting, but, alas, are rarely considered). In his book Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes the problem of induction from the perspective of philosopher Karl Popper:

There are only two types of theories:

1. Theories that are known to be wrong, as they were tested and adequately rejected (he [Popper] calls them falsified).
2. Theories that have not yet been known to be wrong, not falsified yet, but are exposed to be proved wrong.²

Or, put another way: “to paraphrase baseball coach Yogi Berra again, past data has a lot of good in it, but it is the bad side that is bad”.³

One is left with the impression that the claims based on inductive logic are more absolute and immutable than they really are. The authors of Subject to Change are really saying is ‘this is what works for the majority of cases we have seen in our (necessarily) limited experience, but there is always the possibility of an exception that is completely violates that patterns we describe’ (even though they don’t explicitly put it this way). With this in mind, I would like to explore what some of the exceptions to the rule might be (Black Swans, Taleb calls them), and, more importantly, how ignoring them can actually increase the probably of a software project failing. So, what are the limits of user experience? Are there domains in the practice of designing and building software where user experience is of little value?

Earlier in my career, I worked as a software engineer for a company that builds software for storing, managing and using digital images (e.g. MRIs, CT scans, mammograms, etc.) for hospitals. In the spirit of Subject to Change, I’ll call them PacsCo.⁴ The size of these images used in a clinical environment is quite large relative to those stored, for example, on a standard consumer digital camera. Not only this, but some devices such as CT scanners take pictures of ‘slices’ of the subject, increasing the size of the data by ‘orders of magnitude’, as folks at PacsCo are found of saying. PacsCo started with this particular problem: how can all this clinical information be stored and managed reliably and securely, in such a manner as the right information gets to the other systems when it is needed? Note this fundamental question has nothing to do directly with the user, as the ‘users’ of the PacsCo software are actually other software systems! They were building a software product essentially with no user interface.⁵ The raison d’être of PacsCo was to solve a plumbing and infrastructure issue. Their salespeople never demonstrated how intuitive their user interface was. There were no user interviews to determine their tastes, as there were no users to be found that could be interviewed. All the tools of traditional user experience research—card sorting exercises, information architecture, user empathy, etc.—would have absolutely no value for PacsCo. This is an example of software that mostly interacts with other systems, not humans. When PacsCo software is working as designed, there is no need for user interaction.

Now, PacsCo was quite effective at solving this core problem. They grew and became more successful. Eventually, the decision was made to expand their product offerings into something besides just infrastructure technology, and PacsCo merged with another company that we will call ‘ImageCo’. ImageCo in many ways was the counterpoint to PacsCo: ImageCo’s software was used by clinicians to view and manipulate all these complex medical images. ImageCo provided a very valuable tool to physicians. Their software helped physicians improve the accuracy and efficiency of their diagnoses (and consequently, improved patient care). ImageCo placed extremely high value on the user experience of its software products, and saw it as a competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace. ImageCo placed most of its engineering resources on optimizing the user experience, to the neglect of almost everything else.

Once PacsCo and ImageCo became one company, the focus of the combined engineering teams initially was integrating the two companies’ product lines. It was thought that this would be a fairly quick effort—after all, the two products could already ‘talk’ to each other. As it turned out, however, this effort was not completed for well over a year. ImageCo, while having done a superior job at delivering a unique and compelling user interface, had neglected other fundamental software issues such as performance and scalability. As a result, when ImageCo was integrated in hospital environments with extremely high volumes of traffic (where PacsCo excelled), the ImageCo applications bogged down and became unresponsive. One may claim that application responsiveness is, in itself, a key component of user experience. However, as a practical matter, ImageCo applied all the ‘traditional’ approaches of user experience and still missed this. The reason was simple: ImageCo had only so many resources, all of whom were busy optimizing the experience of the clinicians with the user interface. Classic user experience techniques often focus too narrowly on user interface, aesthetics, design, etc. This risks losing the bigger picture of the software problem, which may yield the unintended consequence degrading the user experience once the product is placed in real world situations.

Am I dismissing the value of user experience altogether? Certainly not! At PointClear, we consider our entire approach to designing and building software to be infused with concern for the user and how they will interact with what we build. By exploring the boundaries of where an idea or approach starts to fail, one can achieve a more balanced view of where a methodology can add value and where it cannot. More often than not, software companies put too much emphasis on the nut of bolts of building software and neglect user experience, resulting in products that users hate. On the other hand, one can allow the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction, resulting in myopic obsession for user experience. Strangely, this too can result in software that users hate—not because of poor UI, but because it doesn’t work. And further, as we have seen, there are some domains in software where user experience simply isn’t relevant.

What is required is a balanced approach: passionate empathy for the user’s experience, vigilant concern for traditional software problems such as performance and security, and the maturity and experience to know the limits of each.

¹Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, and David Verba, Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World. Beijing: O’Reilly, 2008.

²Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness (New York: Random House, 2005) 126.

³Taleb 126.

⁴PACS stands for ‘Picture Archiving and Communication System’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_archiving_and_communication_system

⁵One might argue that there had to be some user interface—such as an administrative tool—and this is true. The key point is that the value of the user interface was dwarfed by the need to solve the fundamental question with which PacsCo started.

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 finally did it. I traded my truck-based SUV that carried 4 bikes (and smelled like it carried as many or more racers of said bikes) for a luxury crossover with leather seats, navigation, and a rear back-up camera. I love it. I would live in it if it had a kitchen and a bathroom. It’s just that awesome in its 0 to 60 in 6 second, 300 horsepower loveliness.

One specific feature that I love is the Intelligent Key. All I have to do is have the fob on my person (or in my purse) and I can open the doors, start the car with the push of a button, and lock the doors when I get out. It even knows if the key is inside or outside the car, and won’t let me lock it inside. But for all its whiz-bang technology, the Intelligent Key is, well, still just a key.

It makes me think of a concept I first heard about from my professor in graduate school, Janet Murray. When a new technology comes along, there is a period of time before the paradigm shift occurs, where the new technology is still applied in old ways. Think about the first Internet web sites. They may have had hyperlinks but they still closely resembled the printed page. Only later did the true interaction and communication possibilities become evident and even mainstream.

That’s where the Intelligent Key is today in my opinion. If it’s smart enough to know when the key is inside or out, or when I (with the key) come close, why can’t it automatically unlock the doors when I near, and lock them when I walk away? Why can’t the same key that opens my car open my garage, my front door, and my locker at the gym? Why can’t we replace the analog notion of a metal key inserted in a slot with mechanical tumblers, into the digital notion of a code that belongs to me and travels with me everywhere I go? Maybe one day our “keys” will really be a public/private encryption key that we can code into all the locks in our lives. Only then will the paradigm have truly shifted and the keyring become obsolete.

My friend Ike on Twitter just now pointed out a blog entry about the new rollerball design of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and the fact that a PR person from Dyson commented on the entry. It reminded me that upon seeing the commercial the other night, I let out a huge gasp (akin to the gasp precipitated by the MacBook Air commercial). “Oh, I want one of those!” I said. My husband replied, “But you don’t vacuum.” Good point, but I still want one.

Just so you don’t think my house is terminally filthy, I do have the luxury of paying someone to clean it (the result of some fuzzy logic on my part about how it saves us money). Anyway, the house is spotless and he doesn’t argue! But before I had this luxury, I toted my canister vacuum up and down stairs, tripped over it, knocked it over, and generally cursed at it, even though it did a great job and I do appreciate its engineering. (It’s an Electrolux, same as Mom had).

The point of the blog post, and why I gasped upon seeing the Dyson, is this:

Another great example is the TV spot for the new Dyson Ball vacuum where James Dyson demonstrates the “steering” problem with conventional vacuum cleaners due to their being on four wheels that are only able to roll forwards and backwards and then showing his solution, putting the vacuum cleaner on a ball so it can pivot on a dime.

…

As for the Dyson example, they’re taking the entire experience of using their vacuums very seriously - always looking for ways to improve and rethink them and then actually doing something with what they learn. How is it working for them? They’ve been cleaning house on the competition for some time now. (Bad pun intended.)

Good design wins because it takes user experience into account and acts on real research into user habits, preferences, and desires.

If my husband ever figures out that my logic isn’t quite so spot-on, I’m buying a Dyson. Although, that will cost more than the cleaning service.

That giant intake of breath was what you just heard when I saw Jing, a new project by TechSmith that is basically SnagIt on steriods. You can capture images and create videos, annotate them, and then share what you just created. It is wonderful, especially for this girl who was really missing her SnagIt when she went totally Mac a few weeks ago.

Check out the video.

I’m a Mac devotee, but up until now I’ve run most of my daily apps in Vista through Parallels. Things like Word, Excel, Visio, Powerpoint, etc. Well, yesterday that all changed when I installed MS Office 2008 for Mac (and got the disc stuck in my CD drive but that’s another story). Now I’m almost 100% Mac-native apps. Visio is still Windows for me, as is SnagIt and a few others. But I feel like I’m home, like I’ve finally found “my people.”

The interface, even for Microsoft, is just so much nicer in the native app. I like being able to use the dock and my side mouse key, plus the corners, to move around my workspace. I got so inspired today that I splurged on a Cinema display.

I can’t yet put my finger on it, but it’s sort of like I felt when I moved from California back to Atlanta. They know what real humidity is, and you don’t have to ask if the iced tea is sweetened. I feel like I’m back where I belong.

On the eve of Valentine’s Day I got the coolest gift ever - an iPod touch. My current iPod was a 2004 model, which I maintained was perfectly fine and I didn’t need another one, thank you very much. But I hate to say, I would toss the old one out the window at 70 mph, the Touch is so cool.

Right now I’m watching a Timbaland video, downloading Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, and checking my email. The gesture based zoom and scroll is nothing short of amazing. It immediately connected to our wireless network and I was rolling.

Yep, I’m in love. Of course with the man who gave it to me. But I think I’m in love with the iPod Touch too. Shh, don’t tell him.

I had a great user experience the other day at Roly Poly, and I wanted to share.

We scheduled an all-day meeting with a client, and things were going so well that we decided not to break for lunch but to bring it in. I knew that Roly Poly was close and would make an easy pick-up, so we googled and found their web site. The site is great - it has the whole menu, including descriptions, item numbers, and indicators to tell if the sandwiches are hot or cold. It’s also really easy to find locations, including maps, addresses, and phone numbers.

We easily figured out what everyone wanted, called and placed the order. The man who took my order couldn’t have been more nice and friendly. But the experience didn’t end there. The sandwiches were ready within 15 minutes. I was able to drive up to the pick-up window where an equally friendly young lady gave me the food.

It seems simple but Roly Poly has obviously done their homework, and they got it right. Here are some highlights:

• Roly Poly uses their web site as a tool. Rather than brochure-ware about how great their sandwiches and salads are, the site meets user needs by providing menus, directions, maps, ability to order online, nutrition facts, and franchisee information. This is a realy important point. It shows that Roly Poly is paying attention to what customers want and need, and most importantly, they are delivering.
• The experience extends beyond the web site. This is something that companies sometimes miss. The staff at Roly Poly was friendly and helpful. They made me genuinely glad to give them my money. And the food was great too! Everything I needed was in the bag including napkins, sweetener for tea, and utensils. Knowing that I was picking up at the window, and would be in my car, the drinks were already packed in a carrier that I could easily transport.

Roly Poly has earned a customer in me, and no doubt in many others who experience what makes them outstanding.