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.

I was, like every other American who has watched Tim Russert, deeply saddened by his death on Friday. It really shook people. Immediately I saw tributes on Twitter. Everyone I asked had already heard the news. The media, and our country, lost a true gem that day.

I’m somewhat of a political junkie, having been raised by two of them. I enjoyed watching Tim’s neutral, hard-hitting interviews on Meet the Press and his segments on the Today Show.

This morning I was watching some TV while making coffee. I caught the end of Inside the Actor’s Studio with Matt Damon. One of the questions he was asked was, “what turns you on?” Instead of giving a trite or pat answer, he said (and I paraphrase), “People who are intellectually curious.”

Matt also recounted the time when Mickey Rourke gave him a lecture about maintaining professionalism, and being courteous and punctual in his acting career.

Then I switched over to Meet the Press. I was touched by the commentary from Tim Russert’s friends and colleagues. The thing that struck me the most was his passion for what he did. He was singularly dedicated to Meet the Press, commenting on how fortunate he was to be able to prepare Monday through Friday for his show on Sunday. While his guests were sometimes not prepared, Tim always was. He was the consummate professional in his field. He lived and breathed politics, and his intellectual curiousity made him stand head and shoulders above the rest. Meet the Press changed the face of political journalism and made history.

The theme of my morning: intellectual curiosity of two remarkably professional and well-respected men.

Rest in peace, Tim Russert: 1950-2008.

I just finished watching an overview presentation of Subject to Change on Slideshare. Enjoy.

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My Yankee husband has always wondered why he doesn’t fit in better at Southern get-togethers. You know, the Sip ‘n See, the Kentucky Derby party, etc. I figured that since he can’t play bocce ball, wasn’t in a fraternity, and doesn’t have a camelhair sportcoat, the deck is pretty much stacked against him. But the other day, he hit on something that might make a difference. Through work, he has a friend who is a well-known former Auburn football player. “I bet if I brought him, I’d be the most popular guy there.” Well, maybe the 2nd most popular.

Through an interesting set of circumstances this fall, we ended up with the Heisman Trophy at our house for a night. I’m talking the real deal here, not a replica. We figured this was a once-in-a-lifetime event and we may as well have a get-together and show the thing off. So, we made up an invitation about a mysterious celebrity, so famous he required a police escort (this was true!), and invited a few select people to come over. It was a hit.

This gave us an idea. Why not have a yearly “Famous Person” party. The person would be a mystery until the guests arrived. Of course, we couldn’t think of any more famous people (or statues) that we knew, so the idea kind of fizzled.

However, I’ve recently become “friends” with a couple of famous people, through FaceBook. Now, if you’re not a cycling fan, you may be somewhat underwhelmed. It all started with one of my teammates, who’s rather well-connected to the US Pro cycling scene. She is friends with Phil Liggett, the Tour de France commentator on Versus. He’s known to describe Lance Armstrong as “dancing on the pedals” or Jan Ullrich as “a steam locomotive.” I sent Phil a friend request, and whaddya know, he accepted. Then, I noticed that Phil is friends with Mario Cipollini. Mario, ah, Mario. He’s an Italian professional cyclist, known for his sprinting abilities, his 12 Tour de France stage wins among his 191 victories, and his, hmm how shall I say it, wild ways. Since I had such good luck with Phil, I sent a friend request to Mario. Voila, we’re friends.

Now of course, I realize we’re not REALLY friends. But I think there’s still something interesting about this phenomenon. We all know the Internet is making it ever-easier for people like you and me to influence media. And with sites like FaceBook, we can come into contact with people we’ve always wanted to meet or to know. Even the famous ones. The barriers are ever-lowering. Facebook isn’t the only place this is happening, either. If you follow someone you respect on Twitter, chances are you can strike up a dialog with them if you really want to. The inaccessible have become more accessible through these technologies.

I may never meet Phil or Mario, but somehow I feel a connection to them. They’re strengthening their importance with their fans by accepting friend requests. Maybe I’ll see if they want to drop by for a little party the next time they’re in town.

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.

When I first signed up for a Facebook account, I stumbled upon a capability to import blog rss feeds as Facebook notes. Log in to your Facebook account, click Notes, and then notice ‘Import a blog’.

Now, when I first did this, I used the following URL for our PointClear blog:

http://www.pointclearsolutions.com/blog/?feed=rss2

The problem with this, I later discovered, is that we have multiple Authors (Lee Farabaugh is the most prolific of all of us), and this URL is the feed for _all_ blog posts. The worse part is that when Facebook shows these entries, it doesn’t pick up meta-data from the feed like author. So, it appeared that notes actually written by other folks like Lee were my own. (Sorry for the virtual plagiarism, Lee).

Anyway, obviously, the solution is to use a URL that filters by author. Here is the format, which took me a little while to find:

http://www.pointclearsolutions.com/blog/?feed=rss2&author=3

By trial and error, I figured out that Author_id=3 is me, Author_id=2 is Blaine, Author_id=4 is Donnie, Author_id=5 is Lee, etc. There probably is a parameter that allow you to specify author first name or the such, but I was too lazy to look at the source code. Anyway, it works!