Blog posts on usability

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Practicing Mistake-Promoting Instead of Mistake-Proofing at Apple

  Mistake proofing is a wonderful management concept. Design systems not just to be effective when everything goes right but designing them so mistakes are prevented.

  ...

  But guess what, the unnecessary steps Apple decided to force me through are broken so I can’t just waste my time to make them happy. No. They have created a failure point where they never should have forced the customer in the first place.

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• Use Urls – Don’t Use Click x, Then Click y, Then Click z Instructions

  In the 1980s software applications had to use click x, then click y, then click z type instructions to get you to a specific location in a software application (or at least they had a decent excuse to do that). Too many web application development organizations forget that they now have urls to direct people exactly where to go: and that they shouldn’t rely on ancient “click here, then there, then in that other place” type instructions.

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• Mistake Proofing Using Enhanced Stop Signs

  The video shows a system that cascades a sheet of water and displays a stop sign directly in the path of trucks ready to crash into a tunnel (because the truck is too tall).

  The driver had ignored several less obvious signals that they were headed for danger. This is an application of one of my favorite management (and industrial engineering) concepts: mistake proofing. As I have stated before, often it is really mistake making more difficult (as it is in this case) rather than mistake proofing.

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• Before Deming’s 14 Points for Management

  (principles 16 to 21) The consumer is the most important point - Performance of a product is the result of interaction between three participants: (1) the product itself; (2) the user and how he uses the product; (3) instructions for use, training of customer; service provided for repair.

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• Deming’s Stage 0: By What Method?

  Ron talks about W. Edwards Deming teaching a 2 week course on consumer research in Japan in 1951: that course included a section titled “the art of questioning and interviewing.” Dr. Deming had participants go out into the street of Tokyo and interview potential customers. Those interested in Lean Startup will recognize this activity.

  Ron Moen’s presentation explores what “stage 0” should look like (Deming provided little guidance). Ron decided it was important to start with the customer need. When gathering data, to learn if the idea has merit, the data collection should be made at the actual place of work by the people doing the work (gemba).

  continue reading: Deming’s Stage 0: By What Method?
• Don’t Hide Important Content Using Coding Gimmicks

  The hidden text here is due to hiden content that only becomes visible once the user clicks something (and instead of going to a page that highlights that content, some content is unhidden and other content is added to the hidden content on the page). It is just a bad Ux practice in general (as with many Ux issues there are odd cases where it can make sense).

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• Google Check of Whether a Website is Mobile Friendly

  The tool is useful in pointing out potential issues to improve for mobile users. I do wish however that Google wasn’t so autocratic about its opinions, acting as though failing their tests is equal to failure mobile users. It isn’t, it is a decent indication there may be a problem, but it is not proof there is a problem.

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• The Edge-case Excuse

  I have found “edge cases” to actually mean we don’t want to fix it. Often the issue isn’t needing some special code to deal with an “edge case” it is the coding was done poorly and breaks in many different “edge cases.” It isn’t that those edge cases need to be coded for. It is that the code should have been written in a robust way that didn’t break for lots of “edge cases” but the excuse given for not fixing the fundamental coding fragility is the bugs found are just “edge cases.”

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• Functional Websites are Normally Far Superior to Apps

  Just like old school businesses were only comfortable with their old business models and didn’t create functional websites (instead using the web just to advertise that you should go to their store, or giving you forms to complete and fax back to them…) new businesses are often stuck on only using apps even though they often provide a lousy user experience compared to a functional website.

  There are some apps that are very useful and not having a functional web app can make sense, but it is fairly limited. Getting a ride apps I can see as only apps. Driving instructions and live maps using GPS to locate you is another great app use...

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• Bell Labs Designing a New Phone System Using Idealized Design

  I remember hearing this same story when Russ Ackoff spoke at the Hunter Conference on Quality (which was named in honor of my father) in Madison, Wisconsin.

  If you haven’t heard this story you are in for a treat. And if you haven’t heard Russell Ackoff before you get to enjoy a great storyteller.

  Watch the video...

  continue reading: Bell Labs Designing a New Phone System Using Idealized Design
• Add Constraints to Processes Carefully

  Frequently I see unnecessary constraints creating the edge case excuse. By burdening your process with unnecessary constraints you create edge cases that fail and then use the excuse that each of the edge cases is rare and therefore you can’t justify the expense of fixing them.

  But if you designed the process sensibly in the first place the edge case never would have failed and you wouldn’t need special work arounds for such “edge cases.” A simple example of this is unnecessarily complex web page code that fails if to submit a button without javascript. Yes, a small number of users won’t have enabled all javascript to run (today anyway) so it is an “edge case” to deal with if you don’t have the form work without javascript. But there is no decent reason to have it fail in most cases.

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• Continually Improving Using a Focus on Delighting Customers

  A deep appreciation for the long term needs of your customers and potential customers should guide where in the system to continually improve. And my belief on how to continual improve is to create and continually improving management system with principles of experimentation (with the necessary understanding of what conclusion can be drawn from results and what cannot), an understanding of the organization as a system and respect for people as principles to be guided by to achieve continual improvement.

  Quality practices of experimentation directed at continually improving management practices and internal processes need to be completely integrated with the efforts to continual improve customer delight. Those efforts should be one process and therefore they automatically grow together.

  The success of improvements should be evaluated at the system level (outcome measures not merely efficiency measures). In process measures are useful in adding evaluating improvement and monitoring processes but the end result for the overall system must always remain the primary concern.

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• Don’t Assume All Web Users Have a Fiber-like Connection

  I have pointed out for more than a decade how poorly many web pages are coded. They often assume a very low latency connection and without it the user experience is poor.

  ...

  I can only assume they just test the pages on their fiber connection and if it works they are ok. This is a very bad idea for nearly every website.

  Learn to get a deep understanding of your customers and potential customers with focus on the customer’s “Jobs to be Done.”  Otherwise organizations find themelves creating solutions that work in test conditions but that don't work for their customers (or potential customers).

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• Jobs to be Done

  If you see your job from the customer’s perspective you may change the scope of your offerings. You can add services that help the potential customer chose you. In the book, they explore the example mentioned in the article in more detail. They also discuss how an online university changed their processes to address the issues their potential customers faced in the “hiring” process. They changed, not the “product” (education), but the processes supporting potential students making the decision to hire Southern New Hampshire University.

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• Innovation and the Creative Commons

  Creative Commons is a license that lets the creators of intellectual property clearly define how that property may be used by others. Partially this license is a reaction to the poor way copyright law is being viewed today (see links below).

  Partially it is tool that gives creators a way to provide for more interaction with their ideas. And this interaction is a great way to market, in the right circumstances. More managers should be thinking about how their organizations can use this tool to improve performance.

  continue reading: Innovation and the Creative Commons