Author: Nadreck

Ex-game industry, ex-dbx, currently technical writer turned tools developer. Sucker for learning random things. Tends to talk about social computing, online identity, internet culture, and life.

User Experience(d)

Last week, I was at a family reunion filled with fabulous, intelligent, talented people whom I’m glad to call family. One thing I noticed: as people pulled out laptops and iPads and smartphones, or discussed some of the current technological hurdles they’re facing in their day to day lives, there was still a lot of frustration and implied distrust of the hardware or software being used. It really hammered home to me that there’s still a long distance left between usable and intuitive. They were adding complexity and hurdles that didn’t need to be there, because they were used to a previous mental model that was more complex.

I work with software and computers every day, and have for years. Even a lot of my hobbies end up taking place on computers. It’s easy to take for granted the human-computer interactions I do on a daily basis, because I do them regularly, and generally even if it’s a new piece of software or hardware, it still behaves similarly enough to other software that I can get the hang of it pretty quickly. The thing is, even with the pervasiveness of technology these days, I am an anomaly, not the norm. Many people — highly skilled, capable people — simply don’t have that background and context for understanding, nor the time or interest to gain it. As far as I see it, this is a lot of what user experience design is all about: finding that line between simplicity and complexity, where people have enough detail to understand what is happening (at least a high level), but is still simple enough that they don’t have to invest cognitive energy to grasp how to use it.

Aiming for clarity is hard on its own, but what I was noticing is that it faces an additional hurdle: overcoming the complexities or mental models of previous designs. It seemed like a big problem in particular for older generations was that they’d fallen out of sync with what experiences were designed to be now, and were burdened with the expectation of complexity or failure from experiences in the past. It’s easy to say “oh, well they just need to retrain themselves,” but that implies they have the cognitive energy, time, and interest to do so.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep working on improving the user experience, but it is something to bear in mind when developing software or hardware. I have a few ideas on how to accommodate this, some of which may be more palatable than others:

  • Evolving UX: Going with more iterative, minor changes rather than a large shift. This already happens some (depending on the software), and sometimes it’s unavoidable that multiple changes will need to go in at once.
  • Documentation: Creating effective documentation can be invaluable for keeping older users up to speed on what’s happening. Three things I’d want to make sure to consider: keeping docs up to date to the current version of the software; keeping legacy docs for older versions; mapping the old user experience to the new user experience in change logs and within the docs themselves.
  • Usability Studies of Existing Users: Doing usability research has definitely become more prevalent, which is a good thing, but I feel like tends to focus on how to attract new users, and doesn’t really give a lot of attention to existing users (I suspect at least partially under the presumption that once a user is committed to your product, they are less likely to take the additional effort to switch). It would be really interesting to make sure to include existing long-time users when doing usability studies. If considering retention of existing users isn’t on your radar, maybe you should reconsider.

Obviously, it’s impossible to please all of the people, and maybe more of this is already in progress than I’m aware of, but it does feel like we’ve got a distance left to go on learning to effectively clear out the cobwebs of past experiences.

Sympathies for my MS Friends.

Until about 7-8 months ago, I worked as a vendor for Microsoft (v-). It wasn’t a bad gig — the pay wasn’t amazing, but provided a nice opportunity to work on some interesting projects, and since I was a v-, had a certain amount of job stability (a- contractors are required to take off 100 days every year, which causes a lot of disruption in projects, but at this point has been established long enough that we’d work through it. Vendors did not have this restriction).

Apparently, Microsoft is planning to implement a required 6 month hiatus for vendors as well. I honestly don’t know if the upper management who made this decision is quite aware of just how much of the work is done by vendors. Optimistically, there is some grand plan as part of the upcoming restructuring (laying off 18,000 full time employees, plus apparently who knows how much external staff), which will allow the company to shift their culture and make this work. I’ve been known to occasionally be an idealist, but I’m not sure I can be optimistic enough to believe that.

My sincere sympathies for everyone getting laid off, and for my v- friends who will now need to navigate this new landscape.

Reunions and Goals

It’s always fun to have a little time to reset. I’ve spent the past week at Squam Lake, enjoying the swimming, the people, and the house. It’s been a family reunion of families directly related to the property, and so it’s been wonderful to see all of my cousins, many of whom I haven’t seen in years. It did mean I missed Hack Week back at work, but sometimes that’s just the way things happen. It sounds like they’ve been having an awesome time as well.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what’s important to me, and what sort of environment I tend to thrive in. I’ve got a pretty good handle on it overall, but it’s still nice to pause and reflect every so often to see if things have shifted. When I turned 30, I took some time to figure out a two year, five year, and ten year plan. I managed to hit my two year goal largely on time, and I’m feeling pretty good about hitting my five year goal as well. The ten year is still too far out to tell, but I do feel like it’s still obtainable, so that’s good.

My ten year goal is a hammock. More specifically, sipping iced tea or lemonade in a hammock, while reading a book, nestled in a rambling garden outside a house. A significant other is doing what they want to be doing (maybe reading, or playing a game, or gardening, or painting, or whatever they enjoy doing), while the children play.

It may seem weird to think of a specific vision as a goal, but consider it for a moment: to achieve that, I need to be financially stable enough to afford a house and have the time to enjoy it. I need to be in a romantically stable relationship with someone who is interested in similar goals and lifestyle. I need to be emotionally stable enough to enjoy all of these things.

So if that’s where I want to be when I’m 40, how do I get there? Well, my five year goal is my litmus: if I’m starting to have a good handle on the financial, emotional, and romantic areas at the halfway point, I’m likely in good shape to achieve what I’m hoping for (and if not, it’s also a good point to do any course corrections). So, the five year goal is to have had solid progression in my career (in responsibility, pay, and flexibility), to have my personal life together, and to be in a solid relationship that, if not married and having kids, is at least on that path.

My two year goal was to have progressed in my career, where I’d be working for a company I respect and value, with a steady improvement of pay and advancement, and where I could see myself working for another several years. I managed to hit that right around on target (give or take ~6 months).

So… yeah, goals. It’s weird. When I was younger, my goals were things like “become a published author”, “have a gallery show”, “write a graphic novel”, or “design and produce a game.” Those are all still things I want to accomplish, but they didn’t really click as a goal, because while the goals were concrete, the paths were tenuous. My goal now is just an idea, a vision, but the path is clear, and I may end up achieving some of my other aspirations along the way.