What is important, however, is behaviorally anchoring your rating choices. That is, as much as possible you should base your usability severity ratings on observable – or well-defined inferable – criteria. There’s nothing earth-shatteringly new in this post, mind you. I’m just taking the highly non-controversial position that you should define your usability and user experience issue ratings using observable examplars of behavior.
You may notice that I do move off the reservation a bit when you read my rating definitions. I’ve included information about how a user experience issue could affect an organization’s brand equity and revenue as well. I’m not entirely satisfied with how I’ve lumped these (important but somewhat orthogonal) issues together with “straight” usability; I may break them out into separate ratings that accompany each usability issue. So my rating schema would work like this:
Usability severity
Impact to brand equity
Impact to revenue or (other key performance metric)
Anyway….here is my current set of behaviorally-anchored user experience issue ratings; feel free to borrow, modify, criticize, adapt, ignore, etc.
Critical
A critical usability issue will definitely result in a user not being able to complete their intended task. It will also result in an immediate, noticeable and significant impact to the organization’s brand equity, revenue and/or profitability.
High
A high severity usability issue is one that is likely to result in a user not being able to complete their intended task. From the business perspective, the issue is likely to negatively affect the organization’s brand, revenue, or profitability.
Medium
Medium severity usability issues include those that are likely to significantly impede or frustrate a user, but are not likely to prevent users from eventually accomplishing their task. They might also negatively affect the organization’s brand, revenue, or profitability.
Low
Low severity usability issues include those that are likely to present momentary or transient difficulty or confusion to users, but do not prevent users from accomplishing their task. There should be no effect on the organization’s brand or financials.
It’s all about context, yes. Some immensely complex UI’s are necessary in certain domains, for certain workflows. But sometimes you can just look at a UI and know that, for whoever its intended users are, it’s a horrible failure.
So it is with this Ferrari steering wheel. Via FastCompany and @JasonSpector, look upon the horror and of course watch the vid. Bonus points for the headline “Ferrari F10 Steering Wheel Looks Like a Robot Barfed on It.”
Yes, the world has another after-the-fact design modification to add to its motley collection of hacks, patches, fixes, taped-on signs, and Sharpie-improved user interfaces.
Found at the Kent State University bookstore, where I ducked in to buy an umbrella during a downpour. I was there to do some customer observations for a product line I’m working on, and had to walk between buildings in a solid rain storm.
Notice the attention to detail on the mod. The counter clerks must’ve really been tired of walking people through the transaction flow. They even highlighted “BLUE LIGHTS” with blue marker, just so people would get the message.
I know, I know, this is how “The Design of Everyday Things” starts. The difference is that I found this instance at my local bank. The whole “Wells Fargo experience” is chock full of questionable design actually; I’ve struggled with elements of their web site, physical branch locations and ATM’s.
But it’s always good to catch one of those classic design gotchas in the wild, as it were. So look upon it and know that as long as there are problems out there like this, there’s work for those of us who try to make the world a more user-friendly place.
And yes, every time I leave the bank I pull the damn handle. And that’s because physical affordances are more salient and engaging than labels and signs.
I asked the bank employees how many people pull instead of push, and they just sort of heaved a collective sigh. I took that to mean “a lot”.
I’ve gotten more UX mileage out of that bank than you’d believe…
Back about two years ago I was working on a product line that took a number of potentially objectionable actions with customers’ systems. I pushed back against the product teams, saying that these actions put our products at risk of being perceived as malware.
They in turn pushed back on me, essentially telling me to prove my allegations.
So I went away for a few days, did some research, and returned with my (fanfare) Malware Perception Risk Assessment Tool. Ta-da!
Uh, sorry, I meant “thud”. It went over like a lead ballon. No takers. So I wrote it up in an article at UXmatters, hoping it’d become adopted. More deafening silence. Dejection.
But here’s the thing: systems are becoming more and more interconnected, and more than ever, applications are utilizing aspects of your personal, semi-public, and public data to derive value (presumably for you as well as themselves). Thus the risk of an application being perceived as malware has only increased.
I strongly believe that our field needs to provide the wider world with a tool that can help assess the risk that a particular product or service might be tagged as malware in the minds of users or the market at large.
So I again submit to the UX, dev, and product management communities the Malware Risk Assessment Checklist.
To measure the probability of people perceiving a product as malware, I created a checklist representing a set of attributes that typically characterize malware. I grouped these attributes into these five categories, each containing two or more representative attributes:
personal information gathering and usage
modification of data or system configuration
stealth and resistance to removal or modification
resource utilization
transparency and disclosure of third-party relationships
This time, I’m explicitly calling out the fact that the checklist is light on data propagation via social networking applications. And I’m asking for help in rounding out that aspect of the checklist. So help a guy out and suggest some social media items. I am releasing this checklist under a “Creative Commons non-commercial share alike-derivative works permitted” license, so you can remix this, add to it, etc. When I receive some good item suggestions, I’ll re-roll the list and publish again.
Here’s the checklist as it stood in 2008. Peeps, have at it.
Personal Information Gathering and Usage The product or Web site…
Gathers and transmits users’ personal data or information about users’ behavior to the organization providing the product
____Yes
____No
Gathers and transmits users’ personal data or information about users’ behavior to a third party.
____Yes
____No
Uses personal data and data the product developer obtained from third parties to assemble profiles of users that are more complete and comprehensive than users expect.
____Yes
____No
Exposes more of users’ personal information to their contacts or a community than users expected or wanted.
____Yes
____No
Does any of the above without user notification and consent.
____Yes
____No
Does any of the above and does not allow users to opt out.
____Yes
____No
Modification of Data or System Configuration The product or Web site…
Overwrites, modifies, or destroys users’ data without their knowledge or consent.
____Yes
____No
Modifies other applications on users’ computers or their operating system settings or computing environment.
____Yes
____No
Fails to restore modifications to other applications, operating system settings, or the computing environment when the user uninstalls the product.
____Yes
____No
Damages or renders inoperative other software or hardware on users’ computing systems.
____Yes
____No
Stealth and Resistance to Removal or Modification The product or Web site…
Hides or renders its files and resources inaccessible to the user through normal means—that is, using standard file managers and viewers.
____Yes
____No
Resists attempts at removal.
____Yes
____No
Modifies antivirus, antispyware, and other computing hygiene applications or application settings, to make itself appear harmless or less harmful than it actually is.
____Yes
____No
Resource Utilization The product or Web site…
Overuses computing resources—CPU, GPU, memory, and so on—to a noticeable extent.
____Yes
____No
Utilizes computing resources for purposes not directly related to the tasks users typically perform with the software.
____Yes
____No
Transparency and Disclosure of Third-Party Relationships The product or Web site…
Installs third-party applications that demonstrate any of the above behaviors.
____Yes
____No
Installs third-party applications without user notification and consent.
____Yes
____No
C’mon people, let’s make this checklist useful, and maybe even a de facto standard.
I used to be a semi-professional musician. For a variety of reasons I didn’t stick with the professional part. I still play, mostly for my daughters and to keep my fingers limber. But my repertoire has gone to crud.
That happens when you don’t play for an audience anymore. You just forget most of the songs you’ve learned. I can honestly say that I do *not* miss the low pay, late hours, and second-hand smoke. But when I was single, let’s just say I definitely benefited from the pull that singing and playing guitar had with the ladies.
Even GarageBand gives me conniptions. I just want to lay down some beats and play along with them. But I’ve fallen cleanly into the gulf of execution – I know what I want to do, but have no way of divining *how* to do it. And that’s a big bummer.
Um, OK, whatever floats your digital boat. You require elevation, I need a face full of chocolate cookies, we all have our needs. Live and let elevate, I say. That’s my mottocredo words to live by.
<Colombo>There’s just one more thing…and you’ll have to forgive me, I’m slow with this kind of stuff…what exactly are you elevating? If ya don’t mind me asking of course. It’s just that I don’t understand exactly. </Columbo>
(Whoosh is the sound that last paragraph makes as it sails over the heads of the 20-somethings…)
Just kidding around here folks, I assume it’s referring to elevated permission levels. But still.
Yeah, I said it. And by it, I mean that we’re too convinced of our moral superiority, and it’s hampering our ability to effect the very changes we want to make in this world. Read on to discover why.
This post covers a conversation that started at Scott Berkun’s site, where he made the point that comparatively few UX’ers seem to be able or willing to step up and work on persuading their organizations to put greater resources into the user experience of their products and services.
When it comes to the world of UX, designers, usability engineers, and the rest, they tend to complain about how little power they have, but spend little time doing skill development in how to gain influence and power. The average designer or IA would be better served by going to a sales conference and learning sales and pitching skills, than going to yet another design event. They’re already good at design, but they’re probably not very good at pitching design ideas to non-designers.
At the end of the post, he cited some articles from Dan Szuc and I on how to sell UX. Just happy for the props, I commented last week, saying:
Dan Szuc and I have been working this problem for a few years now, and we too hear the same “if only I could get x” refrain. I’ve been both a UX innie and an outtie (sp?), and I have to say that insider UX’ers often put themselves into the “learned helplessness” state almost reflexively. UX’ers can be their own worst enemies when it comes to getting resources to do the job right. And I speak from experience: I’ve been there, done that. Maybe that’s why Dano and I beat this drum so loud; i.e., “Learn from our mistakes! Here’s how!”
I also noted the discussion in my UsabilityBlog post of last week. In another happy surprise for me, Scott dropped by and responded on UsabilityBlog, saying:
The curious thing is why this fairly old idea (specialists need to persuade) has such a hard time gaining traction among the UI/IX/HCI community. And oddly, it’s seems really hard to sell the UI community on the point of view you offer. Do you have any theories as to why this is? I did a study of sorts on designers about why they fail to explore this question among the design community. But I have thought about doing a similiar thing for the usability/HCI side of things: http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2008/why-design…
I lobbed it back at him when I posted this in response:
Thanks for dropping by and commenting at UsabilityBlog Scott. If I had to venture a guess, I think the reluctance among UX’ers to persuade stems from my contention that most of us are utterly convinced of the rightness of our ways. After all – and this is a mostly a good thing – most of us stumbled onto this field and found it a fantastic lens through which to project our ethical expression onto the world. UX is a place to be a force for good. How awesome is that? Answer: quite awesome indeed. So why *wouldn’t* everyone see our opinions as correct?
But there’s the rub. Our moral certitude gets in our way. In other words: UX’ers belief in our own rightness is quasi-religious. Hey, if that’s the case then there’s no need to persuade others of our rightness; we *know* we’re right. And if they don’t believe us, frak ‘em.
Only there’s that pesky little issue of who’s cutting the checks….hmmm, I better tow the line and *try* to light the way for the blind, convince those who labor in the darkness of not knowing UX, even though they’re little more than inmates running the dark asylum…I think you can see where I’m going with this.
My bottom line advice to our field would be very similar to what my Jewish mother from Queens often says: hey UX’ers, get over yourselves. We don’t poop roses. Not everything we do is an expression of our moral superiority. Most times, we don’t -and aren’t even in a position to – see the big picture. And we don’t know what it’s like to be on the hook for the revenue of a product. In other words, we should have a little more empathy and broaden our horizons a bit.
I’ve made these points before; check this article out for a slightly more polished version of this argument: http://bit.ly/a2Xwux Thanks again, Scott. Good discussion you’ve triggered here.
That list bit.ly link? It leads to the UXmatters article where I first started crystallizing these thoughts: “The User Experience Practitioner As Change Agent.” I just reread the article, and I still agree with its main points. Maybe it’s common for other people to agree with their former selves, but I am not one of those people. When I read my past work, I typically either cringe or have to stifle the urge to get in my time machine and slap my former self for saying something so asinine. But this piece? It’s stood the test of time. And it resonates with people.
Now if only I can craft the call to action more effectively. I honestly wouldn’t mind if this area became my “UX brand.” It’d be in keeping with my training as an organizational / human factors psychologist, and honor the systems approach of my dissertation mentor, Bob Helmreich.
Just found out that my presentation about web usability and conversion is on Slideshare’s “Hot on Twitter” front page module. Or was, on Sunday 21 March. (Slow news day?)
Scott Berkun recently posted a thought-provoking article “How UX Can Get Anything They Want.” It was a good and short read, but what really made it special for me was that he called out my and Dan Szuc’s writings and presentations on selling UX.
Said Scott:
The biggest skill gap the UX world has are advocates, translators, and persuaders, people who are not afraid to sell and convince others on the value of their work.
This lack is something that I’ve noticed in myself and others, which is why I took very conscious steps in my career to become an advocate for UX and not just a UX practitioner.
And as I mentioned above, it was great to see Scott recognize our work in this area in the “See also” section at bottom, where he called out these content pieces from Dan and I:
I would also add that Adam Polansky of Travelocity and RedearthIA contributed a fantastic chapter to “Usability Success Stories” that covered how UX practitioners can be “natural liaisons” between disciplines. (This is the book I conceived of and edited back in 2006.)
I’m getting tired of having to bring this up. (See here and here for prior scoldings.)
Software and service providers, listen to me: it’s a bad user experience to prevent the use of “plus” email addressing when capturing visitor emails. But it’s not about us, it’s really about you: preventing plus addressing is almost definitely depressing several of your key performance indicators. Why? Because it lowers conversion, and when conversion falls, your other KPI’s fall like dominos.
Here’s the latest offender:
The web team at Starbucks needs to understand that when they prevent the visitor from using plus addressing, they not only create a negative user experience, they also increase abandonment, a.k.a the anti-conversion. And isn’t conversion the whole point (OK, a major point) of having a web presence?
So I strongly suggest to Starbucks – and any other organization that captures emails – that you consider changing this policy. Plus addressing is perfectly acceptable according to the RFC gods, and it allows some of your (more organized, meticulous, and/or obsessive-compulsive) potential customers to better manage their email flow.
Don’t prevent us from managing the flood of communications in a manner that makes our lives easier. If you make signing up easier, more people will sign up.
Cute, funny, capitalizes on a well-known existing meme. It’s not too objectionable, meaning it’s not going to piss anyone off in a major way. Overall, a good user experience in a crappy situation (i.e., you’ve tried to browse somewhere or save something, and it didn’t work.)
Next, here’s an RSVP and profile “completer” from eVite:
The context is different of course; this isn’t an error message. I get the fact that they’re trying to help people learn more about each other. Still, the “If I found 1K” question is whimsical but bothersome.
I don’t know why it sticks in my craw like it does; maybe it’s that there’s a disconnect between their intent (connecting people and helping people know each other better) and the execution. I guess it’s just that knowing the answer to that question is a crappy way to build connections between people.
This my friends is how you increase trust and confidence through your UI.
In this case, it’s Travelocity that has done this, with the simple addition of some content about disclosing information before the user makes an irrevocable change.
Here’s a server error page that makes you feel good about the company or service.
It humanizes them. By that, I mean that it makes you feel that they have a sense of humor – and humility – and hopefully gets you to realize that there’s people behind the service; it’s not just a faceless corporation.
That’s a good thing.
This is just one of those little details that distinguishes companies who really keep on top of every aspect of the user experience from those that don’t.
Plus, I really like Slideshare.net. I keep all my best slide content there. So there’s that.
Last week I gave a presentation at the Online Marketing Summit 2010 about website usability and conversion. I used the famous Ling’s Cars site as an example of conversion, arguing that “unique” (read: ugly) design coupled with “stealthy” usability can facilitate conversion.
You can check out the preso here, or go to Slideshare to see it in full-screen glory. Bonus points to anyone who reports back with the page number of my “Captain Obvious” reference. I hope you enjoy the presentation. Please feel free to email or comment with questions, refutations, counter-arguments, and the like. -Paul
But I thought the other Ask UXmatters contributors had some fantastic points and I want to call them out here.
Dan Szuc of Apogee lists a number of questions a UX team *should* be asking itself. I think he nailed it when he said this:
What do you see as success for your UX group?
To me Dan defined the essence of the issue: when you’re building a UX group, it’s critical to define what success looks like. It may be metrics-driven; e.g., “we shall be usability testing 80% of our company’s product line by EO 2010″, etc. It could be anything really. But of course it helps if your success definition is tied to and aligned with your larger organization’s goals…
Joel Grossman recommends taking a business-case approach to building a UX organization:
Start by preparing a business case, outlining the expected qualitative and quantitative benefits that will accrue to the organization,” suggests Joel. “Define a series of milestones that take you from the current state of affairs to an end-state that will maximize the benefits you’ve identified in the business case.
Agree and agree. Except: true “business case” documents are quite formal affairs. I certainly agree with Joel about demonstrating the qual and quant benefits. But I recommend against adopting a B-school format for your document. Keep it short and to the point. I’m pretty sure this is what Joel meant as well, but I wanted to clarify my thinking on this a bit.
Steve Baty of Meld warns against taking a centralized approach, which I heartily agree with:
I’d be cautious about moving toward a centralized service model in this case…Think instead about what you’re hoping to achieve through that move (i.e., of going centralized):
consistency of approach
efficient use of resources
shared customer or user insights
shared UX principles across interactions and touchpoints
I don’t know if Steve was reacting to my content or not. But I should say that I definitely do NOT advocate for centralizing UX in a big way. My view, which I think Steve shares, is that user experience efforts belong with the product teams they collaborate with. UX resources shouldn’t all be piled atop the organization in a service bureau model. And they certainly shouldn’t let themselves be seen as sitting on some fancy “UX throne” issuing UX directives from on high. And even when some centralized user experience concentration is called for, it should be about providing consistency and efficiency; i.e., some “UX glue” across the organization.
Having been on the wrong end of the barrel during several workforce reductions involving centralized UX functions, I have to say that UX contributors and managers are safer when they’re allied with (and aligned with) the product teams they serve. It’s all too easy to lay off an entire centralized UX group, because they’re not directly tied to any specific profit center. When things get tough, an embedded UX group has a much better chance of survival, albeit with attrition.
I wanted to get help in Paypal, that’s why I clicked on “Help” and expected to see the help section of Paypal.
Instead I saw the following:
All that I read when scanning through the page is:
Help information isn’t available in English yet. […] select U.S. English.
So I need to change the language to U.S. English. Okay, I try to remember all the steps that they tell me, go through them and reach this page:
Hmm. I cannot see U.S. English. How to select U.S. English now? I think I will contact the Help Center. …But wait a minute… I could not access the help pages, that’s why I came to this page in the first place. I’m trapped in a can-not-get-help-loop. *argh*
Note: If I select German, then the help center is shown! But if I was an English speaker I would not be able to get help. I think this bug exists only for Swiss users, otherwise it would be fixed since a long time.
What to learn from this mistake by Paypal:
Let me select the language for the help pages directly
Or give me a direct link
But no lengthy instructions please
When I clicked the help link, I need help immediately!
Yesterday I posted about a discussion Jared Spool and I had about the import of the iPad.
I made the claim that the handset would continue to be the innovation driver, and as soon as it had the computing horsepower to drive a large LCD monitor and run productivity applications, it would be the primary and dominant computing platform.
Several smart commenters weighed in as well, so check out their comments here at the post’s permalink.
Anyway, it turns out I’m not much of a prognosticator. It’s already being done.
Check out the video to see Citrix’s Nirvana phone driving a full-size LCD, keyboard, and mouse, and running Windows.
