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Is There Such a Thing as "Too User Friendly"?
rtphokie asks: "The story about the TiVo get-together along with some recent trials and tribulations rolling out a knowledge base along with the time I've spent recently helping my 80 year old grandfather with this VCR and TV has gotten me thinking about user interfaces and the elusive "user-friendly" label. When someone who thinks of themselves as 'non computer savvy' works with a gadget like TiVo and compains that it's 'too complicated', how should we react? Why are users immediately forgiven for not even taking the least amount of effort to look for a solution to their confusion in the manual. The tendency has always been to blame the interface and ultimately the engineers who designed it but isn't there a point where users have got to share some of the blame?
Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?"
Now go build your system so that someone can use it without knowing anything. Also, make it so that an advanced user can get to the functions she wants without going through some idiotic "wizard."
UI tests with actual users? What a interesting thought!!! Maybe someone should try that, too!
Yeah, right.
1) Lack of basic knowledge or incentive to acquire it. I sell computers in your basic retailer setting, and consumers really are the dumbest, laziest people out there (in general, there are always exceptions). Nine times out of ten, a customer would rather complain that something is too difficult than take the extra five minutes to simply read a short section from a manual. I have people call and ask me how to connect, say, the line level plug to their speakers on the computer they just bought. Anyone who has opened a retail computer in the last two years knows that there is a big, glossy fold out "poster-size" page with a color illustreation of the three steps necessary to plug in basic cables. Square peg in square hole, blue trapezoid in blue trapezoid-al hole. Things 4-year-olds have already mastered. It also never ceases to entertain me when customers will readily spend an extra $200 to get a machine with four features they don't need just so they can have more RAM. "But," I'll say, "You can walk right over there and get an additional X MB and pop it in. Do you really want to spend another $200?".
Problem 2: Easy-to-use is obviously subjective. I prefer a heavily hierarchical organization in everything. On windows machines, I'll typically have only 4 categories under "programs", each with sub-categories and sometimes sub-sub-categories, ie. Entertainment->Games->FPS->Q3. It makes sense to me and allows me to launch programs more quickly. It frustrates the hell out of my girlfriend, who prefers the "Giant alphabetical order list" of programs. Of course, her method is far more suitable on my iBook.
So, to summarize: Ease of use still requires a little bit of education/effort in learning. What's easy to use for you or the interface designer may not be easy to use for Grandpa or my girlfriend or me. Allow a good degree of customization and configuring, but make those options obvious and easy to locate.
Everyone writes one interface for every skill level. There ought to be different interfaces according to your choice, or according to what level of interface the system thinks you can handle.
That last part's a bit broad, so I'll clear things up. With a normal PC, you've got CPU cycles to spare, and the computer has time to tell if you move deliberately for a menu choice, or if you're hunting for it, or if you keep choosing something, and cancelling out of the choice.
For a VCR, the default interface should be as simple as the buttons on the front. If you read the manual a bit, it will tell you how to turn on the intermediate features. If you read a lot, you can turn on the advanced features. If you read waaay too much, you get to turn on the command-line interface that uses reverse-Polish notation, in Aramaic, but displayed approximately by using Turkish for vowels, and Cantonese for consonants.
Everyone's not as comfortable with it as folks like us are, and because computers can do sooo bloody much, we should stop boring them, and give the computers more to do, such as providing different interfaces for different skill levels. We use short command interfaces with our kids and our pets ("Sit! Quiet!"), and much longer command interfaces with our peers ("Dude, nice frag!"). It's a very natural thing to do, and we ought to start allowing computers to do the same.
I'd guess that most people reading this, including me, know more about info tech than 99% of the population. It's easy for us to say that anyone who doesn't figure computers out is just not making an effort and respond with a 'RTFM'.
... Wash DC? ... local judges? ...)
But why don't we look at some fields that perhaps are not part of our aptitude. How much time and effort have you spent learning about,
- a recipe?
- fashion and clothing?
- fine art?
- your elected representatives (quick, name the ones in the State capital
- giving your girl/boyfriend a mind-blowing orgasm?
Now, you may say, 'but these things aren't important to me; I don't have time for them.' And then you'll understand why all the 'lusers' don't RTFM.
The world is divided into two categories. Those who "get it" and those who do not. Those who "get it" understand that everything has a pattern and all they have to do is play with the gadget and read the manual/documentation and understanding will come. Those who do not get it are akin to those who call us over to set the time on their VCR without even checking to see if they could do it themselves. Those who ask us 200 times how to copy/paste and cannot remember simply because their mindset is that computers are scary complex things that do not make sense.
These people are not going to be helped by simplification. These people are not going to be helped by hand-holding.
There needs to be some sort of "mind building" curriculum for people who are afraid of electronics. I believe that people who are told a 3-step process (such as copy-paste) 200 times and STILL cannot remember are mentally defective and in need of rehabilitive therapy.
Think about it. If someone is told even 10 times that "If you push the doorbell a bell will ring" and cannot remember it, you'll assume they are brain damaged and treat them as such.
That's how I've come to treat my mother when she asks me how to copy and paste. Finally I took her to the local drugstore and made her copy a piece of paper. I brought her home and had her paste it onto another piece of paper. I then had her describe the steps she had to take to me by writing them down. If she skipped something like "Put the money into the machine" or "select number of copies" then I'd get confused and make her go back to the beginning. Afterwards I brought her over to the computer and said "There are no settings. There is nothing to remember. You drag the mouse to highlight the text you want to copy. You press the right mouse button and choose "copy". You move to the new document and right-click and choose "paste" HOW is that more complex than what you just did with the copier over at the drugstore? HOW is that more complex than tying your shoes?"
She agreed, and then 10 minutes later called me over because she couldn't figure out how to copy/paste. She didn't even try.
-Sara
The 80 year old grandfather's problems with the TiVO can be attributed to the fact that as people age, they experience a decline in Fluid Intelligence (their ability to deal with novel problems that do not draw upon previous experiences). It's not that the grandfather was stupid, or that he didn't read the fine manual. It was that his brain's ability to deal with a new situation that didn't draw on his past experiences was not what it used to be. When you also consider the decline in performance of short-term memory that the average 80 year-old experiences, it is really no surpise the grandfather had so much trouble.
To design something for someone of that age, you have to draw upon their Crystallized Intelligence(the store of knowledge or information that a given society has accumulated over time). You might (if you're *really* a geek) be able to do something like rig up an analog alarm clock to the TiVO and expoit the grandfather's 30 years of experience setting alarm clocks to get him to successfully set the TiVO. Yes, he'll probably still need a TV Guide to look up the time so he can set it in the alarm clock, but the point is that the show will be recorded. It sounds crazy, but older adults often exploit their crystallized intelligence to create strategies that work around deficiencies in fluid intelligence.
If people hack network interface cards into their TiVO's, why not hack Grandpa interface alarm clocks into them as well?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
It's not that I haven't shared your frustration, but I've noticed everyone continues behaving the same and I think there's a rational explanation:
... Yes! the world should be ruled by all-powerful -- but benevolent -- geeks. Selected by their /. karma. Mod me up, and I will put a Palm in every hand. ;-)
I think of it as a simple micro-economic question: Programming the VCR is worth 50 to them (50 of what, I don't know). Asking me to do it costs them 10 (and costs me 10). Doing it themselves costs them 100, so it's not worth it for them to do it themselves. If they learned it, their cost would decrease, but you can't learn everything -- and their cost of learning a new technology is much higher than yours.
Which leads to another micro-economic concept: Specialization. They spend their time and effort learning about (e.g.) cooking and doing it; I spend mine on technology. We help each other out. It's much better than me cooking mediocre food and them struggling with their VCR. Also, they learn *new* recipes much faster and I learn new tech much faster.
if you have authority over these people, you can easily make them figure it out.
If only I had more authority