Compete on Usability

What will we do with cognitive surplus?

Bloggers I follow are buzzing about the Clay Shirky talk on the post-TV cognitive surplus.  I understood it as "Passive TV-style media is going away, replaced by the interactive Internet, and now we'll all use our free time being busy content creators."

His actual talk, however, was more nuanced and believable than a simple, en-masse transition of humanity from passive consumers to active creators.  He managed to address two shortcomings I predicted with cognitive surplus.

TV is fodder for social interaction. When my coworkers chat about the TV shows Lost or 30 Rock, I can't do much but smile and nod, because I watch very little TV. In the workplace, opting out of TV talk is a real sacrifice. In diverse contemporary society, what can you chat with people about, without risk of confusion or giving offense? It's just easier to have safe common experiences outside of work to talk about.

However, Shirky was careful to emphasize that even a small amount of redirected TV time could spawn multiple Wikipedias per year of Net content. If it only takes a little attention to contribute, it's easy to see people playing an online game or posting to an online community while watching TV. They're doing it now, all the time.

TV is rest time. People like being passive. Depending on what you read, television is either the world's most tranquilizing addiction, or a cognitively demanding cultural simulator. Either way, for a long time pundits doubted the PC would ever replace the TV, because peoples' behavior is quite different using these two mediums. No one "watches computer," and no one "uses TV." It's not easy to find exactly what the difference is. Supporting these naysayers, hybrid systems like WebTV and the Apple TV have had no great commercial success.

In the past ten years, though, television has evolved into convergence with personal computing.
Or rather, the TV interface, not the content, is much more like computers now. Tivo changed everything, and new TV sites like Hulu promise to change things further.

My take is that we still must make online content creation easier. It's great that people can watch less TV, but creating anything interesting online is still inconsistent and frustrating for most people. We need standardized widgets for common functions, so that every rich interface isn't a new learning experience for users. We must clearly communicate state in Web applications, so people always know what to expect from our tools. And we need very quick feedback and results when using these applications.

 

The default book link

Just a quickie post, but have you ever realized that Amazon.com is the default book link of the web?  The vast majority of instances when anyone links a book title online, they're pointing to Amazon.  Two fairly obvious reasons why:

1.  Their selection is so broad, they almost certainly have a page for the book you're referring to.

2.  Meta-info and community book reviews make their pages feel useful for readers.  It's almost like it's not even an online store.  Almost!

Wouldn't it be amazing to become the default music link (iTunes)?  The default reference link (Wikipedia)?  Are there other content-type or general category defaults like these?

making The Switch: My MacBook user experience

I had several good reasons for purchasing a MacBook but, anticipating my new laptop's arrival, I still was nervous about switching.  About a month later, it's been a positive overall experience for me.  I hardly miss my old PC at all.

The positives

Great keyboard and trackpad. The keys are springy and let me type fast. The touch pad responds better than other pointing devices I've used in the past.  It's hard to describe, but a combination of the touch surface and the way it responds to fast and slow motions, somehow make it better.

It sleeps and wakes up intuitively.  I've dealt with multiple laptops and desktops where the sleep or hibernate commands don't work the way you set them in Windows.  It's common for machines to ship straight from the vendor with memory-resident software that messes up power saving.  Not so with this MacBook!  Close the lid and it sleeps immediately.  Open the lid and it comes back on almost instantly.  It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Lots of applications open?  No problem.  Mac OSX is designed to handle multiple open applications without cluttering up the interface.  I find that when the Windows XP Taskbar has more than four or five applications, all the rectangles and ellipsis text look crowded and bug me.  The OSX Dock holds many applications by icon, marking them subtly and without lots of cut-off text.

Quicksilver. Although I like the Dock, I don't use it to launch applications.  On the advice of coworkers, I downloaded the freeware Quicksilver launcher. Quicksilver opens with a key combination, and then typing only a few more letters launches an application.  It has many more functions, but I'm content with the fast, no-pointer-required application launching for now.

The negatives

My slippery, dirty case.  The matte surface of the black MacBook is quite slippery, almost like the inside of a nonstick pan. I've come close to dropping it more than once. Other times, I caught myself holding on so tightly that the case was flexing.  At length, I decided it's only safe to pick it up with two hands.

After a month, my laptop has picked up several noticeable fingerprint marks. Cleaning them safely is not straightforward, because Mac community resources are flatly contradictory on the best way to clean the case.  Is an isopropyl alcohol solution fine, or will it strip off your finish?  Does Apple's iKlear polish work on black MacBooks, or not?  My favorite comment from this post was that the dangerous wood fibers found in paper towels will scar your case like sandpaper. Hmm.

Keyboard layout.  The Command buttons for keyboard shortcuts are crowded close to the spacebar, unlike PCs, which puts the Ctrl button at either edge.  On my Wintel laptop, for keyboard shortcuts, I can easily reach the Ctrl key with my pinky finger and hit a letter key with my index finger. That's not possible with the Command keys on this keyboard layout.

I also miss the PC Delete key (aka "delete forwards").  It's difficult to remember (and reach for) Fn+delete for that.

It's a two (or three) mouse button world.  Come on, Apple. Is there any reason left not to ship your computers with two buttons for the trackpad?  After all, if you plug in a two-button mouse, it will work.  You even sell two button mice. We're years past the point when even diehard Mac fans could argues that Command-Control-Shift-clicking is a good idea.

On my PC the scrollwheel is clickable as a third mouse button, and I use it to open a link in a new Firefox tab. So, I really feel two buttons behind.

The Finder is so missing.  Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but since I know the file system is based on a hierarchy of folders, widgets layered on top of that make it more difficult to orient myself and save things where I want them.

In the Mac OSX Leopard screenshot to the right, there's a little Home row of breadcrumbs that mimics the UI I've seen in iTunes. However, that was turned off by default on my Macbook.

The button to create a new folder is also needlessly buried.  I guess I'll have to learn the keyboard shortcut for that one.

And the final score ...

I very much like the MacBook overall, but for reasons beyond all these pro and cons.  II'll need one more blog post to expound on those reasons.

making The Switch: Upgrade choices

Today was Steve Jobs's annual MacWorld conference keynote, a perfect opportunity to post about my experience with my new MacBook.  Last year I needed to upgrade my old Dell, but I really wasn't interested in "upgrading" to Windows Vista. The irritating security warnings I've read about, with a very poor signal-to-noise ratio, make me believe that Microsoft has lost any empathy for real end users. Still, I was resigned to limp along for as long as possible on Windows XP before grudgingly transitioning.

Instead, a confluence of events convinced me to take the Mac plunge. Reports of the diminished cost difference between PCs and Macs and Apple's growth in market share helped me think different, but not nearly as much as the examples set by my peers. My wife is a teacher, so it's not surprising she's a longtime Mac user. The tipping point came when I started my new job, however. I was impressed to find the most thoughtful engineers preferred not Linux boxes, and certainly not Wintel devices, but Macs.   

In the end, and say what you will about Apple's marketing hype, it's clear they are among the leading companies in the world who have chosen to compete on user experience. I want to support a company whose values are so closely aligned with my own.

So at the beginning of December, for my birthday, I purchased a black MacBook.  (I wanted the sophisticated black shell no matter what, but since my wife already owned a white MacBook, it was practical to get the different color for myself.)  This post is becoming a little long, so I'll follow up soon with my sense of whether the product has fulfilled my expectations.

Next: My MacBook user experience

Verizon: the false dilemma

I find Verizon untrustworthy, like other telecom companies. It's their business model. You must accept a 1-2 year service contract for service, meaning you cannot cancel no matter how poor their service becomes. Their wireless business model seems designed to set up an adversarial, unpleasant relationship with paying customers.

This is the twenty-first century, and I'm tired of buying stamps, filling out paper checks, and sealing envelopes with spit to pay Verizon Wireless.  So I tried out their online billing service and I've been using it without too much trouble.

Here's an email I received recently:

Date: 7/10/2007

To: JOSHUA LEDWELL

From: Customer Service

Subject: Verizon E-Bill Trial Ends Soon

You already experience the convenience of receiving, tracking, and paying your Verizon e-bill in a secure location. Your e-bill service is always available at no additional cost to you.

It takes thousands of trees to print bills each year in the United States. Help reduce waste by canceling your paper bill. The environment will thank you.

To continue receiving Verizon e-bills, you must stop your paper bill before the trial period ends on 07/24/2007.

This message only applies to the e-bill feature of your bill payment service. The trial period does not affect your ability to make online payments through this service.

My question is, why must I stop paper billing to receive electronic bills?  My utilities, bank, credit card, mortgage ... every other company that bills me is content to send bills both by snail mail and email. I find it easier to file records when I receive them by mail, so paper bills have value to me.  But I also like email reminders to pay on time.

Since I know Verizon is presenting me with a false dilemma, and I'm conscious of their business model, I'm very suspicious of all their points. E-billing is saving the planet? Please. Even if it's true that paper bills are wasteful, I'm thinking instead of Verizon's ulterior motives in depriving me of easy recordkeeping.

Verizon, let your customers pay any way they want, or give them an incentive to switch. What about a discount for however much paper bills cost you, if they cancel paper billing?  If not, they'll remember your shabby treatment when their contract expires and they can afford to switch to AT&T iPhone service.

The Apple experience

When I started this blog, I expected to be writing about Google all the time. Today, though, it's Apple that deserves the most praise for competing on usability.  Apple, whose personal computer market share is single digits, and whose Web presence is just as irrelevant, dominates consumer electronics.

They won the music game by changing it, basing their brand, marketing, and iPod product design on superior user experience. Now they seem poised to execute on the same formula for cell phones, with the launch of the iPhone.

The iPhone's unique design, compared to the weak usability of other mobile phones, is reason enough for most bloggers to praise it. Others noted:

• Jared Spool of UIE: "A one-word explanation of why experience design is important."
• AskTog: "[T]his is the most approachable full-featured phone I’ve ever seen."
• Eric Meyer: "Thanks Be To Jobs. The big day is finally here. That’s right: Ratatouille opens today." 

Okay, Eric Meyer's post was a joke but regardless, Apple and Steve Jobs have come a very long way back. Remember, Apple was roadkill in the mid-nineties. At its nadir in the late 1990's, the Mac platform was irrelevant. The company established a new niche with OSX in 2001, but it was the launch of the iPod in the same year that really turned them around. Music player led to music store. Music sales led to video sales. Then came Apple Stores and Genius Bars. In all cases, Apple designed and marketed an unique, superior experience that was differentiated on form, not function.

These days no one can compete on their terms -- the Apple experience mystique is stronger than a contact high at Woodstock. So what does Apple's resurgence have to teach us? You, too, can aspire to be be a user experience force. Change the terms of the discussion. Raise expectations. Link your brand with user experience, and reap the benefits.

Daylight screen backlash

Via Usability News, I found a press release saying 60-80% of British consumers have trouble reading their portable device screens outdoors, with 44% saying they were misled by advertising showing people using them in daylight.

Note that the press release quoted research sponsored by a next-gen screen vendor. While the data may be accurate, it's being released as blatant marketing spin to create a need for the vendor's products. Still, the data seems intuitive to me. My cell phone's large, bright screen is unreadable even in overcast conditions, let alone sunny skies.

Color-reflective displays, optimized for bright light viewing and low battery drain, have existed for years. Early implementations of the technology, however, caused a real backlash. First versions of the Game Boy Advance's dim screen, as well as the DS (pictured), were derided by industry press.  These days manufacturers seem to rely on displays using the opposite technology, perhaps hoping consumers will grow inured to squinting and hand shading in order to use their cell phones and handhelds.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Screens can be optimized for both types of ambient lighting. I always thought it was too expensive, but if a $100 laptop designed for children has a screen that works well both in daylight and indoors, why don't we all have one?  So I hope pressure builds and consumers begin to reject their dim displays.

Market health care

Health care in Massachusetts (my home state) is undergoing a quiet revolution. A new law requires that all state residents enroll in a health insurance plan by the end of the year. Other states have, or will have, similar regulations. Meanwhile, the United States as a whole continues to struggle with new prescription coverage plans for senior citizens.

In both situations, consumers have many choices between both private and government health plans. Unfortunately, many have a tough time choosing because, as one good article points out, the plans aren't set up to match consumers' mental models of health care.  In Massachusetts, some people chose the plans with the lowest initial costs, then suffered high rate increases after the plans had signed up enough new members.

Software's dirty little secret

Legalese is a growing blight on the tech industry. Every time users download a plug-in or open a shrink-wrapped box, they're confronted with a dense passage of text. End user license agreements (EULAs) are a lightning rod for consumer backlash, or simply passive cynicism and distrust of the industry.

Here's the secret: it doesn't have to be this way. Take Yahoo's Terms of Service: it's a model of clearly organized, readable text. Yahoo competes by reassuring users with a lucid description of what they do with their data. They build trust and even delight users with an unexpected good experience.

At your company, don't assume you must accept an unreadable EULA. Discuss with your legal team how you can make your EULA more consumer-friendly. Show them the Yahoo Terms to illustrate the difference between legalese and legible. If all else fails, inserting a prize message into your terms will eventually get someone's attention!

First Human-Powered Search?

When I first came upon Mahalo, the new Hawaiian-themed search site, its description immediately gave me reason to doubt. They are FAR from the "world's first human-powered search engine." The major 1990s search engines, including Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and LookSmart, built custom pages for popular, high-revenue terms like cars, travel, and tech. Even today, sites like the Open Directory have far more human-edited content.

Mahalo's information architecture is suspect too. Its ten main categories are listed in no particular order -- alphabetizing them would be nice, like other directory sites do. The hierarchy is also unclear. Why do they give Music and Television their own categories, but bury movies under Entertainment? Why are there seven top link picks for each result ... no more, no less?

The site makes more usability mistakes:

• Ratings and ranked lists that don't necessarily correspond to users' needs
• Breaking the Google paradigm with no helpful metadata for recommended links
• No breadcrumbs

It's very difficult to see how Mahalo can compete with either Google's machine-based search breadth or Wikipedia's human-edited depth of content.