Zooiblog

The key to success is to make others succeed

The ultimate goal of every self-respecting interaction expert (encompassing job descriptions like interface design, information architecture and human-computer interaction) is to make the user happy. No, not just happy. A user must not only accomplish his task, he must feel that he does. Acknowledgement of his success is as important as actually succeeding. The user might not notice, but subconsciously he will be satisfied by what he did, and the opposite, if the user feels he failed, is a negative and much more powerful feeling. Best to avoid this. Yes, he got it done, but look how he got there.

To the user who’s not already heavily numbed by the bad interactive objects he encounters, does not believe that ‘the ends justify the means’. Nowadays, he is probably used to the mess that comes with many of the applications and other interactive objects we encounter. That does not mean improvement is useless. It never is. They don’t call it ‘improvement’ without a reason. If it’s impossible to fix it, it might still be possible to improve it.

Improvements often go by unnoticed. Many will agree with me, it’s in the details. Details make the difference. Heck, one tiny detail that doesn’t behave as it should can mean death to the whole object. It’s like that with everything. You may get away with something mind-boggling that lacks the more subtle interface details but does something extraordinary. Odds are that you won’t create something like that. That’s okay, but if you make something which is plain, work on detail. See it as The Road to Success, Mile One. It’s a long road, and users might get bored too. Hopping off the driving cart is an option.

Out with that metaphor. It’s weird. Okay, not yet. I envision it like that. The user is a passenger who wants to sit on the best seat. Either you make sure everyone sits comfortably or you figure they will put up with your crappy seating. Who cares if the passengers sit comfortably? Enough of that, people (both the metaphor and the behaviour).

To return to the subject at hand: the user wants confirmation. I’ve been told often that you should not want validation, but the user expects nothing less. It might sound like a cliché, but it’s very true: don’t ask what your user can do for you, ask what you can do to make the user experience a better one, one worthy of being called a User Experience™, if you’re into that kind of stuff. The point is, don’t disappoint a user. Wait, scratch that. Better: satisfy a user. Satisfaction is what makes the world go round, and that makes you wonder why so many interactive objects lack this.

Example: Gmail is a nice system. Few people realise how easy it is compared to such embarrassments like Hotmail. When you send a mail with Hotmail (it always takes me a bit to do it properly), you get (after searching for the Send button) a page with a confirmation that the mail is sent. That’s not too bad, but I’d rather go back from whence I came. Not the point here though. The element of the page you deem most important gets the least focus. I keep failing to see that it indeed has sent it, because all I see is this ball of clutter and an option to add the person I mailed to my contact list. Mailing someone through my Hotmail has become an awful chore—I can hardly say I enjoy that process.

The real solution to this all is very simple, and many around the world already get that. Constrain yourself to the following keywords: simplicity, sensible feedback, singularity. Simplicity is a classic, but it doesn’t mean you can deviate. Sensible feedback is a must. Take this made-up but highly plausible Windows error: “Error: an error E332-#8874 has occurred in Application. Please restart.” Obviously, this doesn’t help anyone save the programmer who wrote the line that declares that error, if any. Cue Gmail: “Your message has been sent.” Singularity, lastly, is highly underestimated. Where I get a completely new page in Hotmail confirming that I sent a mail plus several features I have never used, Gmail just tells me, in a yellow-ish bar at the top of the inbox, my mail has been sent. Focus. Keep functions separated. Clutter hasn’t done anyone any good.

How do you make sure your user will like the way you treat them? You can’t be sure about that for every user. It depends on the kind of user you expect, and even then, stuff is hard to figure out. I guess there is a lesson here for us all! We will have to learn from their feedback to improve ours to them. It’s a progressive step, but it will improve your execution of any user-related work, and that’s what’s important here.

What I’m really saying is, you better do your best at making the user succeed in his activities. If he actually does it without blemishes, then off goes my hat. Being able to serve the user well is a good thing to have up your sleeve.

Next time, I will try and find out how you can improve the feedback you blurt at your user, including some real-life examples.

(Thanks to Pete and Joen for checking and suggesting (and thus improving)!)

Posted on 2005-06-03 at that ungodly hour.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder

Every Wednesday, and occasionally another day of the week too, I have a chat with Joen about a very small selection of topics: they vary from talent to quality, and from bad/good opinions to arrogance. Joen happens to be right most of the times, meaning that I go down painfully. Sometimes, we agree. Those moments are rare, though. However, and it’s one of my bigger issues, I try to define something that’s hard to define. This post, I will try to tell you what I think is quality. Sit tight!

Something that serves a purpose is good. Quality is something that serves a purpose but stands out. Examples. Like with music. A song can be more than its genre. Web design: a two-column blog layout can be designed quite well. Movies: Pulp Fiction isn’t an action movie. Also. It stands out. It might not do wonders for the genre, but it stands out because it’s more. It’s more than just serving the purpose that’s constrained by a genre (take note that my use of the word genre is very general here).

Now, you might disagree (yes, Joen, Britney Spears and all), but when I judge things, I take an objective look at it. I don’t have enough experience to know how to serve all purposes, but I step away from my personal preferences. That way I can see that yes, Britney Spears serves a purpose and does so well, but Opeth, a band I never heard any song of, was played into my very own ears yesterday, and though I’m not into metal/goth/whatever, I immediately heard why they are Good. Their music doesn’t fit into one genre, but excels in many. It’s not my music at all (I like other stuff better), but I heard why it is for many others.

Tell me, how do you define quality? Give me examples. They work.

(If you disagree with me, d’accord, but don’t flame here. Explain your opinion or keep your mouth shut.)

Posted on 2005-05-26 during breakfast.

Why people blog (instead of companies), and something about identity too

Jeff brushed this topic somewhere last week, and I started thinking. First of all, one of my favourite examples of blogging people.

We all (should) know the awesome/amazing/feckin’ cool company silverorange, the Canadian bastards who created the lubberly mozilla.org (yeah yeah Anne) redesign last year. They have a (markup-wise dirty) company site with products, portfolio and the likes. However, instead of running a corporate weblog (yes, even a ‘corporate’ where each employee posts for himself in the company context *cough*), virtually every single employee has his own weblog to rant about life, work and everything. And if it wasn’t for one of my personal heroes, Steven Garrity, I wouldn’t have liked silverorange either. Steven is a nice guy. One can tell. He subtly advertises and keeps the visitors connected. It works.

Now, it must be noted that, over at so, they’re all pretty much buddies, but even without knowing that simple fact, they all seem pretty cool and so does so thanks to that. When dealing with such a company, personalities count.

Conclusion: so rocks

I hardly try to hide my love towards them Canadians, but one can also hardly disagree. However, it’s a prime example of how good personalities work for a company. Now, that’s done. On to bigger things…

Identities for personal sites

I had to talk about this—Nazarin started it (get well man!)—as I’m currently working on a redesign (sorry, people who saw my previous attempt – it will get even better). I am working on a real identity this time, and when Naz says that personal sites don’t really need an identity, I feel obliged to retort. Of course, a personal touch is okay, but some sites don’t need branding. However, when you get some several hundred to thousand visitors a day, you want people to remember you. The more the merrier, no? Maybe a logo is a bit too much of a brand for a weblog (plus more soon, mind that)?

What is it with identities? Branding? Corporate blogging? Tell me. I’d like to know what you think of real branding for a personal site, as that is what you can expect.

Posted on 2005-03-22 while enjoying evening coffee.