Jon Reily

The other day I read an article titled “90% of your users are idiots“. I shared it to Twitter and had a few lively conversations on the subject. All in all we decided that users weren’t idiots per se, but rather were otherwise intelligent people who didn’t work in our field.

Every day in my business I spew acronyms like they’re primary colors and on more than one occasion I’ve completely stumped my wife with a word that is second nature to me, but a different language to her.

So, with this in mind, are we perhaps failing our users with our designs?

I’m currently in the process of a cart & checkout re-design at work. Needless to say there’s been a lot of conversation on the topic as well as testing (not as much as I’d like, but here we are). It’s going well, but it’s still not “there”. I’ve no doubt that it will do what we want, and better than our current implementation, but could it be even better?

Maybe some subtle changes to the wording might make a huge difference.

This came to me while talking to my wife (my always patient sounding board) and in the course of the conversation I used the word “checkout”. She paused, asked what I meant by it, and once I explained we were good to go.

But…

There was a pause there. She interrupted me to ask what I meant by that. When we design interfaces our users don’t have that luxury, so they just go somewhere else.

Cut to the chase…We are prominently using a button labeled “Continue Checkout” in this design. I wonder how many other users don’t get that the way we do?

I bet we’ll find some very interesting results if we change it to simply “Next”.

Will report.

I did not write this. It is as old as the Web itself. It is however, hilarious; and quite truthful.

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.

Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.

Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often.

Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

I was talking to a friend of mine today I’ve not talked to in a long time and the subject of what I do came up. Now, after all these years, I’m used to having to explain what I do to people. It’s just a by-product of the profession. There’s lots of joke names for what I do, “Bubble/Line Coordinator” is one of my personal favorites, but my term of choice for what I do comes from one of my early mentors in the field: I make software applications (for the Web) that are powerful but easy to use.

It sounds simple, and sometimes it is, but most of the time it’s a deeply challenging, and therefore rewarding, thing to do.

My grandfather used to say “the first time you hit a golf ball correctly, you’ll be hooked on the game for life” (he was right, by the way). Working in User Experience is just like that. The first time you hear from a user “wow, that was so easy”, you’ll be hooked. It was like that for me.

It wasn’t anything glamorous, just an updated setup process for an application to manage a Microsoft Exchange-based product that involved some pretty deep concepts (from MX Records to MobileMail and BlackBerry options). I worked on it for a long time, and finally came to a flow that I thought worked well. When it was tested on users it received high marks, and one of the comments was “wow, that was easy”.

Sure, the design answered the requirements (and increased activations by over 60%, which looked good on my annual review), but what meant the most to me was that one user’s comment.

That was my golf ball, and I hit it correctly. I’m hooked on UX and Usability for life.

I have a few friends that are looking for work right now who have asked me about my experiences finding a job in my career. This got me to thinking about my “process” for finding a job, and I started to document it (no surprise for those who know me at all). As a service to said friends (who are of course going to remain anonymous), and others who might be interested, here is my process:

This platform continues to get more and more interesting. While the specific content of this is kind of silly, it’s a fantastic example of what the device itself is capable of.

via HackerNews

As most of you know, tomorrow Apple is going to make an announcement. How big or little this announcement is depends on who you listen to, but most people tend to agree that the meat of the show will be the unveiling of the much rumored Tablet.

However, I’m wondering if it is going to be more than just a “tablet”.

To me, a tablet, something between the iPhone and the MacBook just makes no sense to Apple. Sure, there’s lots of those already, and I’m sure some of them make money, but for Apple to get involved with it, there has to be a market. They just don’t go and create things willy-nilly and hope for the best. They KNOW (or think they know) that something is going to work before they share it with the rest of us.

That means that this “tablet” is going to have to have some killer functionality to it in order to distinguish it from all the other ones already on the market.

Looking at the logo for the upcoming event I think I have an idea of what it might be. You know me, I can’t not analyze something…

Looking at the shape of the logo, it appears to be in a tablet shape. Ok, that’s kind of a no brainer.

It’s also covered with paint splotches. Colorful, isn’t it? But wait, these look…well purposeful.

Also note that said splotches are NOT finger paint. Which one would expect with a tablet “ad”, as you interact with a typical tablet with your fingers.

What this suggests to me is that this tablet is going to have an optical recognition software where you interact with the device by looking at certain parts of it.

Now, before you say I’m crazy, here’s my thinking:

I’m a User Experience (UX) professional for a living. My job is to make software and websites that people can use easily, and enjoy using. A byproduct of this is that I look at an awful lot of heat maps, which are illustrations created by special cameras that track eye movement and mark on the page where people are looking. This helps us as UX Architects to determine where to put items on the page so people will find them. Here’s an example.

Now, look at this heat map and go back and look at the “Latest Creation” ad. Looks kind of similar, doesn’t it? And notice where the largest splotch of paint is? Right on the Apple logo.

So, I may be WAY off base here, but I think tomorrow we’re going to see the beginning of optical input computing on a large scale.

We’ll see if I’m right. Check me tomorrow…

EDIT: 27 January 2010

Well, I was wrong. Too bad. I would have liked to see that. Regardless, I’ll still buy one.

I got my invite to Google Wave today and have been playing with it a bit. So far, I have to say, it’s cool. I don’t really know if it will “be the next email” or even the replacement for it, but I can see a use for it: the end of the endless thread of long emails.

In business, it’s pretty common for an email to get passed from person to person, add another person, put in some more information, pass it back to someone else, and repeat. This leads to a HUGE amount of information that you may or may not need to know, as you part of it may be at the beginning, or worse, tucked somewhere in the middle of the conversation. This is where Google Wave will excel.

The neat thing about the Wave is the ability to “step into” the conversation at any point and play it back. You can roll back the conversation to any point and see what happened, with who, and when.

So, overall, I think it’s going to be a good product. It’s still a little buggy (crashed a bit on me in Firefox, but not Chrome, go figure), but I’m sure they’re working on it en masse.

More to come.

I was talking to a friend of mine today I’ve not talked to in a long time and the subject of what I do came up. Now, after all these years, I’m used to having to explain what I do to people. It’s just a by-product of the profession. There’s lots of joke names for what I do, “Bubble/Line Coordinator” is one of my personal favorites, but my term of choice for what I do comes from one of my early mentors in the field: I make software applications (for the Web) that are powerful but easy to use.

It sounds simple, and sometimes it is, but most of the time it’s a deeply challenging, and therefore rewarding, thing to do.

My grandfather used to say “the first time you hit a golf ball correctly, you’ll be hooked on the game for life” (he was right, by the way). Working in User Experience is just like that. The first time you hear from a user “wow, that was so easy”, you’ll be hooked. It was like that for me.

It wasn’t anything glamorous, just an updated setup process for an application to manage a Microsoft Exchange-based product that involved some pretty deep concepts (from MX Records to MobileMail and BlackBerry options). I worked on it for a long time, and finally came to a flow that I thought worked well. When it was tested on users it received high marks, and one of the comments was “wow, that was easy”.

Sure, the design answered the requirements (and increased activations by over 60%, which looked good on my annual review), but what meant the most to me was that one user’s comment.

That was my golf ball, and I hit it correctly. I’m hooked on Usability for life.

I made this and it hangs in my office. It inspires me every day. I hope it inspires you too.

Sure, Apple’s default Snow Leopard picture is cool, but I think this one is WAY cooler. It’s been the desktop picture on my Mac since I installed 10.6. Via Pixadus (which is a very cool picture site, BTW).

So I had an old laptop laying around. Well, to be fair, I have LOTS of old laptops laying around, I’m a tech packrat (there are two 20th century clamshell iBooks within 3 feet of me as I write this). However, this was a REALLY old laptop. It’s a Toshiba Satellite that is so old that it has a “Made for Windows98″ sticker on it. I don’t know why I have had it laying around all this time, but as with many things, it came in handy today.

I was playing with a new custom ROM on my G1 and thought to myself, “hey, I bet I can get Android running on a PC”, and low and behold, I was right. Thanks to this little article,  I had it up and running in no time. The machine in question won’t boot via USB (no surprise there), but the CD image worked just fine and now I’m up and running (it also worked great in VMWare, for those of you adventurous types w/out an old laptop laying around).

More to come, but so far, so cool!

I am a sucker for cool-looking infographics, and this one absolutely fits the bill. It’s a visual representation of the seven deadly sins across the United States done by a team at Kansas Sate. Here’s lust to tempt you.

Rest can be found, here. Via Wired.

It’s just like this working in software development sometimes. That’s why requirements are SO important.

“Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.”

Read the rest here.

via Digital Survivors