In the Introductory article I described Big and little SSNiFs, showed a couple of examples, and laid out the benefits of capturing scenarios in terms of Stakeholders, Situations, Needs and (potential) Features. Here I’ll talk about how they fit into the product creation process.
SSNiFs have a role to play in the four major stages of designing things: 1. understanding your customers 2. formulating a vision, 3. generating requirements and 4. solving the design itself. Not coincidentally, these correspond to the four layers of the Design Pyramid. Let’s dive into each layer.
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One of the best skills a designer can have is empathy with the user. And one of the best ways to achieve empathy is by looking at things from the user’s perspective using scenarios.
Scenarios have been around a while in different forms and flavors, but I haven’t found the standard formulations entirely satisfactory. They are either not concise enough or not structured enough or they don’t scale or they don’t articulate the need clearly or explain why the need exists to begin with.
Over time I evolved a different way of composing scenarios which has proven to be so simple and powerful that I thought it worth sharing. I have been using this technique since 2002.
Streaming music has become the dominant way we listen to music in our house. No muss, no fuss, no files to manage. We’re at a plateau, but not at the pinnacle of how it can be.
Let me just start off by saying, I think the iPhone is close to being a masterpiece. I am blown away by the imagination and quality it exhibits. Way to go, Apple designers; please get in touch with me and let me take you out to lunch.
That said, I’m disappointed in some of its designs. The object of my ire is the calendar app. The Palm 100 calendar UI from 1995 laps it in terms of moment-to-moment usage. In this article I want to show how a thirteen year old UI on a 160×160 pixel, monochrome display works so much better than a 2008 iPhone with a larger, high-res screen and fast CPU.
Why is great design so elusive? Why do requirements so often shift late in the game, wasting months of effort and millions of dollars? Where should we look to come up with breakthroughs product concepts? How can we make our design process less chaotic?
For years, I have sketched out a simple diagram to explain to clients my answers to these types of questions.
This diagram, the Design Pyramid, suggests that the design we can see and touch is just the tip of the iceberg. It is supported by distinct layers of information and prerequisite decisions. The four layers of the pyramid are Design, Requirements, Vision, and Understanding.
Speaking of portable music players, I’ve always been curious about why they don’t use audio more in the UI. They are intrinsically audio devices, after all. The only other way an iPod has to communicate to you is with its display, and that is useless when your eyes are on something else (like that mattress on the road, look out!).
With the iPod Shuffle the point is moot because the device is mute. There is no display at all, so you must navigate across and within songs by trial-and-error. Playlists are precluded from the device because there is no good way to navigate them. This makes it hard to use the same Shuffle for different situations. If you don’t have one, believe me, stepping through tracks on a Shuffle is a real pain.
You already have the earphones in. Why shouldn’t the iPod use them to speak with you? Here are some details of how it could work.
You know that feeling we all have these days? That boy, things sure are different than a few years ago? Where we can type a few keystrokes, get a recommended restaurant, its location on the map, directions to it, a photo of its storefront?
All from a beautiful little phone?
For free?
In 2007 we take this for granted, and consider the pre-Google Maps world of 2004 to be the olden days. (The pre-Facebook, pre-blog, pre-e-commerce days are already ancient history.)
Is that wonderment of rapid change just a now feeling? Will it fade as we take for granted the innovations that have changed our lives so much over so few years?
The answer is no, we won’t lose that feeling of wonderment over new things, because there is no end in sight to them. Innovations will continue to arrive at our doorstep in brown cardboard boxes at a faster and faster pace.
2007 will feel like the olden days even sooner than 2004 did. It’s the nature of the accelerating returns of technology. This much is obvious after watching Ray Kurzweil’s 2005 seminal, mind-blowing talk on the idea.
The concept is that every generation of technology makes the subsequent generation faster and cheaper. Moore’s Law (which predicts the doubling of computing power every 18 months or so) is one example. So is the evolution of life on the planet. And the extension of life into technology. And the inevitable future integration of technology into life. And, for that matter, life made out of technology.
Imagine, if you can, the same accelerating curve in medicine, energy and machine intelligence, leading to some unimaginable technological singularity. If you have trouble, let Kurtzweil do it for you.
You can watch an abridged 20 minute TED video (Feb 2005) of his talk. But I recommend you immerse yourself in the 90 minute Long Now talk. The Ogg Vorbis audio version* is loud and clear; skip the first 5 minutes of announcements. (The quality of the video and MP3 versions is bad.)
—– [*The iPod is not smart enough to play Ogg Vorbis files, but you can convert the Ogg file to MP3 using Audacity or other tools.]
Dedicated buttons for expressing your pleasure with the current song, or lack thereof
Music is so easy to come by these days. We should be in sonic bliss, right? But we aren’t, because so much of what we have on our music players is, well, crap. Our shuffled music is a mix of stuff we love and stuff we don’t. Not so pleasant.
So our goals is not just to get piles of music, it’s to have piles of music that we love to listen to. We want our music collection to have a high signal-to-noise ratio.
Apple already got AT&T to do the work to support visual voicemail. This is a good thing for users, since it’s much faster to be able to use one’s eyes to navigate interfaces than only one’s ears.
But why must voicemail be accessible only from your cellphone? Users already have a web login for their cellphone accounts. Why not allow users to access voicemail through a web interface? Then you could skim the messages, type text message responses from the browser or even initiate a callback from the far more efficient UI of your computer. (The callback would call your cellphone then the other party’s.)
While we’re at it, why not have an IMAP connector to your voicemail? You could then process voice messages as you process your email. The only difference is when you open the email message there would be a voice attachment to play. Since it’s using the glorious magic of IMAP, messages you read or delete are kept in sync with the server and your mobile phone, so your phone doesn’t nag you with a message you already processed. (Office VoIP PBX phone systems have permitted these scenarios for years, and they are great.)
Today, if you want to commission one mobile phone, you must decommission another.
Why must this be so? Cellphones are so cheap. Why can’t we have multiple active phones tied to the same number? A call to one would be a call to all of them.
Then you could have:
one powerful PDA/communicator/GPS smartphone like the iPhone as your main device
a tiny mini-cellphone/MP3 player to take running — an “iPhone Shuffle” (today I leave my phone behind)
a backup cellphone to grab when you are rushing out the door, when you misplace or lose one
a hands-free cellphone integrated into your car. No cables, no bluetooth coupling, no charging
a cellphone built into your laptop computer. Your computer would “ring” when someone called. You could process voicemail visually from your desktop. It would provide data, voice and video call connectivity when WiFi wasn’t available.
a couple of docked home cellphones that replace your existing land-line
Readers: We in the USA are mobile phone laggards. Does this capability exist anywhere in the world yet?
We’re so lucky. We have cellphones and GPS, cheap high speed Internet, free shipping and Wiis. I’m grateful, I really am. The progress has been astounding.
But there are some perennial UI issues in everyday products that year after year never seem to get fixed. Every year I expect someone will finally do something but year after year ticks by and nothing happens. Perhaps if I wish real hard out loud here on StealThisIdea some of these these problems will finally be resolved.
Here is my wishlist for 2008:
Awesome speech recognition on Mac
Speech recognition works and it’s here to stay. It is one of the few remaining advantages that Windows has over the Mac. Unfortunately the Mac has been second-class citizen for years. It’s only worth using the best speech recognition system available, and that system is Dragon NaturallySpeaking, available for Windows only. Apple, buy Nuance, willya?
[1/27/08 It's working already! Within days of writing a draft of this article, MacSpeech announced they have ported the Dragon NaturallySpeaking engine to the Mac with a product called Dictate! I can't wait. I currently use NaturallySpeaking on WinXP within Parallels on a MacBook Pro, channeling input to the Mac side of my Mac using TightVNC on the Windows side and Vine Server 2.2 on the Mac side. It works really well, and I depend on it. But it's memory-intensive and cumbersome. A Mac-native solution will be most welcome.]
Put a real second mouse button on Macs
In the mid-80s, I used a three button mouse on Sun workstations. It was a scourge of usability. There was no standardization of which button should do what. The user was left to flounder, learning and relearning button definitions across applications.
In that climate, it was refreshing for Apple to pronounce, “let there be but one button.” One button, no ambiguity. If you wanted a second action you could double click. Advanced users could Option-click or Shift-click. (Or Shift-Option-click. Usable indeed!)
Later, Microsoft introduced a second button, But they were careful to declare a clear and unwavering mandate: “Let there be a second mouse button, and let it be used only for contextual menus.” It has been an unqualified success. Every app uses it. Even your proverbial mom knows how to right-click to get options on things. Even on the Mac, support for second mouse button is ingrained in every serious app.
Apple seems to agree: Mac OS X, the iLife and iWork apps fully support the second mouse button.
The only thing missing is an actual second button on Apple mice and laptop trackpads. It’s as if Steve Jobs himself is petulantly holding out on his 20-year-old pronouncement out of sheer stubbornness. The only Apple-branded bone we’ve been tossed is an invisible, barely functioning fake second mouse button on the Mighty Mouse that requires that you lift your fingers off the left part of the mouse in order for it to register a right button click.
A third-party mouse with a proper second button therefore remains a required purchase with any Mac. Laptop users are still out of luck. It is a point of confusion and an ongoing barrier for Windows users who would otherwise switch to the mac.
Apple is a well-known button hata and we hope it gets over it in 2008.
[1/27/08 The signs on this one are not good; Apple looks like it's going to use multitouch trackpad gestures to get around having to desecrate its laptops with a second physical button. Maybe that will work, but I'm skeptical, based on bad experience with gestures on Powerbooks]
Put a real, physical keyboard on the iPhone
We are evolved to sense things by touch, not just by sight. Tactile, haptic user interfaces make use of that faculty.
On-screen keyboards require much more user attention than physical keyboard. The user must look not just at the text field but at the keyboard. The user cannot trust that a keypress will be interpreted correctly like a real button and must therefore verify what has been entered. It’s a “type->verify->proceed” mental loop instead of a more efficient “type->proceed” loop you use when you can unequivocally trust that a key press gave you what you expected. Finally, keyboards with real buttons you can feel are easier, faster, and more gratifying to use. Apple, please get over the buttonphobia. Stop trying to be clever with the workarounds and put a proper keyboard on the next iPhone.
Put physical playback and volume controls on music devices
There are very few universally-applicable UI principles. Almost all have contingencies and caveats. The only safe answer you can give to a general UI questions is, “It Depends.”
But there is a solid, generally applicable principle that you could teach a monkey: identify and streamline the most common and frequent tasks.
My first Sony Walkman cassette player got this right in 1979: I could adjust the volume and pause the music instantly, without looking, without changing modes, without unlocking anything, without even removing it from a belt clip. Yet most iPods are horribly modal. Turning down the volume on my current iPod requires pulling it out of the pocket, unlocking it, looking at it, turning the click wheel, locking it again and putting it back in my pocket. As I have pointed out, this makes the iPod touch flawed as a music player. So please, Apple, in 2008, put the volume and playback controls physical, pressable buttons that you can feel.
Stop the bouncing
On the Mac, icons of applications which require your attention bounce. And bounce. And bounce. Even if you’re in the middle of something else. They clamor for your attention like a needy child. Instead, icons should bounce once or twice and then stop. If they still require your attention, they may step forward from the dock, peeking out a little bit until a moment befitting the user.
Cars should stop self-destructing
How many products can you name, that you rely on for your life that self-destruct when the user makes a minor error? This is what happens when you accidently walk away from most cars with the dome light or headlights on. The car will dutifully shine that light all night long until your battery is dead and the car is no longer operable, leaving you stranded.
In 2008, at this point in human history, all cars should be smart enough to know never to allow the battery level to get below what is needed to start and recharge itself. This should be a national safety requirement.
Allow graphics to be copied and pasted into web forms; allow files to be dragged in
Blogging apps, SaaS apps like Google Docs, any webform requring a photo: all of these require that you provide files. Unfortunately you cannot interact with a web browser as you can with regular apps and the desktop. You cannot copy and paste images one application into a web app. And you cannot drag one or a dozen files from the desktop into an upload area. Users must contend with a cumbersome file open dialog, and do so repeatedly to upload multiple files. These facilities are needed now to upload images in many web apps, and they will be needed for evermore in RIAs and SaaS apps.
Cell phone service with the clarity of VoIP and the low latency of landlines
Cell phone service sucks. It has always sucked and so we take for granted its suckitude. But it doesn’t have to suck. There are two key problems: latency and audio quality. Latency is the delay from when you say something to when your friend hears it. You can get a sense of how bad it is by having both parties clap on the count of three. Latency affects cellphone service and VoIP and makes for awkward conversations. Either you work out a telegraphic protocol with clear, unnatural pauses to clear the air, or you talk over one another clumsily. Latency doesn’t have to suck so badly: it is negligible on old fashioned landline service, so it should be possible with cellphone communications.
The other problem is audio quality of phone calls. You don’t know what you are missing until you participate in a VoIP call with headphones on. The other person sounds like they are right next to you. Puhs, buhs and duhs are clearly distinguishable, as are v’s and f’s. It’s wonderful. This is also a mere matter of bandwidth and should be solvable, not just for mobile phones but for landline phones as well.
How many more years must pass before we have clear, instant, reliable voice communications? I hereby wish for someone to do something about it in 2008. We have HDTV; the time is ripe for HD phone service.
Bring back OpenDoc
OpenDoc was killed ten years ago, but the idea of mixing and matching components of applications has always made sense. I want to be able to put an OmniGraffle chart in a Pages document or a Numbers table in Stone Create. PenPoint did it pretty well in 1991, Microsoft botched it (with OLE), integrated apps like ClarisWorks approximated it, and some ISVs have been pushing the ball forward with LinkBack. But it is still not yet a robust, well supported standard. In 2008 I wish a proper standard and a workable cross-platform technology would emerge for embedding components of apps in other apps.
Make it impossible to leave an ATM without your card and your cash.
My Washington Mutual ATM seems designed to want you to leave your card behind: after it gives you your money, but before it gives you your card, it throws up a full screen ad for several seconds. You’ve got your money, the message it’s sending you is that your transaction is over. You start walking away, and if you’re lucky, you realize that you don’t yet have your card. I saved myself several times but one day it happened to me and I left without my card. When I returned to the bank later the teller told me that this happens several times a week.
It’s not terribly difficult UI design problem, and it’s amazing that it persists after twenty years of ATMs. The solution is to withhold all three items, card, cash and receipt, until all three are ready, and spit them all out at once. The best design I saw was years ago in Tokyo, where the three slots where together and you could grab all elements at once. Please, everyone who works at a bank: in 2008, make it impossible to leave without your card.
That concludes my top 10 UI wish list for 2008. Let’s check in again next year to see what has been fixed.
[Readers: if you know anyone involved with any of these products, please send them a link to this article. It's: http://stealthisidea.com/articles/2008-ui-wishes]
[Cross-posted from Kpao!]
Years ago, my friend Ania Moniuszko started a company making reusable shopping bags to help combat the waste of disposable bags. She designed them herself and calls them MyOwnBag, as in: “Paper or plastic?” / “Thanks, I have MyOwnBag.”
Here is the first product I have seen that embodies the future envisioned at the dawn of the Web era. An unobtrusive, wireless, sub-$200 Internet terminal with no specific purpose.
The Chumby Internet device, about $195 shipped.
That no-specific-purpose part partitions people who hear about the Chumby. Some see it as its greatest weakness, others see it as its greatest strength. I’m in the latter camp. I think the potential and relevance of this class of device is enormous. Here are some scenarios:
The competitors are clustered, copying one another, slowly drifting to where the customer is. Don’t add yourself to the fray by copying what they do. By the time you catch up, they will be elsewhere.
Instead, do a better job at figuring out where customers really are, and chase them instead.
Download a printable PDF of this graphic to post in the hallway.
the thing that continues to amaze me is that smart people at successful companies still form weak visions based on features, assumptions and the competition, not on customer needs. [..] Executives ask the question “How are we going to beat [most successful competitor]?” Features are added just to put a check mark on the box. And when you ask why, nobody can say the true reason any of these things are a good idea. [..] all the effort spent ultimately amounts to nothing.
$10,000 Honeywell Kitchen Computer from 1969. No units were sold. You can visit it at the Computer History Museum.
One era’s flop is often another era’s success. The typical excuse given for failure is something vague like, “the market wasn’t ready for it” or “the product was ahead of its time.” I dislike these phrases, as they shrug off our responsibility to predict what customers will accept, and they shift the blame to the vagaries of customer behavior and psychology.
Yes, sometimes it’s true that mainstream customers need plenty of role models around them before they’ll even entertain the possibility of trying a new technology. It took some convincing to get people to try out the first microwaves, mobile phones, email and the Web.
But just as often, the early attempts at a product fail simply because they do not meed important customer needs at a realistic price.
BART, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system
I had trouble with the BART (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit) mobile phone user interface for checking out schedules, so I sent them the following email.
The improvements are just good old-fashioned information design and matching the solution to the situation. I thought I’d share it here since it shows a bit of design thinking.
Why is great design so elusive? Why do requirements so often shift late in the game, wasting months of effort and millions of dollars? Where should we look to come up with breakthroughs product concepts? How can we make our design process less chaotic?
