A while back I blogged about expanding our definition “user-centered design.” But I want to return to this issue in light of the most recent public debate on usability—the new Facebook UI.
I’m not going to list the “mistakes” they made in this interface or praise its design, either. There are plenty of folks doing just that in blogs all over (see http://www.burningthebacon.com/2009/03/16/new-facebook-interface-fails-usability-test/ about its usability feature changes, and http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,47046,00.html about Forrester research regarding the Facebook UI)—and I’m fairly ambivalent about it, because for the most part, I know it will change soon again anyway. One thing I will praise social networking sites like Facebook for, though, is that even though they recognize that people get USED to interfaces and get annoyed when you change them, that you have to keep changing them.
As annoyed as people initially are, new users are MORE annoyed when you keep an old UI that eventually becomes outdated or obsolete. Take the example of large-scale enterprise software, like SAP, or PeopleSoft. When initially designed, they were revolutionary, and still are for their sheer power. But they continue to face a problem where old users have taken years to get used to the interface and DON’T want it to change, while new user find if cumbersome and poorly designed by today’s standards. Facebook, for example, keeps its UI iterative on a short timescale, and for that I praise them.
What I really do think is needed in usability studies is simply MORE DATA. One of the most popular blogs for the 2008 U.S. elections is fivethirtyeight.com (check it out—it is a lesson in analysis). It is wildly popular, because these guys KNOW DATA and use it well and in an accurate, predictive, or explanatory way. They’re statisticians, and they know social science. I argue that we need such a quantitative revolution in usability (and UI designers can help them some, too—you’d know that if you’ve used statistical software like SASS, SPSS, or STATA). Let’s regress!
In usability, we do a great job of filming users, asking questions, and applying more universal cognitive principles, but we don’t do such a hot job of using significant or representative samples, or using standard methodologies in survey design. I’m hoping for even more improvement in the science of how applications are used and by whom.
One interesting example is the use of social network analysis—the mapping of individuals’ social networks—such a methodology could be very useful in understanding how user are interrelated. Here is one researcher’s visualization of his Facebook social networks (see http://www.connectedaction.net/2009/03/02/facebook-social-network-visualizations/):
Every single user will have a different social network, and
there will be commonalities across populations or groups. But understanding
that not all users maintain the same networks, or even use software in the same
way--even for the same purpose, is crucial to developing adaptable, evolving
applications that use all the quantitative tools at our disposal.
Cool,
Thanks for sharing,
Keep up the good work
Posted by: Web developer | Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 01:34 AM