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Report summaries can damage more than they inform
Disclaimer: I’m a skeptic, sometimes against things I’ve studied or mastered. Nothing is left out of the scrutiny crosshairs.
Jakob Nielsen recently released Kindle Fire Usability Findings, which is a report that speaks to the results of user testing and the summary of the user experience of Amazon’s Kindle Fire mobile device. Summary: I shook my head because it seems to be an example of why so many organizations don’t care for user experience and usability testing at all.
When I saw Nielsen’s summarized findings, I thought ‘If the device sold well, do the findings even matter?’. I’m sure many potential buyers of the Kindle Fire wondered the same thing. Below the fold, in much smaller text is the phrase “Our studies of Kindle Fire weren’t intended to advise consumers on whether to buy a Fire device.” Oh, o….k….. Why was this summary released to the public if the intent was not to influence/affect potential buyers? Why not charge for it, just like so many other NNGroup reports to avoid confusion?
Then, that’s when the questions/speculation seemed to pour down from my cranial computer bank…
- Who is this report for then? Designers? Developers? Managers? Consumers? All? No one?
- I’m sure Amazon did their own testing. Why would Amazon sell it anyway if all of this were true?
- If the report was speaking to the UX viability of 7” tablets, why does the summary seem to be device specific rather than device agnostic?
Furthermore, there are lots of ambiguous phrases like “magazine reading experience could be good but actually is miserable” and “7-inch tablets have either a glorious future or will fail miserably” which make me question the validity of the report (and some might question the discipline) in general.
On the other hand, you have Amazon selling/shipping a projected 3-4 million units of the Kindle Fire within the first few (~8) weeks. And yet, this is a device that has a “disappointingly poor user experience”.
Biggest takeaway from Nielsen’s summary “UX will be great if the money is there and poor if it’s not”. Sounds like a valid conclusion from any other project…This would be consistent with the links to the full 293 report ($298 for single license, $598 organizational rights) and the Usability Week Conference registration links ($769 - $3532 in the US) at the bottom of the page.
Conclusion:
Can we refrain from releasing summarized information like this whose intent is not to influence consumers but winds up eroding the perceived value of UX and usability by the general populace?
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There is no Santa (UX Truth Serum)
Do you remember when someone told you that there was no Santa Clause or that there was no such thing as the Easter bunny? Over the last 8 months, I’ve experienced my very own ‘There’s no Santa’ (truth) moment with regard to UX in general, specifically the perception of the value UX brings to business. Over the last few years, I’ve read a few books and blogs by UX enthusiasts and followed several UX pioneers on Twitter and I was convinced that most UX problems could be solved by finding ways to fit UX practices into corporate product & project life cycles. Unfortunately, the ‘There’s no Santa’ happened when I saw how others view UX in a few ways:
- UX Salaries & Opportunities - I used to think that it was possible to earn as much (or more) as a top developer or manager in a UX role. The truth is that there aren’t enough jobs available in UX and of those, the highest paying UX jobs are controlled by a very close-knit aristocracy. Mentorships are far and few between and often, people aren’t seriously interested in spreading the knowledge of UX unless it’s in exchange for an expensive registration fee, an expensive hardcover book, or expensive white-paper reports. As long as other jobs provide more compensatory benefits than UX and the time and cost to learn UX remains sky high, it will be difficult to promote UX’s value to the general populace. Despite it’s power and growth, UX cannot break the rules of economics…
- Perceived value of UX by non-UX teams - I thought that most companies wanted to include UX in their life cycles, more often than not, UX is seen as a project risk since it has the potential to raise costs and run over deadlines. In the concrete business world, people are concerned with completing deliverables on time and within a budget. A product can succeed/fail for a variety of reasons (i.e. marketing, quality control, availability, pricing, or some combination), but I have never (do not interpret this as being an absolute. I speak for myself only as I’m sure that at least one person has experienced the opposite) heard a management team claim that any product owes the majority of it’s success/failure to the user experience. Many UX advocates may disagree and try to speak for non-UXers and say that the perception of UX isn’t THAT low, but there is a definite bias. UX advocates HAVE to believe the discipline’s value is high because they practice UX (sounds simple, but it has to be stated). I’m not saying that the value isn’t high, but the reality is that it’s possible that the value is a just a tad overstated. UX may be a discussed as an important topic of improvement, but UX’s importance is below pricing, availability, quality, etc. when it comes to purchasing decisions. Only after a convenient and affordable product has been found does a consumer ask ‘Does it work well?’. Why isn’t ‘ease of use’ a product filter on Amazon.com? That’s exactly how a few business sees UX too..
- Lack of cross-departmental awareness with user experience - You DO NOT have to satisfy an obscure set of rules to practice UX. It’s in the best interest of the discipline as a whole to assimilate anyone with the capacity to learn in order to spread it’s true utilitarian power. Unfortunately, trying to couple concrete skill sets with UX is unheard sounds weird in business. Even more so, most companies realize that concrete skills like software development are easier verify and convert into revenue generating deliverables. But if a company doesn’t formally recognize UX practices or hire UX personnel, guess which roles instantly become the best source of UX? The developer, the manager, and everyone else who isn’t a UX expert by title become the last, best hope for UX. However, learning UX cannot be a company initiative. UX’s value has to be recognized by the individual and exercised covertly (think Jedi mind tricks), lest a person come off as a fanatic and using magic to risk project timelines and robbing other teams of value daily. Imagine you are a hiring manager for a large company and you have to look over the resumes of 2 candidates. Each candidate has an objective listed:
- I’m a UX expert, know code, and manage people
- I’m a web developer with experience managing people and I am familiar with user experience principles and patterns
Underlying questions: Who gets hired first and who gets the highest salary? Can UX only be practiced effectively in a formal role or can UX be an ancillary skill within a non-UX role?
Feedback is welcome….
@me on Twitter
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My Head/Heart vs PSU
The most important goal for me right now is to find a way to provide for my wife and my children. I’ve always imagined that the signs of my success would labeled with the silent absence of distress on any of their faces. To protect myself in the future, I applied to one graduate school, namely in the Masters of Business Administration program in order to gain formal experience and skill in business and management. I tried my best to chose a program that had a balance of cost vs benefit and gave me the best chance of succeeding.
Last week, I was admitted into the Pennsylvania State University iMBA program and I was happy to be a part of such a prestigious university and even prouder to know that it would likely be my final academic endeavor. This week, Penn State’s board of trustees fired it’s president Graham Spanier and head football coach Joe Paterno amid a child sex abuse scandal that has significantly marred the reputation of the school and has made me second guess my decision to participate in the program…
I have strong feelings toward the who/what/when/where of the child sex abuse situation as a father, as a human being, and as a prospective student. I try to imagine the feelings of the parents of the children subjected to unspeakable acts. I try not to imagine situations where people diffuse responsibility. I try to think about the benefits and the opportunities I will gain at the completion of the program…
The issue at hand is simply this.. After all that has happened in the last 24-48 hours, can I, in good conscious, attend Pennsylvania State University knowing what happened there? Could I look my sons in the eyes knowing that I found a way to disconnect the alarm going off in my head and heart? Is there any way for me to complete the program and NOT cut the cables to my morality?
Unfortunately, I don’t have many other graduate level choices in the fields that I’m interested with an online delivery option with a reasonable time limit for completion. I guess I’m having a hard time with the possibility that the PSU scandal may have ended more things that I ever could have imagined.
Should I stay (@PSU) or should I go (somewhere else)? @ me on Twitter…
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Book Review: Seductive Interaction Design
Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences
Pages: 240
Number of Chapters: 25
Author: Stephen P. Anderson (@stephenanderson)
Available from Amazon.com
Chapter 1 - Why Seductive Interactions?
Chapter 2 - Why Aesthetics?
Chapter 3 - Are You Easily Understood?
Chapter 4 - Are You Attractive?
Chapter 5 - Who Do You Remind People Of?
Chapter 6 - When Aesthetics Aren’t Attractive
Chapter 7 - The Power of Faces
Chapter 8 - Are You Fun To Be Around?
Chapter 9 - Are You Unpredictable?
Chapter 10 - Are You Stimulating?
Chapter 11 - Are You Mysterious?
Chapter 12 - Can People Express Themselves Around You?
Chapter 13 - Small First Steps
Chapter 14 - Coming on Too Strong (and how not to!)
Chapter 15 - Attracting Attention
Chapter 16 - The Path of Least Resistance
Chapter 17 - The Influence of Words
Chapter 18 - An Eye for Details
Chapter 19 - Real World Games
Chapter 20 - A Challenge Worth Pursuing
Chapter 21 - Making Things Difficult
Chapter 22 - How Are We Doing?
Chapter 23 - What’s the Prize?
Chapter 24 - Let’s Get Serious
Chapter 25 - Only the Beginning
Stephen Anderson does an excellent job introducing the questions that we ask ourselves when we visit a website, open software, buy physical products, and gravitate toward certain people. The book’s psychological approach to explaining the catalysts and triggers of human behavior is thorough and provides good examples of how to use those triggers to create a lasting and impressionable experiences.
Section one (Aesthetics, Beauty, and Behavior) covers topics like gestalt principles/psychology, perceived affordances, product credibility and personality, affect, cognition, and association. Anderson makes plenty of references to other quintessential UX books such as Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson, Visual Thinking for Design by Colin Ware, and Emotional Design by Donald Norman.
Section two (Playful Seduction) covers ways to engage audiences with positive affective states such as humor, the mystique of unexpected behavior, and ‘delighters’. Anderson also uses specific phenomenon such as the information gap theory to explain alternate methods of eliminating the feeling of deprivation in users seeking information.
Section three (The subtle Art of Seduction) covers some of the covert ways that our behavior is influenced by revealing topics such as the endowed progress effect, default options, and the many interfaces that offer suggestions such as Twitter’s ‘Who to follow’. Topics such as loss aversion were clearly outlined and empowers users to be more aware of the influences we encounter while online.
Section four (The Game of Seduction) takes a gamification approach to explaining the intrigue of certain user experiences. Anderson explains the power of ‘fun’ by introducing the elements of game design (challenges, choices, and conflicts)
This book provided so many examples and references that even a proficient UX specialist would learn something new or easily be referred to other helpful sources of information. Rarely have I found so much information packed into such a short book. I highly recommend the book for newcomers to UX, but I also encourage experienced practitioners to grab a copy for reference.
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