Secondary Uses

I'm going to tell you a little story (poetic license has been used in the story - and for those HCI boffins, yes this is a "scenario of use" and yes, the "persona" Alison is based on my experiences...).

The other week Alison walked to uni in the middle of a thunderstorm. It came on all of a sudden and she was caught out a bit. She did not have a hat or an umbrella and ended up getting very wet. Alison's hair was soaked through and her jeans were soaked too. Alison arrived at uni feeling fairly unhappy and miserable.

Alison wanted to dry off before she taught her 9.15 class, in the old department building she used to dry herself by going to the bathroom and standing under the hand dryers for a few minutes. So, Alison went to the bathroom in the new building and realised that the new design of hand dryers does not easily allow her to dry her hair or trousers (the latter she would only be able to dry if she removed the item, which did not seem appropriate). Alison could not dry herself, and went to teach her class in a horrid mood and set lots of nasty homework for the students. Eventually Alison dried off and felt a bit better, but by the end of the day Alison had started to develop a nasty cold, possibly as a result of standing around wet for a couple of hours.

As stories go I appreciate this wasn't thrilling... but it illustrates the point (as a scenario should!). Although a hand dryer's primary objective (and the user's primary goal) is to dry hands (well.. d'uh) and the new fancy hand dryers do this more effectively, efficiently and ecologically than the old ones (or so I'm told - that's why they were installed!) the secondary objective of allowing the user to dry other things cannot be achieved with the new design.

Is this a problem? Well, for Alison, it was very annoying as she had to wander around with wet trousers and wet hair until it dried naturally. The end of the scenario tells us that Alison developed a nasty cold. Are these two things related? Well, that can't be proved, but I don't think it helped... However, Alison's mood in the class was certainly affected be the product's inability to meet her secondary goal.

But, do the ecological benefits of the new design outweigh her irritation at not being able to dry herself? Quite possibly. It might be the case that the designers of the new system were aware that their new design no longer allowed users to use the product in all the ways that they traditionally did. The designers may well have decided that, on balance, the ecological benefits were sufficiently superior that it didn't matter that people will, occasionally, wander around with wet hair and wet trousers. Or perhaps they didn't actually fully consider the requirements/objectives of the existing system and overlooked this element of functionality.

Are secondary goals important? Well, that's entirely context driven and depends upon what the user expects. As it happens, Alison did not pay for the hand dryers (well not directly) and was not involved in the design. Alison will not stop using the hand dryers to dry her hands because of it, and the ecological benefits (probably leading to economic benefits) to the company that paid for the hand dryers will probably outweigh the fact that Alison got annoyed, so I suspect this secondary goal (and the fact that the new design does not fulfil it) will not affect sales of the product in the future.

BUT, some products will have unintended secondary uses that do impact on sales volume if the user cannot see a way of achieving this functionality. When designing products, with a user focus (as all products should be designed!) it is imperative to think about the user's secondary or alternative goals, particularly if the product will be used as a replacement to an existing technology, otherwise not supporting this activity could result in the product being somewhat useless to a large number of potential customers.

Please comment if you can think of any other products that have secondary goals/uses that are no longer supported. I will put up a photo of the new dryers when i get a mo...

HCI Fail #1: Am I a human? Apparently not...

A regular slot in this blog will be for those annoying HCI failures; the things that should work, but just don't!

So, I have been asked to sign up for google wave... I tried... however, the "verification code" check to see that I was a human and not a machine (or computer-oid!) kept failing.

Now, I know that I am not particularly good at getting those stupid, annoying visualisation codes (otherwise known as captchas) correct so I tried typing in the different verification codes at least 5 times before I realised that it wasn't working. I really hate these captchas.. they are so annoying! In the example shown "gonfi" did not work, has anyone got any suggestions on what it should be?

(As an aside: it's also rrrrrrrrrrrrrreally annoying when systems refresh because you have input some information that it wants to check - i.e. the captcha, and then tells you that you have not entered all the required information. You are correct google wave, I did leave the First Name and Last Name fields blank... this was because I had not got that far before you decided I was a computer-oid!)

Even if we ignoring the fact that even though I entered the code correctly the site didn't accept that I really am a human, I still take issue with how some of these verification processes work. It is not always easy to read these codes, even real humans get them wrong and it is VERY irritating to be repeatedly asked to input codes (which change!) because you get it almost right... but not quite. (I am finding it very hard to avoid referring to Pinocchio and saying "but I am a real boy!" in this post...)

The same visual verification code process is used in many different web applications. The best one I have found is on Ticketmaster. Congrats go out to them. HCI winners! I have purchased a number of tickets from Ticketmaster recently and their method of checking verification codes is vastly superior to Google's or any other that I have come across. 

Humanoid attempt at entering code: Close but incorrect. Attempt accepted.

So, on Ticketmaster they use captchas too, but they only require you to be close to getting it correct - not absolutely right. This is clever because the verification codes are actually pretty hard to read! (See the example beside where I think the code wants me to write "comerany chifving" but I intentionally put "camerany chifling". Ticketmaster accepted that I am a human trying to legitimately purchase gig tickets, not a machine trying to automatically purchase on behalf of a ticket tout or something).

To verify that Ticketmaster's check does sometimes work and "correctly" identify those pescy computer-oids I tried pretending to be a computer and input a stupid verification code. The code was vastly dissimilar to the required version. The attempt failed. I received a nice error message explaining what I had done wrong. Not useful if the attempt really was made my a computer-oid, but as I am a real boy I did somewhat appreciate it.

Humanoid pretending to be a computer-oid attempt at entering code. Completely incorrect. Attempt failed.

Whilst I have not conducted any vigorous research into this process, I can say that I have purchased a fair few tickets recently using Ticketmaster and I am yet to be accused of being a computer-oid (apart from on the occasion above where it was intentional!).

Congratulations Ticketmaster on being sensible. But Google Wave? I'm afraid you get to be known as my first HCI failure!

Numerical Nuisance

For anyone who might be interested, a fellow HCI researcher, friend and all-round cool dude, Sarah Wiseman, has started blogging about her research: Numerical Nuisance

Sarah's research focuses on number entry errors and why these can be very, very bad! This is particularly true in the medical domain where HCI fails can (and have) actually be responsible for people dying. I don't expect her blog to be full of doom and gloom though, so take a read... it's pretty fascinating stuff!

Tell me what you think...

Recently, I have noticed  there is an increase in the number of websites directly requesting user feedback. To me, the premise of this idea is a great one - getting real feedback from real users about their site is great! It's fabulous that companies are beginning to recognize that users opinions really do matter and they are trying to gather opinions in a constructive, metric manner.

However, I wonder how many people actually complete the responses? How much of the data they provide is useful? Do the companies actually take not of the responses? Or is it all for show?
I suspect that many users will simply opt-out of these surveys as they can't be bothered with them. The process of asking the user if they wish to take part in a survey as they open the website means that the user has not had a chance to experience the site before they are asked if they want to comment on it. I suspect that many users will simply opt-out because they don't think they will have anything useful to say.
But what happens if the user has opted out, and after using the site realises they have issues that they wish to report? Well, there are few (if any) mechanisms to let the user change their mind once they have opted out of the original survey request.

It would be nice if these sites had a permanent link for giving feedback of your experiences when visiting the site, with the occasional reminder to visitors tthat they can give their opinions by clicking on this or that link.
Another issue with this method of gathering data is that the demographic that provides feedback will not necessarily be a proportionate representation of the site's readership. The snapshot of information that is provided is unlikely to be representative of the site's wider audience. If the developer's of the site were to take the feedback into consideration and, perhaps, do a complete redesign based on the results they could end up alienating their main readership. All responses from these types of survey must be taken within the context they are provided, and with consideration of the main user base.

Finally, if the user does decide to take the survey, they will probably find that the main focus is not on the website itself. Often, the surveys are more focused on the companies products/services that the website's usability. For example, I recently completed one of these surveys for a mobile phone selling site. The pop-up said "Let us know what you think of our website" but actually, the survey was much more focused on the company as a whole. Only 1 of 10 questions was actually about the website!

As someone that has good knowledge of HCI, I have developed a strategy for dealing with these surveys. If a site asks me for feedback and I do reasonably have time to give it, then I will do so. But I give a maximum of 10 minutes to each survey and I focus mainly on the HCI aspects of the site. Any longer thatn 10 minutes and I feel that I am doing consultancy and to be frank, as an almost-expert in the field I deserve payment for this! But, as someone who believes that improving HCI really does matter, a mere 10 minutes of my time can be given for free.