Chris "The Brain" Hoyt

I can’t tell you how many software and website projects I have worked on that were governed by a “least common denominator” mentality.  Everything, from design to interface, was tailored to thinking of the users as stupid and helpless.  Many of the projects, especially the software ones, never took off because the end products were nearly useless due to the need to “explain” everything at every point.  This “idiot proof” mentality has several major issues with it, not the least of which, is realizing what kind of client base we are building when we think that way.

Jeremy Girard of designinformer.com wrote an article called “Giving Users Some Credit”  (http://designinformer.com/giving-users-some-credit/) where he argues that we are taking the wrong approach to design by assuming users are idiots.  My favorite point includes looking at the Keurig coffee machine (which sells quite well).  It has a button that says “Brew” not “Click Here to Brew a Cup of Coffee” and users seem to understand the function just fine.  However, I would like to take his concept a little further and talk about how we can educate our audiences and raise the “least common denominator” rather than cater to it.

Don’t Confuse Usability With Familiarity

Apple’s iWork Pages is arguably MUCH more user friendly than Microsoft Word.  However, users have had decades to acclimate to Microsoft Word, and are unfamiliar with iWord’s interface methods when they start using Pages.  People impulsively assume Word is more user-friendly, because they know how to use it.  Of course, after taking the time to learn and get used to Pages, I have found most people prefer it.

To continue my now perceived Apple fan-boy mentality, let me use the iPhone as another example.  Is the iPhone a completely intuitive and user-friendly device?… NO!  I have seen lots of new iPhone users ready to throw it out the window.  However, since Apple enforces a common interface across all their programs, users find themselves feeling like experts after they get used to the initial design.

Whenever you make something new, people will find it frustrating to use.  You can do EVERYTHING right, and still get complaints on usability.  This is because, let’s face it, there are a lot of people who don’t like change or learning new things.  The real test of usability is the learning curve AFTER someone has already taken the time to learn your software/website’s way of doing things.

Everything you use now you had to learn at some point.  Is a car user-friendly and completely intuitive?  Is email? Is your fax machine?  NO!  You just already learned how to use them.  Responding to all your immediate complaints to a new endeavor will always steer you down the wrong path.

Keep Your Tutorials and Instructions SHORT

Again, Apple really paved the way here.  The iMac was in the Guiness Book of World Records for shortest instruction manual.  The point of a tutorial or instruction is to familiarize your users with your METHODS, not teach them how to do everything.  The point is to let users know where to look to find answers, not give them all the answers.  No one is going to watch hours (or even 15 minutes in most cases) of tutorial anyway.  Taking 2-5 minutes to introduce people to basic functions and concepts should be enough.  If it is not enough, then maybe you really did design it too complicated.

Let the Majority of Your Users Train the Minority of “Idiot” Users

“Idiot” users are NEVER the majority, but let’s face it, they can be the loudest.  You will never hear from the 100 people who could figure out how to print the coupon from your website, but you will hear endlessly from the one “Where is the ‘Click Here to Print’?!?” user.  You could spend endless hours of support and resources making that overly-vocal minority content, and they never will be.

Letting your primary users guide the “idiot” users is the key to managing the chaos.  Sometimes, you don’t even have to do anything for this to happen.  If you make a great website or software product, people will force themselves to learn it after a while, just because they know others who use it.  Creating places for your users to interact, like support forums, can help with more complex sites and services where even regular users need to help educate each other.

The point is, most people are not “idiots.” If you create a site or software that really appeals to most people, the rest will catch up.

Good Karma = Good Customers

Placating to an “idiot proof” mentality means that you will probably attract more idiots. Designing in a way that is user-friendly but assumes your user is capable means you will attract capable friendly customers.  You doubt me?!? Here is an experiment you can try:  Stand at the Genius Bar of your local Apple store for a while and see who you meet, then stand at the Geek Squad counter at Best Buy for a while and see who you meet (and smell)…. OR, go buy a coffee machine that says “Click Here to Brew a Cup of Coffee” and compare the coffee it makes to a Keurig coffee machine. 

I love when companies like Constant Contact and Mail Chimp come out with these charts and stats…it is a great tool for business owners to use as a comparison. That said, you can always do better, but you have to have a plan, test and measuring it each step of the way….so, how do your email efforts fare?
Email Marketing Benchmarks

Great job by the PPC Blog team on this diagram…check it out! http://ppcblog.com/how-google-works/

The Good

I am a big supporter of Net Neutrality. The Internet has ushered in an amazing era of growth for humanity. It has created a “gold rush” of fresh new ideas, start up businesses, and ingenuity. Business models that were not possible before, now are. Smaller “Mom and Pop” businesses are able to overcome their Wal-Mart induced blight of being drowned out in their own neighborhoods by being able to expand their market to the whole world. It has been very exciting.

This wonderland of the modern age has become inevitably threatened by big business and big governments. Those in power hate when us peasants gain any kind of independence. China and other fascist governmental establishments are continuously seeking ways to control and censor the Internet. Big businesses are, likewise, seeking ways to corner off parts of the Internet as “their property” so they can profit by making us pay more to access “their” Internet.

Net Neutrality is a movement against all forms of Internet possession. Simply put, KEEP YOUR DIRTY HAND OFF OUR INTERNET. Geeks, like me, who are passionate about Net Neutrality simply want to insure that the Internet remains the open-to-everyone public resource for information, commerce, and communication. We don’t want anyone to turn the Internet into property or some kind of rationed commodity. Currently, Net Neutrality is under attack from all sides, so I want to set the record straight here.

The Bad

Again, stating I am a BIG supporter of Net Neutrality, let’s talk about about justifying the ideal of Net Neutrality with the reality that the Internet costs money, time, and resources to keep going. Businesses, like Comcast, who provide Internet to millions of people want to, and should, be able to make a profit by doing so. There have been two contentious methods of making profit with the Internet that has caught the attention of us Net Neutrality activists:

1) Internet providers want to be able to show favoritism toward webpages that pay them fees. In other words, they would lower the bandwidth available for the web and offer higher “premium” bandwidth for sites paying a fee. It is a ways of double-dipping the Internet; consumers pay for Internet on one end and business pay to show up on the other.

2) Internet providers have discovered that a large percentage of bandwidth is used by illegal (or at least questionable) file sharing services such as BitTorrent. In order to lower costs, Internet providers wish to be able to limit bandwidth, or charge more, for Internet services that consume a disproportionate amount of resources. See Comcast vs. FCC here -> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/06/AR2010040600742.html

Item #1 is horrible, but #2 is understandable. However, the recent fight between the FCC and Comcast over item #2 has given big-business-friendly politicians an emotional cause to support item #1. Now many Republicans in congress are fighting to end Net Neutrality based on the valid problem #2 presents, but also allows for #1. The Republican bill allowing scenarios #1 and #2 is ironically called the “Internet Freedom Act” (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS348124681720091022). I believe, most of these Republicans don’t even understand what they are really asking for, they just know their contributors are whining.

The Ugly

The political-right in this country isn’t the only threat to Net Neutrality either. While Conservatives are starting war to end one kind of Net Neutrality, Liberals are pushing back with a weird anti-Net Neutrality bill of their own…. which they still call “Net Neutrality”. Take a look at what Cass Sunstein the new head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) thinks about the Internet in his book Republic.com:

“A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government. Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name.”

Pretty scary, huh? In other words, he doesn’t like the fact that the Internet gives us so many different options and opinions. At one point he believed that:

“…that government should consider fairness-doctrine-type mandates on Web sites. It suggested that it’s reasonable for government to think about creating the equivalent of linking obligations and pop-ups, so that you’d be on one site — say, a conservative site — and there’d be a pop-up from a liberal site.”

While he later states, “I now the believe that the government should not consider that…”, it shows where he is coming from. I never understand people who claim that websites should be “fair”. No one makes you go to the sites, no one makes you stay, and since search engines are still neutral, everyone can find all sorts of opposing views on any topic. Besides, “fair” is such an ambiguous term, it is impossible enforce.

You can’t claim “fairness” just by posting a view that opposed yours on a website. What if the view you posted was chosen because it was so poorly supported? What if there are many opposing views? What if the opposing view is from a bogus or proxy source? Such claims of “fairness” can only possibly do more to limited freedom of speech on the web.

Will the Real “Net Neutrality” Please Stand Up?

When we talk about Net Neutrality, we need to clear that it is an objective, enforceable, and unbiased ideal. Keeping the Internet open, free, and neutral just means that no Internet provider can limit or withhold bandwidth for any website, and no one can tell what to do with your website. Businesses can’t own or section off part of the Internet as “premium” and governments can’t tell people what to put on their sites when they are not performing illegal activities.

Keep it simple, and keep up the fight. Don’t let the Internet become property.

I.E. 6 Takes It’s Last Breath

Internet Explorer 6’s market share dropped below 5% for the first time in the US since it debuted in 2001 (almost 10 years ago!). Back then, It was widely adopted by the majority of internet users but was plagued with security holes, bugs and overall development issues.

IE6 is so old, here are a few of the things that have happened since it made it’s start in 2001

• Myspace was created, became the most popular social networking site in the world and then was promptly taken over by hookers, spammers and creepy old men looking for the aforementioned characters.
• XBOX & Gamecube were invented, became popular and died out. PS3, Xbox 360 and the Wii became the next big things.
• Napster was still cool & the iPod hadn’t been born yet.
• If you said the word wifi, people thought you were asking a question.
• Social Media, Facebook & Twitter weren’t everyday terms and the Web was still 1.0

As a web development company, we’re glad to say goodbye to I.E. 6. It caused countless headaches and annoyances and was difficult for both us and our clients. We’re glad to see web standards progressing and web browsers emerging that support those standards.

If you’re one of those 5% that still are running I.E. 6 don’t be caught using something so out of date. It’s bad for you, your computer, and the web in general. We recommend downloading the latest version of Firefox here.

Ok, so I am not the illustrious writer I wish I was, but I love to rant in short outburst about totally unrelated topics..so here goes.

Twitter Outages – Really? How many outages can a company have on a website on any given day? It’s not like they are passing on photos or files…it is 140 characters!

Facebook – Privacy is a big issue and these guys have dropped the ball. Their CEO has said in the past that people are dumb to give him that much info…have you changed your privacy settings yet?

The iPad – What a great device! I love watching Netflix, playing games, surfing the web, checking email etc on mine. My COO uses his to work on…really work. His favorite apps are omnigraffle, imockups and iwork suite. Good battery life and quick start ups are a plus as well. Will it take over the laptop? As it sits today…no. Give it till the 3rd generation and then lets’ talk.

LinkedIn – A mid-year prediction for everyone. Salesforce.com will buy LinkedIn and solidify itself even further as ‘the’ CRM of choice.

Trends – Did anyone see the news? For the first time, Facebook overtook Google as the number one US website for a week (roughly 7% of all website hits). With over 400 million users and growing, this company is on the move.

Search – We did a graph for a client yesterday showing that their #1 keyword/phrase wnet form 80K searches a day in 2004 to now under 40K searches per day, while during that same time span, Internet usage has more than doubled from 800 million users to over 1.8 billion.

What does Apple get that Sony, HP, Microsoft, Dell, Samsung, and LG don’t?…. Usability in software. All these other geeks out there making hardware love packing on “specs”, stuffing big numbers like RAM, gigahertz, and hard drive space into small or cool looking gadgets. It all looks good on paper, but after you use one of their gadgets for more than a few weeks, you just want to throw it out a window. Thousands of new gadgets released every year all using the same-old crappy unfriendly, unintuitive, unattractive software. It’s no wonder so many are flocking to Apple when we can just pickup one of their simplistic products, start taping and swiping our fingers, and lo and behold… it just does what we want it to do. Of course, it isn’t easy, or cheap, to make software this user friendly, which is why everyone is having such a hard time keeping up.

As a software developer, I hear the phrase “I just want it to…”. Which, as any experienced software developer knows, is the most expensive phrase we ever hear. People have software needs all the time, which may require vast complicated effort to achieve, but they want it to hide all that complication behind a simple and user-friendly interface. What most people don’t know is that making software do just about anything doesn’t cost nearly as much as making it easy and intuitive for them to use. This lack of cost awareness is what ruins so many “brilliant” product ideas.

Sony is, in my opinion, the worst offender. In the past decade, I have seen Sony release cutting-edge gadgets to the market before anyone else. The PSP was an amazing gadget when it came out, in theory. It played music, videos, viewed photos, surfed the web, and of course, played games. The problem was that, excluding the last feature, it didn’t do any of them well. In fact, all the claimed features were so hard to use that almost no one could figure it out. Then, even more idiotically, Sony received reports that users were not using the extra features and stopped improving them! Sony could have been the what the iPod Touch is today, but lost the chance with bad software.

But I don’t just write this to rant, I write this as a warning to other business owners and entrepreneurs out there. Developing software and technology is one thing, but making it user friendly is another. In fact, usability can consume up to 80% of a project’s time and resources. That is, if your actually going to make something people will want to use. You have to build it, review it, fix it, test it, fix it, beta release, fix it, get feedback, fix it, get more feedback, fix it… and maybe… just maybe… people will be able to actually use it.

This is why the only mobile platform even close to keeping up with Apple is Google’s Android. Google is the only one in the fight with the know-how and resources to keep up. Even RIM, makers if the Blackberry, can’t keep their mobile software up to par, they have to invest in starting from scratch or spending huge resources in fixing what they have.

If you or your company has a “great idea” for an application or gadget, just remember, once you price the development… multiply it a couple times for usability.

Portfolio.com has a great article on how Dunkin’ Donuts, and other businesses, uses Twitter to keep a pulse on their customer base as well as market (click here).  Twitter is probably the most misused and misunderstood of new social media fads.  Few businesses use Twitter, and even fewer use it correctly.  I tend to agree with those who feel Twitter is just too “spammy” and full of false connections, but there are some really smart uses of Twitter, and Dunkin’s Donuts found one of them.

Dunkin’ Donuts is a business that, when it is working well, becomes a part of a consumer’s day-to-day life.  As such, it finds itself appearing in the vast stream of consciousness of Twitter.  By being active on Twitter, Dunkin’ Donuts can keep a pulse on how they are being perceived by their target base.  They are able to converse with their customers, and have another FREE venue for announcing promotions and new products.

Almost any end-consumer business can benefit by this example.  While Twitter is still not a good way, in my opinion, to grow your base or reach a lot of new customers, it is a great way to connect with and cultivate your current base.

We found this amazingly well done illustration of popular social networks as people.  We think it’s hysterical and want to find the original artist!

Does anyone know who created this masterpiece?

(Click to view larger image)