Divide Until Trivial

Posts Tagged ‘usability’

I was reminded of this cartoon, whilst reading some of the comments here (which is completely unrelated). The important bit is this:

> I found myself pulling on a door clearly marked Push.

That is actually just an UI bug in the door. If you want people to push a door, you should use a handle that is like a plate, where you can easily put your hand against and push it. If you want people to pull the door open, you need to use vertical rod as a handle, where people can easily grab on to pull it. With this very small change, you don’t even need to push/pull texts on the doors.

This raises a question… If you find yourself pushing on a “pull door”, is it because you’re stupid, or is it because the door is not communicating clearly?

I’m sure everyone that’s used the Internet a fair amount will be familiar with this sort of error message:

Please enter telephone number in correct format.

I was just given this message when leaving feedback at the TFL website. It’s a fairly classic example of poor usability, but actually, that failing is because of poor communication. As usability experts will tell you, not only should the web form have an example of what you want people to type into it, but the error message must actually add something to the interaction.

Let’s think about that in some more detail: The web form should have an example of what’s required. This is really a way of giving the user the information they need up-front. That means the user doesn’t need any knowledge a priori, they can just use the form immediately. Having no example present means the user must already know how to use the form – if this is the first time they’ve used it, then they have no way to do this.

Secondly, let’s think about the error message. Clearly, if you’re going to tell someone that they’ve done something wrong, and that they need to re-do it, then you need to tell them what was wrong, how to fix it, and optionally why it was a problem for you.

Website usability aside, these same principles apply when we communicate. We always make assumptions about other people’s knowledge, but the trick is to assume the right things, and not assume too much. We also need to make sure people have all the information they need to be able to do whatever it is they want to do.

To try to give some context, imagine you’re working on a problem with a couple of other people. You think you’ve got the seeds of an idea, but need some of the gaps in your knowledge to be filled in by your team mates. That means you need them to do something for you, which means you need to ask them to do it. Here’s where the communication skills come in: you need to give them all the information they need to do the job. If you give them too little information (you assume too much), then they’ll either completely fail to do the task, or else not do it to your satisfaction. If you bamboozle them with details (you assume to little) then you slow down the process of actually working, and you’ll probably confuse them into working over-precisely. In other words, you need to communicate just right.