The other day a coworker of mine said to me: “God I have Google, it tries to do too much when you start typing in the search.” I have felt the same way about this for years; I’m sure we all have. Especially when you have an Android phone and the dang browser starts completing your search before you even start don’t want anything CLOSE to its suggestions.
I commiserated: “you know, I’ve noticed since these spell checkers are automatically in place, I have to re-check my emails even *more* than I did before. The things always make the wrong corrections.” She agreed. It happens quite a bit. I used to type my thoughts, and run back for one spell check (or run a global checker). Now the damn things make contextual corrections as well as spell corrections and really get into your head when you are writing. I do NOT find them helpful anymore. That and sometimes that ajax lag while the computer “thinks”.
Design many times goes too far. I think people want simple and people and complex, they want choice, well at least I do. One of the reasons I continue on with Windows/Linux/Android is because of the choice of configurations, vs Apple which “just works” (I saw, looking at a dead MacBook sitting on the other desk sigh I liked that thing). If you’re a java developer like me you know why we don’t like Apple — dealing with different JDK’s is a nightmare. OF course Oracle hasn’t made it any easier for us at all, making everything “installable.”
Simple: The story I remember was the competition for book sites, and how Amazon won. Basically all the others (like B&N) had very complex search interfaces with title filters, author filters etc. all in as part of the main search; you had to do 3-4 operations to do a seach whereas on Amazon just type once in a search box and the intel does the rest. Fine for that — but we don’t always want that.
Complex: Even Amazon has more complex filters alongside the results screen though not always adequate. But they have them. Newegg, TigerDirect, all those sites have filters and more complex searches. I need the complex searches because I am always looking for outliers. One thing I noted a while back on the job boards is that many of them don’t have filters for obvious things users want — like telecommute vs. onsite. When I see glaringly obvious and missing options or behaviors in software I wonder just who in the hell is making these decisions of usability.
It’s really about use cases, not some Douchbag UX Wannabee’s Opinion
Ego, it’s the killer. If you want to develop good skillsets, in my opinion, learn to observe and listen.
Some time back I was in Nordic ski patrol and I needed cheap all purpose ski wax. Those were my requirements. I had to take my skis across rocks and through backwoods trails for our race patrols and didn’t need something great, just something inexpensive, all-purpose and easy. In the store the salesman had roots in Olympic racing and doing the famous Birkie and the Loppet races around the world. He tried to keep selling me on expensive race level wax. I kept saying that the wax would be toast every 3 k, explained what I needed it for etc. He just wouldn’t listen. None of my needs were being me so I left and bought nothing.
This is what I find is happening in many Stand Up and Requirements meetings these days. Some people are pure douchebags. They’s as “well, this is really what they want. ” Wow, What The Fuck. Then you get one of those locked-in-gold requirements in WRITING even: make it work like it used to – from the same DBags! Usually users are the experts in their domains and since BA and PM jobs have become professions, not extensions of other professions, the effect is getting more pronounced. Sure developers have made some bad stuff. Craigslist is about as good a look as most of us *should* design, and at least that is functional. (Developers aren’t usually UX designers — OBVIOUSLY even we know that.) And Craigslist is still amazing.
Agile Ain’t Design
God it even gets world if non-builders start pontificating on “Lean” and “Agile.” If I had a Dimebag for every Douchebag Lean/Agile non-expert, the cartels would be after me.
The mechanisms of agile feedback are pretty much shot due to the blamestorming nature of modern corporations — failure (required to create things) is never tolerated so the benefits of learning are never reaped. This is critical for UX . . . it is so very difficult to find out the real use cases and they may not emerge until after the software is made — and new use cases show up!
A process isn’t design, and using a process as a management club certainly is not design.
Who’s a Jobs?
If you look at Apple’s business model they they don’t really invent anything groundbreaking, they watch everyone else figure out the Use Cases, take the good ones and perfect them. That’s their genius, and its what Steve Jobs figured out. It’s definitely contributative. (lol stupid word — use it in a meeting and see if it starts showing up in job descriptions)
But — how many people are Jobs vs how many think they are Jobs? How many really understand use cases?
Monstrous egos and the lack of empathy contribute to shitty software.
Recently on a project there was a dropdown on the pages that allowed users to select a page state. It was very useful for development and testing. Not useful for customers though (or so we thought). Having the dropdown allowed testing and development to shave time off our effort. I offered numbers up, and to make the control developer-only and they would have none of it. It reminds me of the fact that testing and refactoring are part of development but businesses don’t want to pay for them any more than people want to pay for their cars oil changes.
Listen and learn, that’s all I have to say. Seems simple, but it isn’t.
