A Moving Target
User Experience
I just read this wonderful post over at the Google Blog regarding how they run their user “experiments”, (Original Post) and it reminded me of what a moving target that web usability still is. What do I mean by “still”? Well, to be truthful, while there are a lot of metrics floating around, and we’re constantly pulling in knowledge from related sources, usability and the web is still in its formative stages.
User interfaces, that is what I’m talking about here, have come a long long ways since the inception of the web, but overall there’s still a huge need for feedback. The truth of the matter is that there are just so many moving parts involved in creating a solid UI, but the most difficult piece of the equation is the user. That might sound like an obvious statement, but if you think about it for a moment it’ll make sense.
Not only does every person come at an interface with a pre-conceived notion of how something should work, but they carry with them an embedded history that colors how they approach a task. Take for instance the analogy of the car; Nearly all of us drive cars of one type or another and many of us have driven cars that we honestly loved. (I’m a bicycle guy myself but the example is apropos.) Why did we love them? In a lot of cases it was because the car did what we anticipated, when we anticipated it, and for longer than we anticipated. (That’s a lot of anticipation!) But a LOT of testing, tweaking and innovation went into making the car as usable as possible. Add to that the fact that there are a myriad of choices in automobiles and you’ve got a decent idea of what it takes to make a simple thing (personal transportation) just right for the end user.
Take that analogy (over 100 years of research just on cars alone) and apply it to web applications, and it’s obvious; We’re in the industry’s infancy. Things move fast in the web world and that’s certainly been compounded by the nature and ubiquity of the web but truthfully we’re just figuring things out.
So, what does that have to do with Verio and its UI’s? While we don’t have quite the user base that Google might, we do care about our interfaces (all of them) just as much. And it’s a constant struggle to make sure that we meet as many of your needs as we possibly can. If you’ve read the Google post (linked above) then you might have noticed that they’re always live-testing their user interfaces and making small tweaks. This is an optimal model, and it would be a perfect world that would allow every company to take this approach. But a couple factors prevent this: Not everyone has the resources of the Google juggernaut. Applications differ in how they present information and what they’re attempting to accomplish. There is more than one way in which to gather user-driven data.
Here are a few positive points that we can take away from the Google example:
- Constant innovation is a good thing.
- Sometimes the answers that are right for today won’t hold water tomorrow, but movement of one type or another is important.
- What testing and metrics tell us is a positive upgrade might actually have a negative impact over time. In other words, taking a holistic approach over a longer period of time is going to net UI improvements.
- Being flexible to change, or being attentive to trends, and reacting appropriately (i.e. not over reacting) is important.
- And most of all, maintaining a clear line of communication (In Google’s case this is the daily testing and metrics gathering.) with the client base is always highly productive.
Which brings us to the underlying motivation of this blog: I’m reaching out to you so that you’ll feel more inclined to respond to Verio. Drop us a line. Leave a comment. Let us hear from you. In the end it makes a huge difference.
Filed under: Blogroll, News, User Experience