Simple Is As Simple Plans
By Mitch Berg
Chad the Elder has a cri de coeur that is music to my ears.
He’s talking about “e-business” sites – shopping sites for places like Amazon, Best Buy, yadda yadda – and a key problem many of them have; they’re just not designed for real people to use them.
He wants the companies to…:
Make it Easy to use: The other day I was trying to find some information on a local hotel/water park. The web site was chock full of neat looking Flash animation and graphics. But when I tried to find out how much it would cost to use the water park on a particular day I entered a cyber-hell of being forced to follow link upon link upon link (while animation played for each one) until I was finally able to find what I was looking for. And then, when I was curious about the room rates, I had to go through the same rigmarole again only to eventually be instructed to “call for information.” Arghhh! If I wanted to call, I would have done that in the first place. The whole idea of visiting the web site was so that I didn’t have to make a fargin’ phone call.
This sort of thing tells me I’ll have work to do for a long, long time. It’s almost a game, trying to guess why a “e-business” site turns out like that.
The usual suspects:
- Management thinks “usability” means “sizzle”.
- Management thinks graphics artists are qualified to design human-computer interaction.
- Management are former programmers, who think “user centered design” is some touchy-feely commie fad – where it is, in fact, a highly empirical, indeed scientific, approach to making software, including web sites, usable.
Elder enjoins business to…:
Think about the top two or three reasons that customers are visiting your site and make that information as easy to find as possible. Fancy graphics are nice, but what I really care about is finding what I’m looking for as quickly as possible.
It shouldn’t be all that complicated…make it easy to find critical information. It ain’t rocket science, it’s just the internet.
If it were easy, anyone could do it.
Fortunately, this town is crawing with people who do just that. Some even write about it. Myself occasionally included.
(Merry Christmas, fellow HCI geeks)
November 30th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
What was the common thread of all three of your “usual suspects”?
Management.
Ever since I became aware of corporate politics in my white collar career, it has NEVER ceased to amaze me, how when I see something that seems to be inordinately stupid to myself, or my coworkers and me, there is usually either someone from the sales team or more often, the management hierarchy that is responsible. We’ll sit and scratch our heads, wondering why people with so little common sense are allowed to ascend the management chain, while those of us in the trenches who KNOW how things need to be in order to best serve the customer/accomplish the task/whatever, are ignored or patronized. And then, when the complaints come rolling in, they wonder who dropped the ball.
The Peter Principle hard at work.
November 30th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
BillC said:
“Ever since I became aware of corporate politics in my white collar career, it has NEVER ceased to amaze me, how when I see something that seems to be inordinately stupid to myself, or my coworkers and me, there is usually either someone from the sales team or more often, the management hierarchy that is responsible.”
Scott Adams made a career–and millions of dollars–mocking similar management cluelessness at Pacific Bell. Indeed, he stayed working there for for a decade after the start-up of Dilbert simply for strip material.
I never understood that strip until I worked a white collar job.
November 30th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
At my workplace, we talk about the very same thing that Bill C mentioned: Why the hell is managment so stupid? It’s like they take the best, most common-sense way to do something and do the exact opposite. Why, why, why?!
I also agree with the whole premise of this thread…make the information people need upfront on websites. Some sites are wonderful, some are atrocious…guess which makes the sale?
December 3rd, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Management is utlimately responsible for defining the balance of cost, function, market appeal, reliability, etc. Too often, following the mantras of delegation and intrapraneurship they leave the inmates in charge. That is, what the customer wants and/or values is often lost in what manufacturing, packaging, advertising, and sales wants. It’s particularly bad when there is a charasmatic leader in one of those departments that dominates the discussion.
Top management has to be responsible for understanding what the customer wants, not the fieifdoms.