Our newest post is a recent in-depth live interview recording of Charles L Mauro covering his more than 30 years as a leading usability scientist. If you are wondering why some products are easy to use and others much less so, why Apple products are so successful, what does it take to create a world-class user experience you will find the interview eye opening if not highly thought provoking.

Listen to the interview below.

This interview was conducted by Robynn McCarthy, Co-host, Skepticality: The Official Podcast of Skeptic Magazine dedicated to critical thinking and science.

Download an MP3 of the interview here.
Download the podcast from iTunes here.

The unusual question: Surprisingly, it is a rare client indeed who asks the opposing question: why is an interface so engaging that users cannot stop interacting with it? This is a difficult question because it requires cognitive reverse engineering to determine what interaction attributes a successful interface embodies that result in a psychologically engaging user experience. This question pops up when products become massively successful based on their user experience design – think iPhone, iPad, Google Instant Search, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Kinect.

The interesting question: Recently clients have asked about the phenomenally successful casual computer game Angry Birds, designed for mobile phones, tablets and other platforms. For those who don’t have a clue what Angry Birds is all about, here is a quick synopsis. The game involves employing a sling shot to propel small cannonball-shaped birds with really bad attitudes at rather fragile glass and timber houses populated by basically catatonic green pigs. The basic thrust of the game is to bring about the demise of the pigs as quickly and expertly as possible by collapsing the pigs’ houses on top of their (sometimes) helmeted heads. Obviously, this sounds like a truly dumb concept. However, there is a catch.

Why is it that over 50 million individuals have downloaded this simple game? Many paid a few dollars or more for the advanced version. More compelling is the fact that not only do huge numbers download this game, they play it with such focus that the total number of hours consumed by Angry Birds players world-wide is roughly 200 million minutes a DAY, which translates into 1.2 billion hours a year. To compare, all person-hours spent creating and updating Wikipedia totals about 100 million hours over the entire life span of Wikipedia (Neiman Journalism Lab). I say these Angry Birds are clearly up to something worth looking into. Why is this seemly simple game so massively compelling? Creating truly engaging software experiences is far more complex than one might assume, even in the simplest of computer games. Here is some of the cognitive science behind why Angry Birds is a truly winning user experience.

Simple yet engaging interaction concept: This seems an obvious point, but few realize that a simple interaction model need not be, and rarely is, procedurally simple. Simplification means once users have a relatively brief period of experience with the software, their mental model of how the interface behaves is well formed and fully embedded. This is known technically as schema formation. In truly great user interfaces, this critical bit of skill acquisition takes place during a specific use cycle known as the First User Experience or FUE. When users are able to construct a robust schema quickly, they routinely rate the user interface as “simple”. However, simple does not equal engaging. It is possible to create a user interface solution that is initially perceived by users as simple. However, the challenge is to create a desire by users to continue interaction with a system over time, what we call user “engagement”.

What makes a user interface engaging is adding more detail to the user’s mental model at just the right time. Angry Birds’ simple interaction model is easy to learn because it allows the user to quickly develop a mental model of the game’s interaction methodology, core strategy and scoring processes. It is engaging, in fact addictive, due to the carefully scripted expansion of the user’s mental model of the strategy component and incremental increases in problem/solution methodology. These little birds are packed with clever behaviors that expand the user’s mental model at just the point when game-level complexity is increased. The process of creating simple, engaging interaction models turns out to be exceedingly complex. Most groups developing software today think expansion of the user’s mental model is for the birds. Not necessarily so.

Cleverly managed response time: A universal law of user interface design is “the faster the response time, the better”. True enough, there are applications where this is patently true. For example, Google has made this a mantra for their systems. However, surprisingly few software developers realize that response time management is actually a resource that can be leveraged to add to the quality and depth of engagement of a user interface. The surprising point that is often misunderstood is that not every aspect of the user interface needs to be or should be as fast as possible. Programmers uniformly have a really hard time with this one and few game designers take advantage of this potent variable. In most commercial software interfaces, response time management is completely overlooked even by those who claim to be UI design experts. The developers of Angry Birds managed response time in a way that goes far beyond simply “faster is better”.

For example, in Angry Birds, it was possible for the programmers to have made the flight of the birds fast – very fast, but they didn’t. Instead they programmed the flight of the angry flock to be leisure pace as they arc across the sky heading for the pigs’ glass houses. This slowed response time, combined with a carefully crafted trajectory trace (the flight path of the bird), solves one huge problem for all user interfaces – error correction. The vast majority of software user interfaces have no consideration for how users can be taught by experience with the system to improve their performance. This problem is a vast and complex issue for screen-based trading systems where error correction is not only essential, but also career threatening.

In Angry Birds game play the pigs also take a long time to expire once their houses are sent to bits. In many play sequences, seconds are consumed as the pigs teeter, slide and roll off planks or are crushed under slow falling debris. This response time of  3-5 seconds, in most user interfaces, brings users to the point of exasperation, but not with Angry Birds. Again, really smart response time management gives the user time to relax and think about how lame they are compared to their 4 year old who is already at the 26th level. It also gives the user time to structure an error correction strategy (more arc, more speed, better strategy) to improve performance on the next shot. The bottom line on how Angry Birds manages response time: fast is good, clever is better.

Short-term memory management: It is a well-known fact of cognitive science that human short-term memory (SM), when compared to other attributes of our memory systems, is exceedingly limited. This fact has been the focus of thousands of studies over the last 50 years. Scientists have poked and prodded this aspect of human cognition to determine exactly how SM operates and what impacts SM effectiveness. As we go about our daily lives, short-term memory makes it possible for you to engage with all manner of technology and the environment in general. SM is a temporary memory that allows us to remember a very limited number of discrete items, behaviors, or patterns for a short period of time. SM makes it possible for you to operate without constant referral to long-term memory, a much more complex and time-consuming process. This is critical because SM is fast and easily configured, which allows one to adapt instantly to situations that might otherwise be fatal if one were required to access long-term memory. In computer-speak, human short-term memory is also highly volatile. This means it can be erased instantly, or more importantly, it can be overwritten by other information coming into the human perceptual system. Where things get interesting is the point where poor user interface design impacts the demand placed on SM. For example, a user interface design solution that requires the user to view information on one screen, store it in short-term memory, and then reenter that same information in a data field on another screen seems like a trivial task. Research shows that it is difficult to do accurately, especially if some other form of stimulus flows between the memorization of the data from the first screen and before the user enters the data in the second. This disruptive data flow can be in almost any form, but as a general rule, anything that is engaging, such as conversation, noise, motion, or worst of all, a combination of all three, is likely to totally erase SM. When you encounter this type of data flow before you complete transfer of data using short-term memory, chances are very good that when you go back to retrieve important information from short-term memory, it is gone!

One would logically assume that any aspect of user interface design that taxes short-term memory is a really bad idea. As was the case with response time, a more refined view leads to surprising insights into how one can use the degradation of short-term memory to actually improve game play engagement. Angry Birds is a surprisingly smart manager of the player’s short-term memory.

By simple manipulation of the user interface, Angry Birds designers created significant short-term memory loss, which in turn increases game play complexity but in a way that is not perceived by the player as negative and adds to the addictive nature of the game itself. The subtle, yet powerful concept employed in Angry Birds is to bend short-term memory but not to actually break it. If you do break SM, make sure you give the user a very simple, fast way to accurately reload. There are many examples in the Angry Birds game model of this principle in action. Probably one of the most compelling is the simple screen flow manipulation at the beginning of each new play sequence. When the screen first loads, the user is shown a very quick view of the structure that is protecting the pigs. Just as quickly, the structure is moved off screen to the right in a simple sliding motion.

Coming into view on the left is a bevy of bouncing, chatting and flipping birds sitting behind the slingshot. These little characters are engaging in a way that for the most part erases the player’s memory of the structure design, which is critical to determining a strategy for demolishing the pig’s house. Predictably, the user scrolls the interface back to the right to get another look at the structure. The game allows the user to reload short-term memory easily and quickly. Watch almost anyone play Angry Birds and you see this behavior repeated time and again. One of the main benefits of playing Angry Birds on the iPad is the ability to pinch down the window size so you can keep the entire game space (birds & pigs in houses) in full view all the time. Keeping all aspects of the game’s interface in full view prevents short-term memory loss and improves the rate at which you acquire skills necessary to move up to a higher game level. Side note: If you want the ultimate Angry Birds experience use a POGO pen on the iPad with the display pinched down to view the entire game space. This gives you finer control, better targeting and rapidly changing game play. The net impact in cognitive terms is a vastly superior skill acquisition profile. However, you will also find that the game is less interesting to play over extended periods. Why does this happen?

Mystery: You probably do not know how to recognize it, but Angry Birds has it. To add context to this idea, mystery is all around us in the things we find truly compelling. The element or attribute of mystery is present in all great art, advertising, movies, products, and not surprisingly, interactive games. The idea of mystery in a user experience as an attribute for increasing user engagement is embedded in the idea of mystery (conceptual depth). We all experience the impact of mystery when we view a cubist period Picasso, recall the famous Apple 1984 super bowl ad, or listen to Miles Davis.  He is said to have described jazz as playing the spaces between the notes, not the notes themselves. Mystery is present when you pick up an iPad for the first time. Why are the icons spaced out across the screen when they could be clustered much closer together to save space. Why does the default screen saver look like water on the inside of the screen?

Mystery is that second layer of attributes that are present but undefined explicitly, yet somehow created with just enough context to consume mental resources in subtle and compelling ways. At its most basic level, experiencing mystery in what we interact with makes you ask the question, “Why did they do that?”.  What we mean here is, “Why did they do that? – A good thing, not “What were they thinking? – A bad thing.  If you think carefully about the experiences you have in the ebb and flow of life, you realize that the most compelling are those that force you to think long and hard about why a given thing is the way it is. For example, why did Frank Gehry create the Guggenheim Museum Bilboa using the shapes he did? The famous architect could have created any shape concept, but why did he choose those shapes? It’s a mystery – we do not know and probably neither does he. What we do know is that his creation is cited as one of the most important works of contemporary architecture. In the same way that a building can captivate millions of sightseers, the element of mystery (conceptual depth) can help sell a few million copies of a simple interactive game.

Angry Birds is full of these little mysteries. For example, why are tiny bananas suddenly strewn about in some play sequences and not in others? Why do the houses containing pigs shake ever so slightly at the beginning of each game play sequence? Why is the game’s play space showing a cross section of underground rocks and dirt? Why do the birds somersault into the sling shot sometimes and not others? One can spend a lot of time on the Acela processing these little clues, consciously or subconsciously. When users of technology process information in this way, it is very likely that they are more deeply engaged than without these small questions.

How things sound: Over the past 15 years, the neuroscience of music has taken a huge leap forward. This new research is just beginning to tell us why music adds such a strong emotional component to movies, advertising, theater, and of course, new media of all types, including casual computer games. Employing the power of audio stimuli including structured music often adds a critical level of engagement for users of all forms of technology. Angry Birds’ audio effects and music seem simple but are, in fact, very complex. The use of audio effects and carefully varied melodic music lines works to enhance the game play engagement level. Many games do this but few do it expertly. The audio in Angry Birds serves to enhance the user’s experience by mapping tightly to the user’s simple mental model of conflict between the angry birds and the loathsome pigs. This concept, known in film production as “action syncing”, provides enhanced levels of the feedback for users at just the right time. For example, in Angry Birds, we hear the birds chatter angry encouragement to their colleagues as each prepares for launch. We hear avian dialogue as the birds arc toward their targets and hear the pained response from their victims when they strike their targets. The pigs are by no means silent. When the avian interlopers fail, they are often egged on to try just one more time by the snickering, grinning pigs. These consistently applied audio elements reinforce the player’s interactions and deepen engagement by emphasizing the anthropomorphic qualities of the main characters of the game and providing clever enhanced feedback during critical on-screen behaviors. What about the actual melodic music shifting from the foreground to the background without apparent reason? This musical thread running through the game play experience is mysteriously familiar and easily understood in the context of the overall theme of the game. Where have I heard that melody before? This combination of audio feedback is varied just enough that parents sitting in the next room are rarely prone to demanding an end to game play based on distracting musical repetition. Perhaps this explains the high number of hours spent playing the game!

How things look: Angry Birds has a look. One might characterize the visual style of Angry Birds as a combination of “high-camp cartoon” with a bit of greeting card graphics tossed in for good measure.

This leads to a more interesting question: How does visual design impact success in the marketplace? I routinely get this question from clients who are undertaking large redesign or new development projects. Decades after it first surfaced in automobile design, visual design is still the most contentious aspect of designing compelling user experiences. Designers (mostly of the UX stripe) routinely sell clients on the concept that the visual design (graphic style) of a given interface solution is a critical factor in success. This assumption seems to make good intuitive sense. However, the actual working principle is counter-intuitive. In most user experience design solutions, visual design (how things look) is technically a hygiene factor. You get serious negative points if it is missing, but minimal positive lift beyond first impression, if a user interface has great visual design. When we conduct user engagement studies for clients (not the same as usability testing), we routinely see data that strongly supports this theory. This concept does not apply to all user experience design problems, but in most cases it holds well. The ultimate question is how much visual design is enough?  Even more important than good or bad visual design is appropriate visual design. On this metric, Angry Birds again has just the right set of attributes. The concept of appropriate visual design is in itself complex as designers generally apply too much rendering and engineers apply none, which often leaves the actual user staring at the equivalent of an engineering prototype (Google) or alternatively, World of Warcraft. After decades of experience in user interface design, I can predict fairly accurately the corporate software development bias of clients by simply examining the user interfaces of their products. I cannot imagine Google as anything but engineering-driven, despite the apparently large number of UX designers hired in recent years.

Measuring that which some say cannot be measured: How does one measure visual design in this context? There are several well-understood methodologies for assessing the appropriateness of visual design that we employ in development projects. These research methods make objective that which is thought to be only subjective. Visual design can be measured, rated, and scaled to the benefit of users and those who develop such interfaces. The actual dimensions of appropriate and winning visual design vary widely, depending on the application but in game design two factors reign supreme. First, the visual design must be memorable and second, it must convey the desired attributes of the game play model.

So memorable is Angry Birds that the developers have deals for real world “brand extensions”, including Angry Birds stuffed toys, t-shirts, and all matter of off-the-wall consumer goods that make BIG profits. The simple visual design of those tiny cartoon-ish birds is so compelling and simple, it brings an additional level of continuous interest to the game play experience. Of note too is the world the birds and pigs inhabit which changes in strange and subtle ways with every level. Visual design is another critical dimension of the success of Angry Birds, which leads to the ultimate question: Is Angry Birds the best it can be? Not by a long shot!

We are left with the notion that a cognitive teardown of a truly compelling user experience is vastly more interesting and insightful than simply answering the opposite question: why is a given user interface dysfunctional? To summarize, in the context of Angry Birds, success is bound up in slowing down that which could be fast, erasing that which is easily renewable, and making visual that which is mysterious and memorable. Over the past 10 years, our firm has conducted user engagement studies on hundreds of user interfaces. The vast number did not get one principle right, much less six.  You go Birds! Your success certainly makes others Angry and envious.

What stimulates creation of simple user experiences is not what it used to be

Let’s be clear, this push toward operational simplicity is not motivated by IT’s desire to do the right thing but is a result of a more recent economic imperative that says simply that customers want products and services that can be acquired, set up, used, and maintained by the lowest level of technical expertise possible while sustaining suitable reliability. For example if 2 manufacturers make the same category of routers and one can be serviced by technical school grads and a 3 page user manual and the other by employees with an MS in computer science and a massive call center in India, guess whose stock price is eventually dropping like a stone?

How “expertise consumption” is becoming the core of expense management

Expertise, in all its various forms, is the new currency of corporate profitability. In a world where IT is the CENTERPIECE of business processes “expertise = expense” and nothing eats up expertise like IT hardware and software.  So, for all the years that usability and user experience design has been proffered as a soft benefit that demonstrated customer awareness, it is now clear that usability and user experience design are actually key factors in expense management. With the new focus being on management by metrics, the actual cost of expertise is now finally being measured objectively. For example: one router (Company A) costs $2,000 but consumes $10,000 in set up and maintenance costs. A second router (Company B) sells for $3,000 and costs $300 dollars to set up and maintain. It only takes one quarterly board presentation on IT expertise costs to understand that Company A is no longer the router of choice. So, whereas usability was previously thought to be no more than a “nice” attribute, not having serious usability performance is now a “nasty” liability.

The interesting question is how do corporations which have previously been disdainful of formal usability science and user experience design actually make the transition to a development culture that values above all the cost (cognitively and technically) demanded of customers using its products? Give this question to an investment banking group and the answer will be to acquire simplicity in the form of a company that has such a development culture. The idea here is that simplicity and the ability to create products which actually are less complex to learn and use can be bought and/or transferred between corporate cultures. Sorry, it does not really work that way because developing a culture that creates simplicity as a primary corporate strategy is not the same as creating one or two simple products. One is massively complex; the other is trivially simple.

Why simplicity is fundamentally an innovation diffusion problem

The key to moving from a development culture that is technology-centered to one that is actually user-centered depends on the corporation’s willingness to support innovation as a core concept. Based on research conducted in the writing of a chapter for the book titled: “Cost-Justifying Usability: An Update for the Internet Age”, we described the factors that must be present for formal user-centered design to be successfully adopted into an existing corporate structure. Below are the key list of attributes from that chapter. Note: this list is adopted from the excellent work of Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, which deals with innovation dispersion within corporate cultures. We view the dispersion of usability science and user-centered design as fundamentally an innovation dispersion problem and not a factor that can be acquired through M&A.

Factors that impact dispersion of innovations and the creation of simplicity

1. Centralization of decision-making is negatively correlated with adoption of innovations such as usability science. If all decisions are made in a centralized manner, usability science is less likely to be effectively adopted within the organization.
2. Complexity of the organization’s staff background and educations can be positively correlated with adoption of innovations. If an organization has many highly qualified and professional individuals from varied disciplines, it is more likely to adopt innovations such as usability science. It is especially important that no one discipline dominate product development decision-making.
3. Formalization of rules and procedures is negatively correlated with adoption of innovations. The more structured the organization’s development rules and procedures are, the less likely the corporation will be to adopt an innovation.
4. Interconnectedness is highly correlated with adoption of innovations such as usability science. This means that the level of network utilization and interpersonal communications that take place between and across divisions and departments and even within individual teams of corporate employees and executives are strong predictors of willingness to adopt innovation.
5. Organizational slack is simply the amount of uncommitted resources available to use in the adoption of new and powerful ideas. It is important to remember that all corporations run on a yearly development budget and rarely is there a line item for “open innovation” resources, those resources which can be deployed easily and quickly to problems that often drive simplicity into product design solutions.

If one were to apply the attributes listed above to Cisco Systems (and many other leading IT companies) it is likely you will find that while these large IT entities may have the desire to sell products that demonstrate simplicity and are paying a lot in an attempt to do so, they have some serious obstacles to overcome before they will be able to successfully create truly simple and empowering user experiences on a corporate wide basis.

Why creating simplicity is more than flipping a switch

It is important to note that creation of a consumer product like the Flip Video Camera is relatively easy compared to reducing the complexity of a major piece of IT infrastructure. The difference between these 2 types of problems can be found in the depth of the user experience layer that must be modeled when creating a product or system that is truly easy to learn and use. The Flip Video Camera can be optimized in many ways by trial and error modeling of the user experience. However, creating higher levels of simplicity in truly complex, software-based interfaces requires the application of formal and highly structured cognitive modeling of the relationship between the user/customer and the deep feature sets of more complex products. This is exactly the point at which buying simplicity and creating it comes off the rails for companies like Cisco and others companies who produce products with deep feature sets.

The ability to successfully employ new design processes that may result in the development of products with simplicity attributes like that of the Flip Video Camera requires essentially altering the structure of the product design process itself. Traditional processes focus almost exclusively on the design teams’ vision of what the product should be with little acknowledgement of the underlying cognitive processes of the end user and how such processes affect acceptance of a product in the marketplace. In fact, one of the most difficult problems facing design teams is realistically accepting the fact that they cannot represent the cognitive state of the end user as they develop new products and services.

Why the simplicity game has changed

A development process that successfully creates simplicity in the face of increasing complexity shifts the perspective of the design process to the actual customer through the application of usability science. This shift allows the design team to develop a product that matches how the user thinks about and interacts with the product resulting in designs that are more engaging, innovative, and less complex to learn. But this is not exactly a ground breaking insight since the concept of “user-centered” development has been around for decades. So what is the important story here, what has changed?

If you are not measuring simplicity, you are not creating it

The difference today is that to apply professional usability science properly to increasingly complex products requires the establishment of formal user-based “simplicity metrics” which a new product must objectively meet in order to deliver a truly engaging user experience. It is this shift toward basing design decisions on hard user experience performance metrics that is a sea change for companies like Cisco and many others struggling with the “Expertise-Consumption” problem. Any company today (large or small) that wishes to develop game-changing simplicity in a market category and does not have a set of tightly structured simplicity metrics is simply kidding itself…simplicity is not going to happen. If you are not basing your design on initial cognitive modeling of the user experience supported by repeated user testing it is highly unlikely that simplicity will be a claim you can make in the marketplace.

Why development executives feel uncomfortable with simplicity as an objective

To clarify our point, what we are talking about is NOT the same as a corporation running a usability study when the product or system is in late Beta. Such an approach will never deliver insights that result in major reduction in learning and operational complexity. It is simply too late. If true simplicity is a goal it is necessary to test design concepts repeatedly against “simplicity metrics” during development. This means building much more robust simulations and constant user testing with unbiased respondent pools. As any experienced development manager can see immediately, the requirement of constant user testing of simulated user experiences virtually reverses their existing development model…not a comfortable position given the nature of the economic environment we face today. Some, like Cisco, may feel that it is easier to purchase simplicity than attempt to create it on a corporate wide level.

Why cognitive capital is the new measure of business success

In our experience, without rigorously (and repeatedly) evaluating the cognitive workload placed on the end user during product development it is nearly impossible to create solutions that result in empowering and game changing user experiences. The simple truth is that it’s not easy for most design teams to accept that the user’s perspective on what is actually simple and empowering is vastly more valuable than their own. Unfortunately for companies like Cisco and others, this shift in perspective can’t be guaranteed by acquiring a company whose culture may have created a terrific product like the Flip Video Camera and hoping that simplicity will occur by “osmosis” or for that matter even by plan. In the near future business success will turn on the cost of “cognitive capital” not “financial capital” and nothing consumes cognitive capital like IT product complexity. Just ask anyone who has tried to install a Cisco router recently.

Charles L. Mauro

Photo by Greg L. available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license.

One might reasonably ask what does an A320 Airbus have to do with the design of products ranging from MP3 players to popular social networking websites? For example had MP3 player manufacturers applied even a small portion of the user interface design methods employed by the commercial aircraft companies iTunes would have been a non-starter and the music companies would be a happy bunch today. The more surprising point is that the best insights come not from how contemporary commercial aircraft fly, but how they crash.

No example in recent history is more helpful in this regard than the ditching of US Airways 1549 into the Hudson River on January 15th, 2009. Here is a condensed analysis of what this incident teaches all who strive to build compelling user interfaces for high technology products and services in the future. You will not find these insights combined in any currently available source on user interface design.

To set these leanings in context, below is a link to the audio recording of communications between US Airways Flight 1549 (using the call designation “Cactus 1549”), the New York TRACON flight controller, and the controller from Teterboro airport in New Jersey. The entire clip is about 3 min. in length. The tape picks up where Cactus 1549 reports a bird strike to the TRACON controller and continues until Cactus 1549 vanishes from his radar view. The brief conversations at the end of the tape are communications between the TRACON controller and several other planes in TRACON’s space a short time after Cactus 1549 vanished into the Hudson River. (Note: If you are really into this sort of thing, you will get the most from the audio if you listen to it 3 times; first for overall flow, second focusing on the pilot, and a final pass focusing on the TRACON controller.)

Listen to the cockpit conversation below:

While you listen to the audio follow the flight path on the diagram below. Note that the entire event string consumed only about 3 min on the time line. The bird strike takes place at about 3:27 on the chart below.

Photo by S.Bollman, available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license.

User Interface design insights from Cactus 1549…why did everyone survive?

Insight 1: Design for automation, plan for user control
The push to automation in all forms of high technology development is inevitable. This thrust is wide-ranging from simple products like the iPod and extending to the A320 Airbus as it bobbed in the Hudson River. It is a fact that automation is at the center of all future user interface design problems and solutions. Some industries deal with this variable better than others. For example the history of the airline industry shows that no other commercial sector has undertaken such a massive and aggressive stance on the use of automation related to its technology. Over 2 decades ago the airlines, working in collaboration with the aircraft manufacturers launched an effort known essentially as the “Cockpit Automation Program”. That effort coincided with the development of a new generation of commercial aircraft. As with most major transitions in technology, the program was controversial from the start and produced a pitched battle between the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and the airlines and manufacturers for control of cockpit flight systems (user interface) for planes of the future. On the one side were pilots rejecting nearly all additional automation and on the opposing side were airlines and aircraft manufacturers demanding nearly complete automation which they believed was necessary to achieve smaller crew sizes that would result in major operational cost reductions. In the end the ALPA gave up the third seat in nearly all commercial aircraft as functions previously spread across three professional pilots were reallocated to two pilots supported by new levels of aircrew automation. The pilots however retained control of some critical functions and most importantly the ability to take complete control from cockpit automation at anytime. Captain Sullenberger in Cactus 1549 made use of this allocation design to maintain control of the A320 during its entire descent into the Hudson River. He did so without being stuffed in the gap between automation and lower operating costs.

Think of this insight in another context. Had the A320 been designed by Facebook one can envision a large crater in Queens with a terse statement on the Facebook website reading “we have changed our flight policy…crashing is now allowed as part of our terms of use”. In the Facebook A320 Captain Sully would have spent the last 3 minutes of his life scanning pages of obscure text looking for the automation control check boxes. Clearly, a commercial aircraft has a different set of usability and user engagement objectives than a Social Networking website but in the end success is determined by applying the same concepts. It is a fact that you can design for 90% automation but realistically you will never achieve more than 60% automation. Therefore, it is more productive to design for automation but plan continually for giving the user control of the functions of the product when your clever software-based automation simply does not work properly or gives the user more complexity to deal with not less. This fact is just as valid on a Social Networking site as it is on the Airbus A320.

Insight 2: Simulate everything, build almost nothing

No industry has made better use of simulations during both development and user training than commercial airlines and the military. Today pilots undergo massive levels of required simulation training to make procedures routine and to experience the actual handling attributes of the planes they fly in sometimes dangerous and dysfunctional situations such as a “total loss of power” descent with a full fuel and passenger load. Professional pilots today can achieve up to 90% of their required training for a commercial license in flight simulations. There are those who believe that modern commercial aviation has been possible essentially through the use of flight simulations for training. Imagine if you will the amount of jet fuel saved based on simulator certification allowances. You are talking about millions of gallons of jet fuel a year. Both Captain Sully and Patrick Harten (the TRACON flight controller), and the tower controller at Teterboro ALL spent time in simulations. When one listens to the dialogue between these parties it is clear that their responses were essentially automatic. These automatic responses would have been impossible without being subjected to the system failure scenarios made possible by simulations. What does this have to do with the user interface design solutions for commercial and consumer products and services in the future?

Surprisingly this insight may be the most important lesson available. To be clear there are several relevant factors in using simulations to create compelling and empowering user interfaces for high technology products and services. The form we are discussing here is known as RS or Robust Simulations. These are simulations that are high fidelity interfaces created during development to allow users to exercise the user interface in ALL critical ways. They are also “robust” because they are created before a single line of actual code has been written. Their entire purpose is to simulate new user interfaces comprehensively BEFORE alpha, beta or launch. Why is this insight important for those who develop new user interfaces in the future? Well, ponder these numbers. This year software development expenditures will total about 270 billion dollars on a global basis. Less than 10 million will be spent on simulations before code is written. About 90% of all large software projects can be termed failures due to cost overruns, failure to deliver functions as specified or flat out user rejection due to dysfunctional user interface design. This is not an especially promising track record for the future even without the current economic crisis. Clearly something is broken here that indicates the need to plan before we build.

Today in the development of commercial aircraft, every aspect of the design is simulated including all flight systems and pilot control and automation configurations and interfaces. Years before the first prototype leaves the runway commercial aircraft manufacturers know exactly how the commercial aircraft will behave and more importantly how it will actually feel to the pilots as they interface with new hardware and software cockpit interface designs. Not every industry sector is so enlightened.

It is curious that no other industry has made less use of simulations than those corporations and startups that develop complex high technology products and services ranging from Social Networking websites to new high-tech consumer products. These companies routinely pound out a million lines of code before sitting a user in front of the system. This is old news. However the lesson in Cactus 1549 for all those who hope to develop successful high technology products and services is now a bit more refined. Here are some additional interesting numbers.

To develop a robust simulation of your product or service is 1/10 the cost of coding the same interface to early alpha level. If you have to make changes in beta or in early launch it is 100 times more costly than the same changes resulting from the simulation. The major benefit of simulation that Cactus 1549 teaches is that with the proper attention to detail simulated user experiences can be made virtually indistinguishable from the real experience. This allows you to simulate almost everything and build almost nothing except that which will objectively drive user adoption and profitability. It is a mystery why VCs routinely fund startups to create early production products based on real code when they could get vastly better return by requiring robust simulations and carefully structured user testing. In the context of how most user interfaces are designed today, let’s think of this whole idea of robust simulations in another way.

Had the A320 been designed by Facebook there would have been no simulation because Facebook flies all of its planes by pure automation. Such automation would have likely lead Cactus 1549 back to LaGuardia runway 1, which almost certainly would have produced a large crater in Queens a mile short of the runway. This would have been followed by another terse statement on the Facebook website reading: “To all our pilots flying the new Facebook A320: whether you like it or not we are turning on the automation, so suffer the consequences!”

Insight 3: The strength of your user’s mental model predicts product success.

This is a concept that is important and not well understood but one that the flight of 1549 teaches all those involved in development of high technology products and services. This concept is revealed in the analysis of  the TRACON controller, Patrick Harten, who plotted alternate landing options for Cactus 1549 at three area airports in less time than it takes most of us to check our email on a Blackberry Storm. When we speak about developing a mental model of a system what we mean is the user’s ability to create a robust mental picture and functional understanding of the system with which they are interacting. The design of all high technology user interfaces virtually determines the strength and clarity of the customer’s mental model. A well designed user interface helps users develop such mental models by DESIGN. Patrick Harten demonstrated an amazingly well developed mental model of his transition air space and 3 major NY area airports. This was present in his rapid suggestions of alternate airports but further included his recall of actual runway numbers, spatial orientations, and distances. Mr. Harten maintained a robust mental model of his operational environment. In the current leading theory in systems design this is known technically as “situation awareness” and was reflected in the operational profile of the pilot and the involved air traffic controllers. This unquestionably contributed to the successful end to a potentially tragic series of events. Designing a user interface to support and create situation awareness will be a fundamental requirement of all successful high technology user interfaces in the future.

Most new high technology products and services are based on user interface design concepts that have virtually no focus on supporting the development of the user’s or customer’s mental model of the system. Yet, this is the single most effective way to test a new system for usability and more importantly the best way to ensure commercial success. If, after appropriate exposure, your customers do not have a firmly established mental model of your new product or service they will never understand either its benefits or its functions. Such products cannot become successful. In the end all of the key players in the Cactus 1549 ditching had highly developed mental models of the systems they were interacting with, where they were, and what actions could and should be taken to produce a productive outcome. Very few new high technology products offer customers interfaces that build such robust mental models or support such decision making performance. Cactus 1549 teaches this important lesson and it is not a trivial learning.

Photo by jkrums, posted on Twitter.

The big lesson

It has been said that we learn more from our failures than from our successes. While Flight 1549 is formally classified by the FAA as a crash it was none the less an amazing example of how an industry (even one crippled by mismanagement) employed development methods that led to the development of a truly world-altering technology, the commercially viable, mass produced, commercial airliner. Possibly the big lesson from 1549 for all who aspire to creating world-altering technology is that by employing automation, simulation and cognitive modeling it is possible to fly 10 billion miles a year without an incident. Even more important may be that, when your time comes (and it will) a soft glide to the Hudson where everyone survives and your corporate brand value skyrockets is a solution worth simulating and ultimately designing for.

Charles L Mauro CHFP

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Additional observations of interest from Flight 1549 incident.

Captain Sully: What made him extraordinary in this situation? Captain Sully had 20 + years of commercial airline experience and previously flew fighter aircraft in the military, but his most interesting and relevant background may have been his sailplane experience. Did this contribute to his situation awareness and flight domain knowledge as the A320 descended in unpowered flight? Did his final flare out and use of ground effect upon landing result in a vastly more reliable final water landing? Almost certainly this played a role as can be seen in the images of the final water landing taken from a security camera in New Jersey. Was Captain Sully experiencing extreme stress?…almost certainly. How do we know? He failed to activate the “Ditch Switch” once in the water which is designed to close water inlet valves and reduce flooding of the aircraft. This oversight led to more rapid flooding of the aircraft once in the water. This was a classic omission error correlated with high stress. Did he deserve the keys to New York presented to him by Mayor Bloomberg?…without question.

Patrick Harten: how “situation aware” was he really?Was Patrick Harten experiencing high levels of stress during the 3 minutes of the event? Without question he was. How do we know? If you listen carefully to the audio tape you will hear Mr. Harten misstate the actual flight number of Cactus 1549 as 1529 multiple times. This form of error is known as a “commission error” and is understood to be a predictor in most cases of excessive cognitive workload and stress. How “situation aware” was he really? The audio file shows he was extraordinarily “situation-aware”…almost hyper-aware. This is demonstrated by his maintaining control of the emergency flow as well as communications with at least 6 other planes in his direct airspace during the actual crash sequence and by his attending to the location and heading of these other aircraft within seconds of losing Cactus 1549 from radar view. Mr. Harten’s hyper-awareness can likely be attributed to his unique experience as a TRACON controller. His father held the same position at TRACON 30 years prior and young Harten would often come with him to work. The 5 year old was even occasionally allowed to guide planes to turn left or right. From a young  age Mr. Harten has been building awareness of the area he covers as a TRACON controller and on Jan. 15th, he was at the absolute top of his game.

The current rant against iTunes by the few surviving music industry executives is a wide-ranging complaint about Apple’s near complete control of the distribution of recording companies’ content. This outcry is based on Apple’s refusal to allow flexible pricing and Apple’s demand for elimination of copyright protection schemes (DRM) from songs sold on iTunes. As the music industry views it, this pitched battle evidently reached a high point in the last two months as Apple gave into flexible pricing but held fast to DRM removal. The whining by music companies could be heard from Hollywood to Madison Avenue. Much of this dialogue is focused on finding a distribution model competitive with iTunes. Apparently such a model would allow the music industry to return to days of yore where a million tons of plastic discs were dumped into the retail distribution channels and out sprang eye-popping profits.

At the very least, music companies are looking to new channels for music distribution outside of Apple’s domination. Currently this is seen mostly in the form of monthly subscription services provided through mobile operators like Nokia, Verizon and other famously out-of-touch telcos.  With iTunes pulling in $1.5 billion in 2008, compared to $70 million in wireless music sales, this tactic is clearly an uphill battle. Unfortunately for the music business, this strategy is likely to have a surprisingly short life-span, since Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch are rapidly outpacing the competition and setting the bar in terms of wireless music purchasing and cross-platform syncing, managed, of course, through the iTunes franchise. The result is a practical version of “two steps forward..three steps back” for the music industry.

It is also a rather surprising fact that the music business is no longer about music. It is simply about creating the lowest friction method for allowing customers access to their artist of choice, recommended NOT by music industry PR firms or marketing departments, but by customers’ friends on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. This whole idea that the music industry can develop an alternative to iTunes is pure fantasy and the reasons why this is true are somewhat counter-intuitive.

For example, in the same way that music is no longer about music, it is also profoundly true that iTunes is not about “selling” music. iTunes is about selling a “process” for selling music. Apple couldn’t care less about the packets of digital data that reside on its servers that form the gruel for billions of micro transactions. This new process model (call it what you may) has only one primary business objective, to make the user experience as simple and error-resistant as possible. Apple cares not what the number one hit is on iTunes this week. Apple cares only about completely controlling the entire series of customer touch points that connect the dots between purchasing music and playing it. It is the seamless integration of Apple iTunes/iPod/iPhone hardware and software that determine success. This level of refinement and objective control of the music distribution and consumption value chain requires fanatical levels of control and selfless matching of business goals for the good of the process overall.

In order to actually compete with iTunes, the music industry would have to morph into a new “process” model where those who create music, store it, promote it, sell it, and create devices that allow users to consume music would all have to work seamlessly together with one goal in mind: to create a lower friction consumer experience than Apple iTunes. One needs only to lunch with a typical music industry executive to know that this is absolutely not going to happen. Apple has already dictated the end game. Although there are moves left on the board, the outcome is nearly certain…checkmate. Fold the King (BB or otherwise) and let it go. To do otherwise is a vast and complex user experience design problem which the music industry does not have either the skills or knowledge to address in a manner that will threaten (or even deflect) iTunes.

Famously at odds industries like music production, web content distribution, and music player manufacturers cannot begin to conceptualize the complexity and selfless decision-making they would need to endure in order to create a user experience even remotely as compelling as iTunes. This is not to say that iTunes is a paragon of ultimate usability for all functions. It is not, but overall iTunes will continue to trump anything the music industry, web music services, or MP3 player manufacturers can throw at it.

Steven Jobs has no reason to negotiate away any advantage to the music industry. He (Apple) had the discipline and patience to understand that iTunes is not about music any more than the iPhone is about phone calls. There are those who understand this way of thinking and then there are music industry executives who do not. A warning to all those music industry executives plotting the demise of iTunes: Beware, the Death Star is upon you!

Charles L. Mauro CHFP

In The New York Times Sunday Magazine section Joe Nocera produced a column that was important, well researched and insightful on how computer-based decision tools (VaR models) led Wall Street down the path to near ruin. However, Mr. Nocera missed an important, deeper point that is impacting critical analysis of what actually happened on Wall Street that allowed these seemingly intelligent executives to continue to pile on massive levels of risk long after they should have known better.

The new science of decision-making isn’t

At the heart of the answer to this vexing question on the melt down of Wall Street is a major shift in the underlying psychological theories of human decision-making. In fact contemporary theory on human error research has shifted entirely from the idea of “decision-making” to the concept of “sense-making”. The underlying cognitive science behind this new way of visualizing how individuals and more important entire institutions assess risk is known generally as “Naturalistic Decision Making” or NDM. What this new view teaches is that there are no “points-in-time” that constitute rational decision triggers, but that problems like RISK management on Wall Street are actually an accumulated series of EXPERIENCES that flow together to create situations that are filled with distortions such “positive outcome bias”. We now know from significant research that these distortions make it nearly impossible for those directly involved in such situations to make intelligent (reasoned) decisions about actual RISK.

The intellectual concept that humans are sense-makers and not rigorously programmed decision makers flies in the face of “Rationalist” decision making theory produced in large measure by economist who, on occasion, received Nobel prizes for proffering theories that humans were rational processors of choice sets leading to optimized, rational decisions. Recently, researchers involved in complex systems design which combine human intelligence with machine automation see the rationalist view as unworkable if not outright incorrect. There are significant real-world experiences that support this shift in human error management theory.

What the Space Shuttle disasters teach Wall Street

In these situations it is known that technology-based risk assessments systems (ie. VaR risk calculations) can and do have massively negative implications, as humans (in this case Wall Street executives), rely more and more on structured, computer-based feedback and less on their instincts about the state of the system. This is exactly what happened with the destruction of 2 space shuttles and is now at the center of why Wall Street continued to pile on more RISK.

Human information processing is not what it used to be

The answer to these extremely complex problems resides in a fundamental redistribution of how functional thinking about risk is distributed between the human participants in the system and the tools that they employ to help manage huge amounts of complex data. At the core of this new way of thinking is the realization that the human information processing system is far more capable than assumed but also subject to context-specific biases that produce disasters like the meltdown on Wall Street and destruction of 2 Space Shuttles.

For these new theories to produce reliable results it is essential that sense-making systems must fundamentally help the human capital in the system visualize risk at the highest levels of management. It is a fact that many of the toxic asset classes conjured forth by Wall Street were so complex and ill defined that they cannot even be categorized let alone visualized. It is exactly such cognitively impoverished EXPERIENCES that made sense-making impossible on Wall Street in recent years. Yet, these may not be impossible problems to solve.

So, where is the solution?

An entire new field of human-centered systems design is currently evolving that is focused on solving these complex problems which have nothing to do with decision-making and everything to do with sense-making. This leads to a rather simple maxim that says: humans make sense of situations, computers do not. This is NOT to say that computers are not a vital component of systems design, but it does say that computers must support human intelligence not supplant it.

Charles L. Mauro

Here is an interesting question: what was the single most profitable factory in the history of modern mass production? Would you be surprised to know that it was an outdated Ford Truck Plant in Wayne Michigan?  Malcolm Gladwell, in the New Yorker said, “In 1998, the Michigan Truck Plant grossed eleven billion dollars, almost as much as McDonald’s made that year. Profits were $3.7 billion. Some factory workers, with overtime, were making two hundred thousand dollars a year.” How is this possible given the vast efficiency of the world’s production facilities ranging from Berlin to Bangkok? It was possible because what was produced there was a product so outdated and low cost yet so overpriced and in such demand that it drove the entire American automobile industry to staggering levels of profitability. Starting in 1996, the Wayne Michigan Truck Plant produced the Ford Expedition SUV…the vehicle that some have said started it all…the SUV generation. As it turns out on July 22nd, 2008 Ford announced that it was converting the Wayne Truck Plant to production of the Ford Focus, a sub-compact design. When the last Expedition rolled off the assembly line, so went the SUV, and for the most part the American automobile industry. Here is our take on what went wrong and why, surprisingly, the SUV is important to corporations large and small that are focused on developing powerful and robust user experiences.

Here is a second even more vexing question: how did untold millions of generally well educated and intelligent consumers end up paying the price of a new BMW for a 40 year old truck with terrible gas mileage? How did this happen?

It is a fact that American automobile design has always been more about theater than innovation. The living embodiment of this concept is Robert Lutz, the jet-piloting, Duesenberg-owning car guy and by no coincidence, head of automobile design for General Motors during the SUV years. When asked what automobile design was all about he said; “Art, entertainment and mobile sculpture, which, coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation”. The key idea behind theater in all its critical forms is that it is by definition a put-on (a play as we say), a stage on which a story line is delivered for entertainment. In a surprising way the SUV was much the same, only it played out on the stage of the U.S. consuming public. In the end the SUV was a Disney musical—90% fantasy 10% hope. It is the fantasy part we can learn from.

From the beginning the SUV was a fantasy of low technology and high hopes. It was a truck remade into a promise of exceptionally broad benefits both for the customer and for the American automakers. From a business point of view it is easy to see why Detroit was punch drunk on the SUV. Take for example the following benefits: 1) The SUV was extraordinarily profitable (60% profits were routine on some models). 2) It required virtually no new R&D and minimal design costs to develop (existing, outdated engineering and 25 year old styling worked just fine). 3) The SUV was very easy to produce in low tech factories (no complex modern tooling or production costs to contend with). 4) Finally, and in one of the all time clever moves by Detroit, The SUV was classified as a truck and was therefore, not legally required to meet any of the safety or gas mileage standards of the traditional sedan or even minivan. This last fact was no small political victory for Detroit and was the source of some of the most aggressive lobbying by the Big Three in history.

So, how do we account for the staggering success of the SUV? In fact, to this day Detroit doesn’t know what made the SUV successful.  In almost any other industry, market research is employed to plumb the decision space of the consumer. However, market research on SUVs for the most part, showed these vehicles appealed to certain personality types, but the data revealed very little about the attributes of those vehicles that impacted critical decision making of the customer. In fact most consumers came to make purchase decisions based on the most perplexing set of contradictions about the actual performance of their SUVs. For example, customers routinely thought that 1) they were more safe in a SUV than a traditional car or Minivan (they were not), 2) Drivers felt more in control (they actually had less control than most other vehicles), 3) Drivers felt more empowered to deal with rough road conditions (most drivers never used these features and when they did, they tended to be overly confident, sometimes leading to tragic accidents). So, not only do we have consumers purchasing vastly overpriced and outdated technology, they were also making decisions based on product performance profiles that were dead wrong.

Starting with the Roman Chariot and reaching a contemporary apogee in the private jet, mankind has always found a keen satisfaction in transportation technology. In terms of design and engineering it is well known that a driver’s engagement with an automobile is a high-stimulus experience combining motion, sound, kinesthetic interactions, system control, status, socialization, some measure of skill, all in the context of well known, although frequently ignored, legal and behavioral guidelines…commonly understood as insurance premiums and driving laws. This mix of attributes and interactions has made the contemporary automobile an unusually compelling user experience…in fact, a user experience unlike any other really. The key concept here is the “user experience” and it is our belief that the success of the SUV is completely and irreversibly bound to that illusive combination of product attributes that make a product instantly compelling in ways that block our more rational centers of thinking. These user experience design solutions, and there are fleetingly few, draw the consumer in so rapidly and so deeply that the desire to acquire this technology goes directly to the core of our consuming need. We simply must have this thing….The best current example beside the SUV is none other than the Apple iPhone. So what do the iPhone and the SUV have in common? More than you think.

When we speak of the “user experience” and how it impacts purchase and adoption of products and services we divide the framework into three basic pieces: 1) the FUE or the first user experience, 2) the EUE early user experience and 3) the DUE the deep user experience. We know from extensive research for leading high technology and media companies that there is no EUE or DUE without a very compelling FUE…in other words, what the customer first experiences is all important and in fact may be uniquely critical to the success of products which in the end, like the SUV, are of marginal or even negative relative value in the larger context. If you get the FUE right you can sell almost anything and customers will thank you for it. When we employ more advanced psychometric testing methods to user experience design research problems this effect surfaces in web sites, cell phones, video games, automobiles and a wide range of other high tech products and services.

When we view the success of the SUV from this perspective it is clear that the matrix of user experience attributes of the SUV were intoxicating to millions of consumers who, for reasons beyond our understanding, found the SUV so compelling a value proposition that they simply ignored media coverage and even conventional wisdom and purchased a design so outdated as to be embarrassing—not to mention environmentally damaging. So, exactly what were those attributes that bent so many minds and fenders? The answer may reside in an arcane branch of psychology known as “Cue Utilization”. This is a theory that, in part, explains how certain combination’s of influences (in this case the user experience design attributes of the SUV) combine to create a deeply engaging overall psychological experience. How and why this happens is the subject of much debate, but it does happen and the SUV is a prime example.

Thus, highly engaging user experience design is basically a process of cue management. Cues being the composite of all design attributes that the consumer processes on a mostly subconscious level. These cues say to the customer “this is a great piece of technology that offers me a combination of benefits that I cannot be without”. The SUV has this in the form of size, luxury, implied safety, driver point of view and an implied ability to deal with the unforeseen obstacles of the open road…or for that matter life. The important point is that these attributes of the SUV were likely conveyed to millions of customers in the first 20 seconds a potential buyer sat in the SUV in the show room.

The SUV was both the high point and low point of contemporary user experience design. Detroit happened upon this amazing mix of attributes by mistake and then squandered the spoils. The design of the SUV became simply a cue management problem focused entirely on conveying to the buyer the false attributes of safe, powerful, empowering, luxurious, capable and socially binding. It was of course all theater but it still proves the staggering power of well conceived and carefully controlled user experience design.

It is likely that most SUV consumers were hooked before they took the test drive. If you doubt this observation, visit a SUV showroom (assuming you can find one) and see if you sense the implied benefits of a SUV from the drivers seat or the passenger seat or if you have children ask them how they feel about their SUV nest with flat-screen TV, hookups for their video game controllers, juice box holders, reading lights, cell phone pockets, iPod connections and of course a private storage compartment for their action figures. No kid on the planet is going to pass up the SUV user experience for a Prius.

A similarly intoxicating first user experience has driven several million basically well educated and intelligent consumers to buy iPhones which for the most part are fundamentally dysfunctional on a core level due to excessively short battery life. Our rational mind knows this but it is the satisfaction we feel when we first pick up the iPhone in the Apple store and scroll that first menu that drives our emotions beyond our rational understanding even though that very morning we may have read a review on CNET that the battery life on an iPhone is abysmal.

The iPhone , the iPod and the SUV are simply examples of just the right balance of interactive and functional attributes presented in just the right way at the point of the first use experience. When this happens we are, like Detroit itself, punch drunk on the user experience and not on the product and its real functional performance. We make dumb purchase decisions.

In our opinion, along with such powerful user experiences (SUV and iPhone) comes some measure of corporate citizenship, which raises the ultimate SUV question—should Detroit have known better, should the Big Three have invested in design solutions that were more responsible? No, probably not…because Detroit has no history or desire to do so…As Bob Lutz remarked when asked about global warming he said it was frankly a “crock” and so goes the basic thinking of the American Automobile Industry. The SUV was intoxicating for Detroit and fundamentally shaped the American Automobile Industry’s view of the attributes for product success, where theater counted and the truly complex problems of driver and pedestrian safety, efficiency, global impact, political participation and responsible citizenship did not really matter.

American automobile executives know that the best and the brightest graduates go to Wall Street (well, maybe not any longer) or into challenging high tech fields. To work in Detroit is the ultimate dead end career. The SUV brought about design studios filled with interior design graduates not innovation labs teaming with scientists and world-class engineers. These are the skill sets we now know will be required to create successful and profitable personal transportation systems in the future. Detroit failed entirely to use profits of the SUV to create real innovation in transportation. The SUV was Detroit’s flight of fantasy and the SUV user experience was at the center of this theater of the absurd. The problem now is that Detroit is out of runway even with a bailout. Which in the end shows that having the benefit of psychologically powerful user experience design does not mean you can have your cake and eat it too.

Charles L Mauro

Not Web 2.0 again!

Following the Obama victory the traditional media, and even technorati, were effusive about the Obama campaign’s use of Web 2.0 technology. However, neither group provided real insight into what made the Obama web experience so powerful. For the most part, Web 2.0 technology has been massively overrated and misapplied. These new tools have failed to deliver on their promise of building user engagement platforms that transformed the web into vast interconnected networks for driving corporate profit and increasing brand engagement. Over the past 3 years, our firm has conducted extensive post-mortems on sites that injected huge sums into Web 2.0 implementations. From this research, we learned, among other things, that: 1) Web 2.0 user experiences are very difficult to integrate into traditional page-based user interaction models and 2) Web 2.0 tools are far more complex for users to understand and utilize than most realize. This last point is where Amy came in.

Oh MyObama

Amy is a young “twenty-something” who taught millions of potential Obama supporters how to set up and make use of the Web 2.0 tools known as “MyBO”. She did this by way of a deceptively simple video posted on the Obama site which was accessible to individuals interested in volunteering for the Obama campaign. The video could be played before signing up at the following link. In about 6 minutes, the Amy video translated to potential supporters the benefits and technical issues of making use of the MyBO 2.0 tool kit. There was nothing special about MyBO Web 2.0 tools. They were garden variety email campaign management, fundraising functions, a personal blog, and local campaign development contacts list. So what is the big deal about using a video to introduce a set of features and functions on the Obama campaign site?

Communicating clearly

What is important is that a properly conceptualized video is vastly superior to other forms of user experience training and has been shown to impact many aspects of the users’ overall engagement with almost any web site and its related value proposition The Amy video fundamentally solved one of the major issues restricting Web 2.0 tools; how to actually explain to users how to make the MyBO tools work for their (and their candidate’s) benefit. In this simple video, Amy communicated not only the value proposition of the Obama campaign but also how a volunteer could contribute to the campaign’s success by making use of the Web 2.0 technology in the “MyBO” tool set.

Page views vs. video streams

How important is a well conceived video in communicating user experience functions like Web 2.0 tools? In a recent study, we compared a traditional web page-based system vs. a well-conceived and tested video for communicating product benefits and teaching basic functions of Web 2.0 technology. The video was preferred by over 80% of those tested. More important, when we examined the group who were only presented the video as the method for communicating benefits and actual UX functions, the video group had significantly more repeat visits, stayed longer on the site, engaged deeper with critical (profit-making) content, and rated the brand much higher on critical attributes. When one applies a bit of demographic analysis to this issue, the reasons for the power of video become clear. What we sometimes fail to realize is that those who started life as the MTV generation 25 years ago are now entering their 40’s, and the current generation is now living in a YouTube video world. Video is the medium and the message. One can see immediately that a vast population of users (translate voters) grew up on video as the primary means for communicating complex or even simple functional concepts and benefits, not static page-based presentations.

A video is not always just a video

Amy taught us that powerful Web 2.0 solutions are more MTV than CNN. To be clear, it is not simply that a site makes use of video but rather how it makes use of video. Clearly the McCain site was overrun with video. So why was Obama successful and McCain not? The answer lies in the way that video was employed to convey core messaging and to achieve critical political objectives. Obama used video technology to train a vast community of volunteers to recruit and expand his political base by helping them make use of new and powerful social networking tools. Conversely, the McCain campaign used video to sell John McCain. One built a political ego and the other built an army. But the real stroke of genius of the Obama web experience had more to do with a much-abused new science than with the art of an engaging video.

The science of the Uber-Connector

Social networking theory has been so misunderstood over the past eight years as to be rendered almost meaningless as a viable science. However, the Obama campaign understood social networking theory. Therein rests the most important innovation of the Obama web experience. Humming away underneath the set of Web 2.0 tools of the Obama web site was a surprisingly simple volunteer database. In its most basic form, it contained only a few data points like email addresses, zip codes and names. This database may have been at the heart of the Obama victory. It apparently grew daily in a manner that suggested something quite interesting. However, victory was not assured until the Obama infrastructure made use of the most basic concept of social networking theory—finding those individuals on the network known as “uber-connectors”. These are individuals in any social networks who do not necessarily belong to one social group but who move freely between several social groups. They carry critical opinions, attitudes, knowledge and status across the information landscape in ways that we are just beginning to understand. These individuals have become immensely important to corporations selling products and political parties seeking victory.

The new social currency

These individuals are known to be so valuable that having access to them is fundamentally changing the advertising pricing models for traditional media. These are individuals who impact large numbers of other like-minded individuals in powerful ways that sell millions of products, build robust brands and not surprisingly, win elections. They are the new currency of our interconnected world. Yet, they are elusive, hard to pin down, difficult to value in dollar terms. If you try to market directly to them, you will miss them entirely. So how did the Obama campaign cultivate this amazing new resource of uber-connectors?

Simple connections, complex implications

One of the purposes of the Obama volunteer database was to connect volunteers in a local area for building grassroots support. The connection process was simple. When a volunteer registered, the Obama database would show them a list of other individuals in their area code who were also volunteers. One could then make use of email links in the volunteer MyBO tool kit to connect with these like-minded individuals. Apparently such connections were made on a rather surprising scale: tens of thousands of these local groups were formed by this method in the months leading up to Nov. 4th. What does this have to do with identifying the uber-connectors who really moved the meter for Obama? How did the Obama campaign find these individuals? Going directly to the point—probably by accident.

Where to look

As it turns out, our firm has been searching for uber-connectors in the traditional and new media space for music, video, TV and movie content. After several studies for leading media companies, we uncovered numerous reliable and interesting insights about uber-connectors. One of the significant predictors of who these individuals are was determined by examining in detail exactly how they feel about Web 2.0 tools. At the most basic level, those who are attracted to and make use of Web 2.0 technology in aggressive and surprisingly creative ways are exactly the uber-connectors any campaign would kill to access and utilize. From the 2008 campaign forward, these individuals will represent a massively important political and social currency. Certainly Obama will want to spend the next 4 years keeping these folks highly engaged with his presidency.

Amy and John

In the end, Amy helped make the MyBO Web 2.0 tools easy to learn and critically relevant for key group of supporters. By doing so, the Obama campaign unwittingly acquired the most valuable currency possible, an entire army of uber-connectors. No wonder Obama whacked McCain on the web! Sometimes making technology easy to learn has world-altering implications. Just ask an Obama uber-connector.

Charles L Mauro

Overview

2007 was a significant year for user experience design. Several UED innovations fundamentally altered the way users will interact with important technology platforms in the future. Most notable was the introduction of the iPhone, which changed how mobile Telco systems are developed and presented to users. Important user experience design innovations in gaming applications were Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii. Google Docs received kudos, but with interesting reservations. Recent developments at MTV are also noted.

The 2007 Annual User Experience Design Review also discusses 3 user experience design missteps. We make special note of Wall Street’s obsession with algorithm-based risk management systems that in recent years have progressively removed the human component from risk assessment. The Review looks at Facebook/Beacon and why it raised so much concern with users and the national media. In a new section called “Viewpoint on Social Change and Technology”, the authors ask critical questions about the viability of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program being promoted as a solution to third-world education. Here is our take on the most noteworthy events in user experience design for 2007.

Milestones of 2007

Analysis: The most important UED introduction in 2007 was the Apple iPhone. In terms of total units sold, the iPhone was barely a blip on the sales radar of the 1 billion plus cell phones purchased worldwide last year. However, in terms of short-term media impact, iPhone was an unqualified winner. The iPhone media coverage eclipsed any other product launch in recent history.

Looking at mid-term impact, the iPhone fundamentally altered the way mobile technology platforms that interface with Telco systems will be developed and presented to the customer. It will be far more difficult for Telco giants to dictate the configuration, feature set, and interface of mobile telephony. Those days are gone and reverberations were felt from South Korea to Finland.

However, the most important impact of the iPhone will be long-term. For the first time, a world-class corporation has shown convincingly that it is possible to develop a mobile configuration which includes hundreds of features while maintaining a highly engaging user experience. Apple created a market-altering combination of size, weight and user experience fluency. This will fundamentally change mobile platform user experience design over the long term.

Predictions / 2008: Apple will continue to dominate the market for this level of device. Other major cell phone manufacturers will scramble to catch up but find a competitive solution illusive. Major Telco’s will rethink their negotiation strategies (Verizon, are you out there?). Other major mobile device manufacturers will waste time with Android, the open platform alliance for mobile devices which fails to acknowledge that the future is all about the user experience, not infrastructure.

Interesting side note: One of the most frequently searched terms on Google last year was “iPhone”.

Analysis: It has always been curious that some of the best user experience design solutions have been developed in gaming systems, yet few of these innovations find their way into mainstream user experiences. Both Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii are exceptional examples of how creating a tighter connection between the user’s interaction with the physical world and a screen-based display produces high levels of engagement and commercial success. Guitar Hero and several games for the Wii take advantage of the customer’s ability to acquire skills through the use of familiar real-world gestures and actions. By creating an interface between these actions and the feedback mechanisms of the game, these products do one very important thing: they tighten the connection between the user and the user experience.

However, the reason why these systems will have long-term impact is counter-intuitive. Upon deeper analysis, it becomes clear that their success is actually an example of advanced virtual reality development. Users become psychologically immersed in the virtual experience of the game by the creation of a more fluent physical interface with the game-play model. This form of interactive fluency is also present in the iPhone interface.

Predictions / 2008: Nintendo will sell the Wii in huge numbers. Guitar Hero will continue to create millions of unskilled guitar players. Major game companies will announce new divisions focused on this new user experience model.

Analysis: MTV, the largest and most successful purveyor of youth culture in the world, did a surprising thing in 2007. At a time when other mass media companies were stuffing their sites with FLASH, MTV took down its FLASH site and put up a surprisingly simple HTML site. The new user experience and related sub-sites were focused on providing the fastest and most direct access to content associated with MTV media properties. Out was the FLASHY user experience. In was fast navigation, easy way-finding and improved SEO. This change went essentially unnoticed by the media, but in our opinion, was a precursor to significant changes in the mass media landscape with respect to user experience design. In the midterm, we believe that other mass media companies will begin to understand that usability of the overall customer experience drives acquisition, retention, and migration. Over the long term, mass media companies will be forced to employ more rigorous customer experience research methods to successfully migrate from the traditional CPM advertising model to a new model that is based on monetizing their content through more robust online user experiences. In the new mass media landscape, it may be better to deeply engage existing customers than to buy new ones through acquisitions.

Second Life and VMTV: At the same time that Second Life was imploding as a platform for creating compelling corporate VR customer experiences, MTV quietly launched no less than 5 new virtual worlds based on the Makena platform. One of these MTV virtual media properties recently received an Emmy (Gold) Award for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology. This suggests that there is more to corporate virtual life than Second Life.

Predictions / 2008: New solutions to the complex problem of cross-platform media distribution will begin to form, but no meaningful changes will occur until 2009. Other mass media companies will begin to understand the relationship between customer experience design, content development, and profitability in web-based delivery channels. In virtual reality, new properties will surface that prove the viability of these platforms for certain applications.

Analysis: First a disclaimer: we use Google Docs. Second, they are as promising as they are frustrating. The idea of internet-based applications designed to replace MS Office goes back to the original NetScape. Many smart folks have gotten up in the morning with a plan, venture capital funding, and a bevy of clever software developers – all with a bead drawn on MS Office. One might even say that Google is the ultimate version of this model. Yet success evades even Google, for as anyone who uses GooDoos (the term we coined for Google Docs) knows, they are both wondrous and highly dysfunctional. It is our opinion that short term and mid term, Google Docs will have a relatively low impact. However, if one peers slightly over the horizon at the next generation of hardware and software operating systems and focuses on Google’s plans for cloud computing, a much different picture appears. In the long term, the game is over. Cloud-based applications will take the day for these types of user experiences.

Surprisingly, the final solution will be far more complex than Google assumes. Simply mapping MS Office functionality into an impoverished screen-based (but cloud-focused) interface will not win the day. Who will figure this out remains an open question. Aside from the fact that Google may well own the cloud, they do not, and probably never will, own the user’s local platform employed to run these new cloud-based applications. From extensive research with clients, we know users’ machines tend to be surprising when looked at objectively. These computers are surprisingly outdated, underpowered, unreliable, and a majority of users have little knowledge of how to maintain and manage their computers’ operating system. Recent studies conducted by MauroNewMedia confirmed that less than 15% of those using MS Windows knew how to disable their personal firewall. Only about 55% knew how to turn off their pop-up blockers. It is at the end of the line, where the pixels hit the glass, that cloud-based applications hit the wall in terms of achieving large scale impact. In our consulting work with some of the most advanced cloud-based interfaces, we rarely see development teams evaluating user experiences on an objectively determined range of user hardware and software configurations. When this type of research is executed in an unbiased and professional way, startling insights result. Many user experiences that are wonderfully fluent and productive on the engineering team’s development system are unreliable, slow, and unsatisfying to use. This makes cloud-based applications complex from a computer science perspective and complex in a cognitive engineering sense. One must wonder if an engineering-centric culture like Google has the user-centric bandwidth to solve this vexing problem.

Predictions / 2008: Google will plug away at GooDoos and make incremental improvements but will put major focus on the larger cloud-computing problem. Microsoft…well, your guess is as good as ours. Microsoft’s primary business problem makes cloud-computing look simple.

Notable missteps of 2007

Analysis: Risk management on Wall Street is out of control. Over the past 15 years, MauroNewMedia has been involved in research and design of user interfaces for several of Wall Street’s most complex trading and risk-management systems. During this period, we have witnessed a staggering shift in how risk is managed by these new automated, screen-based systems. That shift has been the aggressive removal of the “human component” from many complex risk management systems. Gone are human intelligence and experience. In are increasingly more complex mathematical models which attempt to supplant human pattern-finding in complex data.

Wall Street paid the price for this shift and it was a big bill. In the end, several trillion dollars will have vanished in the sub-prime mortgage debacle. Short term, this problem will have minimal impact, as banks will sell equity to retain balance sheet performance. In the mid-term and long term, the design of algorithm-based risk management systems and the user interfaces that visually represent risk for these types of financial transactions must change. It is clear that human intelligence cannot be completely replaced by mathematical models, no matter how many PhD’s are stuffed into the software development process. Our bet is that the CEOs of Citibank, Merrill Lynch and other leading banks had no way to adequately visualize the risks they entered into with these hideously complex transactions. What we are referring to is a new combination of human intelligence combined with the best analytics possible. This is known in the field of professional human factors engineering as a “function allocation” problem where key tasks are dynamically allocated between human control and automation. It is interesting to note that Goldman Sachs profited massively from having PRECISELY the right analytics and hedging strategies that let them cash in all the way down to the bottom of the subprime mess. It is safe to say that Goldman Sachs had a better function allocation solution than those banks that lost billions during the same period. This was not a good year for understanding and managing risk on Wall Street, and it was an even worse year for all those customers who bought homes with mortgages they never understood. 2007 was a low point in customer experience design in the financial services industry!

Predictions / 2008: No change is expected.

Analysis: Tinkering with a winning user experience sometimes results in outsized responses from users and the media. No other user experience design issue in 2007 created more bad press for a company than Facebook/Beacon. This automated behavior tracking and posting function was a low point in user experience design for 2007. While the failed implementation of this system caused uproar with users, the bigger problem for Facebook was the amount of bad press Beacon created in the national media. For example, Louise Story of the New York Times took Facebook to task over Beacon in a series of interesting pieces that focused on Facebook’s attempt to circumvent user privacy issues. Facebook made the problem worse by forcing users to search for the link allowing them to disable the new feature. In the short term, this problem will not go away for Facebook, and in the mid term, Beacon may have damaged the creditability of Facebook as a user-centered, social networking destination. Beacon provides important lessons from which other companies entering the social networking space can benefit.

Why Facebook has such a large user base: The success of Facebook has been based on providing users with a critical combination of simplicity and control. This is known in professional human factors engineering as functional transparency. It is interesting to note that the iPhone user experience also presents such a balance. In Facebook, this transparency gave users total control of the flow of personal information into and out of their profiles. The combination of simplicity and control resulted in increased social interaction for most users and produced a significant network effect in terms of registration. However, Facebook made a critical error with Beacon in terms of user experience design.

How control impacts complexity: With Beacon, Facebook psychologically removed (or degraded) the “control” attribute from the combination of simplicity and control. Users no longer believed that they had complete control of their Facebook profiles. What we know about all successful technology (and related man-machine interfaces), from the iPod to the Space Shuttle, is that a sense of “control” is all-important. With a loss of control, the user’s impression of complexity increases even if the interface remains unchanged in all other ways. While Facebook executives may have thought they were only impacting the attribute of “control”, they were also affecting the user’s impression of simplicity. Facebook/Beacon is an example of how making changes to a major user experience design can have deep implications. Did Facebook test Beacon in an unbiased, professional user experience study? Maybe, or maybe not!

The larger conceptual problem: Facebook/Beacon was an example of clumsy automation. For those who understand how to professionally measure human interactions with technology, automation is frequently another word for complexity. Strategically, Beacon was a failed attempt to use automation to deliver ad impressions and to build brand connection by peer association. Beacon opens the door for new social networking platforms to bring back the proper balance between simplicity and control. These two attributes are the fundamental building blocks of successful social networking user experiences. Unfortunately, monetizing these two attributes is far more complex than Facebook imagined.

Predictions / 2008: Facebook will continue to have problems monetizing its massive user base. New social networking sites will emerge in 2008 that begin to capture smaller specific segments of the Facebook user profile who aren’t well-served by the Facebook user experience.

Viewpoint on social change and technology

The goal of this new section is to provide a forum for increased dialogue around technology platforms or systems that make broad claims for impacting positive social change. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is such a system.

Analysis: It is difficult to take a negative view of what appears to be an attempt to do profound social good. The OLPC project, under the direction of Nickolas Negroponte (formally head of MIT Media Lab), has been controversial from the beginning. For those involved in research at the interface between technology and the human mind and body, the OLPC project seemed like a technology solution looking for a problem. Sometimes, in the march to create technological solutions to vexing social problems, we forget that technology in its best form should support and expand human potential in both a social and individual context. Here are 3 questions we have about OLPC. These questions are intended to expand the dialogue about the objectives and the execution of the OLPC program.

Q1: Why a non-standard user experience interface? It is true that the esteemed graphic design firm Pentagram created a radically new and visually interesting user interaction model for the OLPC computer. The question is why? What was the real objective benefit of creating a totally new interface for millions of children in the third world? It is often surprising to those who study such things that the actual cost of a personal computer is not the hardware and software but rather the training time spent learning how to use the system. From this data, one might assume that a system that is easier/faster to learn is better. But this is not a simple question. For example, billions of man hours have already been spent learning to use the MS Office interface and other standard GUIs. From research, we know that much of this training takes place between experienced users and novice users. Users teach users and MS Windows and other standard GUI interfaces have several billion users who know how to use the software. No one is suggesting that MS Office applications are a paragon of usability (far from it), but why did the OLPC team throw away billions of man hours of training for a totally new interface? If supporting research exists, then problem solved. Without such research, introducing a new interface does not appear to have been a decision in the best interest of the world’s population of OLPC users.

A bigger problem: what good is it to teach millions of children to use an interface that the rest of the productive world will never use? Doesn’t this approach run contrary to doing well for those children? Aside from what Mr. Negroponte thinks, these children are going to learn MS Office, or another standard GUI, when they reach middle or upper school. Long term, OLPC hurts more than it helps because these kids end up with no transferable skills. The solution of a stripped-down MS Windows or even the Linux version of the standard GUI may have been repugnant to Mr. Negroponte, but in the end, it may have been a better solution for the greater good of the children who may use the OLPC computer.

Research challenge to OLPC: If a non-standard interface requirement was defined by objective and professionally executed field research, then the publication of such research is necessary to support the basic premise of the OLPC user experience design.

Q2: Why the student and not the teacher? If one were to research comprehensively the factors that impact acquiring the skills, rules and knowledge required to navigate the modern world, several key factors surface. One of the critical factors (some say the most critical factor) is the teacher and his or her ability to convey both content and compassion in the classroom. Wouldn’t it have been a potentially better solution for OLPC to focus on creating tools for enhancing the teacher’s experience first? In other words, “One Laptop Per Teacher”, with higher levels of functionality, communication, and most important, access to other teachers who can aid in defining and propagating teaching methods in complex and difficult third-world environments. In such environments where basic social and political processes are broken, wouldn’t it have been more productive to focus high levels of innovation on the teacher? This view changes three critical problems for OLPC. It changes the pricing model, refocuses training on factors that impact teacher effectiveness, and opens up the hardware platform options on a massive scale.

Research challenge to OLPC: If the need to focus a laptop on the student vs. the teacher was defined by objective and professionally executed field research, then the publication of such research is necessary to support the basic premise of the OLPC system overall.

Q3: Why not Intel and a standard hardware platform? In a recent article in The New York Times, it was made clear that Intel, a supporter of OLPC, no longer wished to be associated with the project and that Intel would not develop a proprietary processor for the OLPC computer. The breakup was based on Mr. Negroponte’s insistence that Intel stop marketing its basic PC to the same countries OLPC is attempting to capture. Mr. Negroponte was especially upset by comparisons between OLPC and the low-cost Intel computer which sports a stripped-down version of the standard GUI. What can Mr. Negroponte have been thinking? It is not only totally appropriate that Intel or anyone else sell to these customers, but also it is in the best interest of millions of children to do so. Is it possible that in the larger context, a low-cost computer which builds the skills of kids over the long term is a better solution? Totally objective technical evaluations will ultimately determine this answer, but in the final analysis, OLPC may be another clever computer project looking for a solution and that solution is not helping educate the impoverished kids of the world.

Research challenge to OLPC: If it has been shown through objective and professionally executed field research that the OLPC design is superior in terms of usability, functional feature-set, reliability, technical support, and upgradeability, then the publication of such research is necessary to support the basic premise of the OLPC solution overall. If this data exists, there should be no reason other manufacturers cannot respond with solutions to the same problems without pressure from OLPC.

UED Review background information

About the impact rating scales:
Short-term = ability to bring attention to a user experience design innovation that resulted in media exposure and buzz over the past 12 months
Mid-term = ability to influence a specific category of products or services in terms of user experience design over the next 1-2 years
Long-term = ability to bring about a fundamental industry-changing user experience design innovation for a basic technology platform or large industry sector over the next 3-5 years

Disclosure is important to us:
Over the past 30 years, MauroNewMedia has been retained by many leading corporations, start-ups and non profit entities. The placement of products on this list is entirely independent of relationships MauroNewMedia has with these companies. The opinions expressed in this review are the sole opinions of MauroNewMedia. We receive no compensation of any type for products reviewed and presented in the Annual User Experience Design Review.

Actual release dates of the selected systems:
We make note that some of the systems presented in the 2007 review were not actually launched in 2007. Inclusion was based on these systems achieving significant momentum in the 2007 general time frame.

As with all things “Google” there is a shallow answer and the deep answer. On the shallow dimension the beta release of Chrome means little. Chrome is a deeply flawed user experience design which presents many user experience (UX) problems solved in Netscape V.1. It takes some doing for Chrome to make IE and FireFox appear intuitive by comparison. One is struck by the curious user experience complexity of Chrome. Certain critical features like bookmark management simply disappeared or were buried so deep in the interface structure as to require Google search to find them. Are these user experience design problems the result of simple oversight or straight-out wrong-headed application of UX design methodology? A scan of recent information published on the UX design of Chrome provides interesting insight into this question.

You’re in…you’re out…you’re in.

In an article by Steven Levy, from the October 2008 issue of WIRED magazine title: “Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web” the developers of Chrome described how they approached the UX design problem for their new “world-beating” browser. In part they described the UX design methodology as follows.

“When deciding what buttons and features to include, the team began with the mental exercise of eliminating everything, then figuring out what to restore.”

Whoa!…that IS an interesting UX design methodology. The problem is that the Google UX process ignored almost entirely the past 25 years of cognitive science and related skill acquisition theory. The Google Chrome UX design methodology created, to a significant extent, the perplexing complexity of Chrome by ignoring several billion “person-hours” of prior experience that users accrued with established browser interaction models. Arbitrarily deciding what to leave out or include in terms of features and functions is…how shall we say…1950’s UX design.

Long-tail land

Yes, millions who use Google for search will download and install Chrome. Like Google Docs there will be a breath-taking spike followed by a slow walk into “long-tail” land. Harsh words, but when Google’s overwhelming media message is “creating the best possible experience for the user” Google should be subject to a realistic view of how accurately they are technically on message. So, on the shallow measure of actual user experience design, Google Chrome gets a “D-”. Like other things Google, that is not the full story. Lurking under the dysfunctional interface of Google Chrome are deeper implications that may impact user experience design and applications development on a significant scale!

What is Chrome really all about?

Google has said that the primary objective for Chrome was to create a browser to improve the experience of users the world over. Well, we know this did not happen. However, when one examines Chrome at a slightly deeper level a different objective emerges. Chrome’s goal is not to provide users with a new browsing experience but more accurately to create a powerful and stable container for Google Docs and other cloud-based Google apps. In our 2007 User Experience Design Review we gave Google Docs a positive, yet reserved rating. In that detailed review of GooDoos we made the point that no matter what Google did with the design of their cloud-based applications it was, in part, the state of the end user’s machine that ultimately determined the success of these new types of applications.

The last 12 inch problem

For those involved in formal usability research it is well known that the state of the actual user’s machine is a major gating-function for the success of cloud-based applications. Objective audits of user’s machines frequently reveal them to be a rat’s nest of spam-ware, slow processors, outdated browsers, and unreliable connections. Furthermore, most users objectively do not know how to manage their system software upgrades or security settings. In cloud-based applications we call this the “the last 12 inch problem”. The future of Google Docs and other cloud-based applications hang, in part, on this vexing problem. Since Google is not likely to end up in the hardware business anytime soon (joke!) what aspect of the user’s machine can Google currently control for the purpose of improving the stability of Google Docs? You guessed it…the browser.

Under the covers

As those who use Google Docs know only too well, formatting, saving, and importing (to mention only a few functional problems) are unpredictable in IE and Firefox to the point of exasperation if not outright rejection. One can see these user experience problems in the utilization statistics of Google Docs which Google previously posted but took down last year as the numbers went into free fall.

On the other hand when one polishes away the surface of Chrome, deeper and more strategic implications emerge for user experience design. Technically, Chrome is an early, dedicated rendering engine for true cloud-based applications. Clearly those cloud-based applications are intended to be later versions of Google Docs. Even in this first iteration of Chrome some of the formatting and functional nightmares that beset Goodoos in IE and FF mostly disappear. In fact formatting becomes almost “application-like” for GooDoos when running inside Chrome. The problem of loosing your GooDoos spread sheet when your Goodoos word processor freezes was a major issue before Chrome. The new multi-procces management system in Chrome is clearly a great advance. If the Goodoos word processor freezes the Goodoos spread sheet is still alive in another tab. A new Java rendering engine (not developed by Google) dramatically improves response time for some aspects of the overall user experience. This improvement in response time may be the most important innovation in Chrome since most cloud-based applications are painfully slow when viewed on real user machines. Core improvements in engineering performance ultimately mean a better overall user experience for Google cloud-based applications. This assumes that Google begins to take UX DESIGN seriously. However, the larger question is will other companies benefit from the technology and engineering innovations underlying Chrome…maybe, but some say, maybe not.

Doing evil…Yes or No?

Make no mistake; Microsoft, with its recent introduction of AZURE, a closed cloud-based operating system, understands the objective of Chrome. Even though Chrome is now based on open-source code there is no guarantee that Google will develop Chrome upgrades with others in mind. In fact if history is any indication of future behavior, Google will slowly slide Chrome under the covers as it has done with search. Does this mean Google is doing evil…not really? Google must do this for business reasons which cannot be denied.

Upgrade cycle has a big downside

In complex user experience design problems like Chrome, there is a simple principal that says: “those who control the upgrade cycle, control the user experience”. This is the primary reason iPod/iTunes crushed all comers and Apple has maintained the best user experience around. This theory leads to one of the great conundrums when optimizing the user experience for all forms of screen-based applications. The 2 sides of the argument go something like this:

Open source = let everyone join in, but have minimal control of the user experience,
Closed source = let no one join in without approval, but totally control the user experience.

What is the probability that Google is going to ultimately give up or even share control of the user experience for their cloud-based applications…realistically zero. There is much to be concerned about if Google realizes that truly robust UX design is a legitimate science as complex as the most difficult engineering problem.

MS Office on steroids

If Google applies its vast cash resources to create a world-class interface for Chrome one can visualize later iterations of Chrome/GoogleDocs as Microsoft Office on steroids. Picture this solution: A group of functions nearly as deep as MS Office, documents automatically stored remotely, almost unlimited collaboration functions with associates the world over on a platform that is fast, stable and very easy to learn…and all for essentially FREE.

Will this happen? It is too early to predict and certainly one cannot discount Microsoft or other well funded development teams. If Google combines a robust UX design with its cloud-based engineering expertise the future may not be a pretty picture for competitors who are forced to develop cloud-based applications that must compete with and actually run inside the Google “Chrome” black box. In the end the success of cloud-based applications is a UX problem not an engineering problem…Google are you out there?

Charles L. Mauro CHFP
President MauroNewMedia

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