

Time To Get Out Of The Bubble And Design For The Average User - sthomps
http://futurephilanthropreneur.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/time-to-get-out-of-the-bubble-and-design-for-the-average-user/

======
mdasen
It's true that users don't care if you're using RoR or have load balanced
servers or or replicated databases or anything like that. However, users do
care about what those things provide. Load balanced servers means their
requests are likely to be met without large slowdowns. Replicated databases
means your application will have better uptime. RoR could mean that you're
able to add features more easily.

We care about this technology because it allows us to provide a better end
result. We talk about it internally because we want to share our successes and
failures so that we can educate and learn from our peers and create better end
results for the average user.

I don't care why my house stays up, but I'm glad that there are people (line
engineers and architects) who do so that I have a wonderful, stable home.
We're the architects of the web.

~~~
jdietrich
I think the real point of the article is that almost all of the technologies
at our disposal are good enough. We spend endless time debating Ruby vs
Python, RoR vs Django and navel gazing about Lisp or Haskell or Smalltalk, but
how often do we talk about users? Keep a tally yourself and I think you'll see
my point - I counted more HN articles in the past week about Haskell than
about users.

I would expect that the majority of us here at HN can easily build stable,
reasonably scalable applications quite easily. I would expect that far fewer
of us really understand the needs, desires and abilities of the average user.
To me, it seems ridiculous that we continue to worry about marginal,
incremental improvements in the technology when it is readily apparent that
"technically better" solutions are easily beaten in the market by solutions
that resonate better with users.

To use your architecture analogy, few architects worry about whether or not a
house will stay up, because they have mature processes and frameworks in place
to guarantee the soundness of the design. The real work of architects, the
part that separates the likes of Foster and Gehry from everyone else, is of
aesthetics and usability. What makes an architect great is not their ability
to build cheaper or stronger or bigger buildings, but their ability to build
beautiful and elegant ones. We have a great deal to learn from them.

~~~
rue

      > I think the real point of the article is that almost all
      > of the technologies at our disposal are good enough. We
      > spend endless time debating Ruby vs Python, RoR vs Django
      > and navel gazing about Lisp or Haskell or Smalltalk, but
      > how often do we talk about users?
    

Frankly, I do not see any shortage of talk about "users" or "delivering" or
any other of hundreds of similar terms. I think this line of reasoning
overlooks some pretty crucial factors:

\- Arguing about X vs. Y beyond a certain point often has nothing to do with
"productivity" or some other undefinable metric. It is _entertainment_. Not
ha-ha entertainment, but something to pass the time - trading quips, debating
and so on.

\- New paradigms, languages, frameworks and applications - as well as hardware
and architecture - certainly affect users. Some directly, some by providing
developers the ability to concentrate on the essence rather than the
unnecessary boilerplate obstacles.

It often seems that the people writing the "stop language wars" posts and the
like are the ones most emotionally invested in the topic.

    
    
      > To use your architecture analogy, few architects worry
      > about whether or not a house will stay up, because they 
      > have mature processes and frameworks in place to 
      > guarantee the soundness of the design.
    

Yeah, and those processes did not just spring up from nothing. There have been
centuries, millennia, of development - and you can be sure there were more
than a few "pyramid vs. cube" and "vaulted vs. flat" debates in there.

------
lotharbot
I don't think "technical" vs "nontechnical" is quite the right dichotomy.
Perhaps "familiar with our conventions" vs "not" is a better distinction.
Usually when we say someone is tech savvy, what we mean is that they are
familiar with our iconography and vocabulary, and know or can guess at the
magical keystrokes or settings to make the software work the way they want it
to. They may actually be technical users, or they may simply be "normals" with
experience.

An example: a friend was heading up the alpha test team for Sid Meier's
Civilization IV, and invited me to join. I was the only tester without
previous Civ experience. At one point I expressed my frustration with not
being able to view certain information except when the game popped it up. The
other testers and devs were surprised that I didn't know to press F5 through
F9 to bring up that information. The devs added buttons for those screens to
the GUI in the very next release, with clear icons and helpful mouseover text,
and my user experience was much improved.

Point being, the thing that gave me trouble wasn't being "non-technical", but
inexperienced with the particular conventions being used. The challenge in UI
design is to figure out conventions that both experienced and new users will
be able to understand, and to replace conventions that new users struggle
with. The only useful piece of advice I have is to make sure you have some
testers who can compare your product to others like it, and other testers who
have never used anything of the sort, so that you can see what conventions
people from each camp struggle with.

~~~
sthomps
I like what you say here. The idea of getting both testers that are familiar
with services similar and getting some that are completely new offers a
complete perspective of the product and its applications. I will make sure to
aim for this in our testing group.

~~~
lotharbot
You may be interested in "the $5 Guerrilla User Test", which was posted on HN
last week:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1120820> and
<http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/the-5-guerrilla-user-test/>

the basic idea is to go into a bar and find someone who's a little bit drunk
who'll spend 15 minutes using your software in exchange for a drink. "Watch
your application crash & burn as people do all sorts of ridiculous ass shit
they would never do in a lab but constantly do in real life", and learn from
it.

------
daleharvey
very very light on content, yes we should be looking to make wonderfully
usable applications for non technical users, I dont think anyone aims to make
an unusable site.

But how can we do it, what have we been getting wrong so far, what design
idioms need to be thrown out and what innovative ui's help users? thats what I
want to hear.

~~~
sthomps
Very good point, I will try to put that into another blog post in the near
future. I know that there is a book that goes along with this, "The Inmates
Are Running The Asylum" as well.

~~~
idlewords
Dude, with all due respect, you're 18, your product is in triple-closed alpha,
and your writing is entirely aspirational.

Less talk, more rock. Go out and do something, and then blog about it once
you've learned something interesting. If you want to psych yourself up with
self-help stuff, keep a private diary.

~~~
sthomps
You are entirely correct. None of the content I am writing can hold true
meaning until I have made it. All of the writing at this point is purely my
opinions on what I observe and the process that I am going through.

------
jasonlbaptiste
Another thought: find products that exist in physical form, but can be
replaced by something that is much more high-res / efficient with technology.
What physical things won't exist in 5-10 years time because technology can
replace them. Mainstream users usually adopt products that do this. Examples:

* Campuses used to hand out "facebooks" to freshman so they could get to know their fellow students + have a directory.

* Spreadsheets used to be large pieces of grid paper used by accountants.

* Encyclopedias did really well until Wikipedia came along. Encarta was the first sign of trouble, but Wikipedia was the nail in the coffin.

* We used to mail physical letters. Email has replaced significantly replaced that (of course physical mail still exists, but you don't send physical mail for social interactions anymore).

* We think our generation and their families won't be storing photos, memories, and vhs tapes in a shoebox. What's the specific digital equivalent of that is the question we're trying to answer with the new version of Ramamia (to be renamed Genevine).

There are probably others.

~~~
spokey
> Encyclopedias did really well until Wikipedia came along. Encarta was the
> first sign of trouble, but Wikipedia was the nail in the coffin.

This is incidental to your comment, but I think your details are wrong in this
example.

Multimedia digital encyclopedias replaced physical encyclopedias long before
Wikipedia came along, in fact throughout the 80s and early 90s it is a pretty
safe bet that encylopedias on CD-ROM and later DVD significantly outsold the
dead-tree versions, and by the mid-90s the major brands (at least in the US)
already had online versions as well.

Encarta (which was initially a rebranded Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia) was
just one example, and a later one at that, of many encyclopedias that were
transitioning from print to digital. Encarta doesn't represent some kind of
paradigm shift in the encyclopedia business, just a large company snatching up
a small player in a market they were trying to penetrate. Interestingly
enough, Encarta has ceased production, while World Book, Encyclopedia
Britannica and others are still in business and presumably profitable (for
now).

Wikipedia was and continues to be a threat to "traditional" encyclpedias, but
not because they didn't anticipate a transition from physical to digital
publication.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
yup, i didn't want to get into a long extended explanation. My logic is this:
physical encyclopedias are toast. What do we use instead of them more often
and most recently? Wikipedia. Encarta and the like certainly came beforehand
to do this.

~~~
sthomps
Good point. We should look for offline products that can be easily replaced by
online technology. Wikipedia is a very good example. Medpedia is aiming to do
the same thing right now with medical information.

------
jdietrich
Yes, yes, a million times yes. This is the great challenge and the great
opportunity of our era. A yawning chasm has opened up between 'techies' and
everyone else, but we have the tools and the technologies to bridge that gap.
For most of us in this industry, the challenge is no longer the technology
itself - it is to humanise technology and make it accessible and useful for
the mass of the people.

I strongly believe that we are in a new industrial revolution.

~~~
sthomps
I completely agree with you. The technology is now in a position where we can
bridge that chasm, and bring the early innovators closer to the early
adopters. With all of the talent available, we should be able to narrow that
chasm considerably so that all products are friendly to both parties.

------
zaidf
They should apply that lesson to their blog URL;)

~~~
sthomps
I know, it's too long of a URL, sorry about that.

~~~
qjz
I'm an Average User and I Don't Care.

~~~
ams6110
How many people actually care about URLs? At work I help with a drupal site
and by default the URLs are going to be something like node/123 or even
index.php?n=123 but some people freak about that and insist on "friendly"
URLs. I ask "who types in URLs anyway" (other than the site root itself,
maybe). People either bookmark them or are linked to them.

Is this another "techie" blinder of mine? Am I wrong to think that the
"average user" cares at all about what the URL looks like?

~~~
sthomps
No, you are exactly correct. No average user cares about the URL, let alone
types it in. I agree with your point about the nodes/123, or in my case, I see
a lot of upset over index.aspx/something. Linking and bookmarking are usually
the only ways people find it. The root is usually easy enough, but most people
will still use search engines.

------
jasonlbaptiste
Can we put together a list of current products that appeal to this market of
"normals" / "mainstream" users and products that a gap exists?

------
chaosprophet
I read this post and then went to sokanu.com. For so much talk about UX
design, it was a major disappointment. There is absolutely nothing on that
landing page which makes me want to give you my email id. As a user, I take
the time and effort to actually visit your site without anyone marketing it to
me, and I am turned away without even being told what you guys do.

~~~
sthomps
Yes, I realize that. We are in stealth mode currently and in the process of
building the alpha platform. I do appreciate you visiting though, and we do
understand that it is your time and there is little information about the
product.

~~~
chaosprophet
I don't really get the fuss about stealth mode. AFAIK you don't really achieve
anything being in stealth mode. You might get some traffic out of the mystery
factor, but other than that I really don't see any reason why startups choose
to be in stealth mode. Personally I would be shouting off the roofs about what
we are doing.

In any case, I believe that if you're asking user's for their email, then you
should tell them what you are doing. You don't have to give much details. A
short 3 line summary would be enough. In my opinion, "Explore. Connect.
Achieve." isn't going to get you a lot of emails. Just my two cents.

~~~
alain94040
I can think of _one_ reason to be in stealth mode: so the press covers you
when you get out of stealth mode. Because that's news. Apart from that, I
don't think it matters.

