I Wonder What the App Developers Were Thinking?

Every year, we take our daughter to an amusement park to celebrate her birthday.  This year we went to a nearby amusement park, Canada's Wonderland, after the summer break in the hopes of avoiding jam-packed crowds and endless lines. We didn't.

We went the past couple of years and have always found it difficult to find one's way around the park. There are almost no way-finding aids such as signs in the p0ark. Even the mountain in the park central that used to be a reliable landmark for years is no longer visible from much of the park.  So we rely on the paper map that Wonderland distributes (at the front gate). The map is more of a stylish map with a high-level artistic rendering and listings of restaurants and shops.  It's not great for finding the rides as, for example, the entrances to rides are never indicated on the map and are often difficult to locate.

Considering that one wants to get in the maximum number of thrill rides and that easily 80% of one's visit (even on a good, less-busy day) is spent waiting in line (there are lines even for the men's bathroom). Time is of the essence and thus the need to plan an optimum route and get from ride A to ride B in the shortest amount of time possible is essential.

My daughter passed a height restriction milestone recently so she was now able to go on some wild rides. My wife hates rides, so I've had a thrill ride drought lasting decades.

So it was clear that this year pre-planning our trip was mission critical.

Our first stop was Wonderland's website to read up and prioritize the rides. Their website is good but not fantastic. I tried to download their mobile app based on a QR code they provided. But once I scanned the app instead of commencing my anticipated download of their app it took me to their mobile website and a pop-up message said I should download their app. When I clicked it nothing happened. It would have been easier if they just linked to the app on the various app stores.

Their mobile website is actually pretty good - and would serve the needs of most visitors. I'm a big proponent of the mobile Web, particularly when does not need to interact with a business/service very frequently. Most apps that people download never get used more than a couple times and the habit of endlessly downloading apps is not sustainable for users - so eventually we are all going to have to embrace the mobile web.

But the app promised to have GPS Enabled map, which I thought would be invaluable and would be difficult to do with only a mobile website. So I had to go to my device's app store and find the official app (annoying - as they should have had a link to it in the first place and it's difficult to find the official one).

After installing the app, I realized it is not significantly different from their mobile website. Mostly, it offers brief static content - most of which is useful, if not spectacular. The have an events feature that doesn't appear to work as it has pulled up nothing for September or October (despite at least a couple of events that I know are occurring). There is a "Friend Finder" feature that seems promising (as I frequently lose track of my wife) but they have no description of what it is anywhere and one need an individual and their friends PIN numbers before it can be used.

But the worst disappointment is the map function. Granted, they do have their illustrated map, which is handy as users can look up an attraction and have it flagged prominently on the map. But it has flaws: it's not completely accurate, it does not the ride entrance, and it does not zoom to a high level. Despite the claim that it is "GPS Enabled" it does not indicate where one is in relation to the desired attraction, as one expects with GPS-enabled maps. I can't see any GPS functionality whatsoever and it doesn't even have a manual way to highlight the route between two points.

Of course, there is even more they could be doing with their app - not only with maps such as showing where the nearest snacks or bathrooms are or where one parked their car - but also buying tickets to their attractions that cost extra, or delivering geo-targetted promotions.

What I'd like most is an excellent planner feature that would let me plan my day on their website and then view it on their app in a timeline or map. I'd also love it if they had dynamic information on the wait times so that I could hustle to a ride with short lines and avoid those with killer waits. Hell, since no matter what I'm going to be waiting for a long time - at least give me some content to pass the endless time!

Defeating the Apps First Approach to Tablet Interface

Despite a recent CBC study which found that 82% of Canadians mostly use tablets at home, I still consider tablets a mobile device and thus under my purview.  I also take an avid interest in Canadian innovations in digital media. So I was really excited to attend a talk last week by James Wu of Kobo on "Rethinking Tablet User Experience".

Kobo is a world-leader in e-readers. They are no longer owned by Canadians, but are still based in Toronto. The event was sponsored by ToRCHI, a leading organization for organizing events of interest to people working in or studying Canada's digital media.

It's been awhile since I have actively designed digital user interfaces, but when I did I found it a constant struggle (against many forces) to put the user's needs and their perspective first. James Wu, director of user experience at Kobo, opened his talk by addressing this point head on - "technology sucks for most people". Technology should not be the focus of design. Instead, Wu explained, technology should be out of the way and let people quickly and easily perform the task or access the content they want.

Yet, the standard interface of tablets (and I'd add smartphones) is the app. This dominant tablet user experience paradigm "is defined by facilitating a user’s navigation into, out of and between apps". When Wu asked tablet users, however, what they value most about their device it wasn't the apps. It was content. Thus tablet user interfaces "are always at least one step removed from what users want". Wu adds that is apps that define how and where users can access and organize their content rather than the users themselves.

"The focus on apps has taken us away from what apps do for us" Wu empathetically cautioned.

To redress this situation, Wu and Kobo embarked on a new project with the launch of the Kobo Arc e-reader and its Tapestries interface (here's a review).

To achieve this, Wu identified three main goals:

1. Focus on users' content
2. Support organic curation
3. Help users find more content

The Tapestries interface builds upon advances in visual bookmarking (such as Pinterest) and recommendation engines. Tapestries allows one to "pin" content (whether e-books, websites, songs, movies, etc.) to one's homepage. Users can organize their content in collections ("tapestries") in various ways, for example by media type or topic. The best way to get a sense of it, however, is to see a demo, as Wu does below via YouTube (the part about Tapestries starts at the 50 second mark).

Based on above-mentioned goals, here's what Tapestries achieves:

Focus on User's Content
Wu aptly noted that people (other than perhaps the attendees at the talk or readers of this blog) do not care about the movie player on their devices. Rather they care about watching their movies. Moreover, they don't want to have to care (or even think about) the movie player. So it's important to "put content at users' fingertips" metaphorically and literally. Wu noted that even in such content as email or Facebook which are incredibly personal, every user has the same icon on their device homepage - but it doesn't have to be this way.

Support Organic Curation
Tablet apps force organization by media type or date, rather than by activity (e.g. a vacation), topic, or other parameters. Wu asserts "let people organize content how they want to and maintain personal relevance".

Help Users Find More Content
The "Discover" feature of Tapestries engendered a lot of interest with the ToRCHI crowd.  To me, the Discover bar seemed much like recommendation engines on book websites that offer recommendations for content based on other people with similar interests histories or one's personal profile or viewing history. Discover, differentiates itself by allowing users some control in the content that is suggested to them.

User-centred Design
Wu also discussed the benefits and challenges of user-centred design. Before starting the Tapestries project, Wu conducted formal and informal research with tablet users - sometimes as informally as watching over strangers shoulders while they use their device (I do this too - it works great.)

They also conducted rounds of user testing. They found that the interface was so new for people that it took time for people to get used to it. But once they did, the feedback has been positive.

This comment reminded me of a great article by Bill Buxton and Saul Greenberg called "Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful (Some of the Time) ", which I mentioned.

In the article, Buxton and Greenberg caution that when innovations are really new users may need time to learn, adapt, or become comfortable with the changes. Rigidly following the outcomes of user testing can result in killing new interfaces and quashing innovation. Buxton and Greenberg offer this caveat against this:

How can we create what could become culturally significant systems if we demand that the system be validated before a culture is formed around it?

The rest of the article is well worth reading for any company or developer trying something new.

I was greatly impressed at how Tapestries is doing something new and different. I don't have an e-reader (when I get a device I need one that is optimized for data entry as much as consumption) but it made me want to get one. Nonetheless, much of what Wu pointed out applies not only to tablets but to anyone designing or developing for smartphones or even desktops.

I'm looking forward to more such innovations from Kobo and I truly hope that their Japanese owners keep such an innovative team in Canada.

User Experience - More Than Just Usability

Lately, I’ve refined my research focus from online usability to user experience (UE). Yesterday, I told a colleague that I was studying user experience, to which she replied “You mean usability”. Her statement seems indicative of the prevailing thought on how we plan and evaluate online design.

Well, that’s not entirely true - as it still seems rather rare for many companies to adequately implement usability or to consider it at all. Hell, it seems many companies don’t even adequately consider their business goals for their websites or online applications.

Usability does seem to be considered more often nowadays. To begin with, however, there really isn’t a great, commonly-accepted definition of the term usability. I tend to use the International Standards Organization definition of usability as it appears to capture most of the agreed-upon elements and is frequently cited as a leading definition. ISO defines usability as “the extent to which the product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use” (ISO 9241-11:1998.).

This definition is certainly not without contention. Olsen criticizes usability experts, such as guru Jakob Nielsen, who tend to focus on these factors while ignoring the larger human experience:

The problem is that it ignores the emotional subjective side of human beings, which as marketers and brand strategists have long known, is foolish to ignore. Why do we enjoy a good meal when nutritionally it's no different than hospital food? Unfortunately, Nielsen's pronouncements have all too often been like a restaurant critic insisting we should all eat only a McDonald's, since after all it's the most efficient restaurant around. (http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article603.asp).

I believe it is fine to distinguish between usability’s focus on efficiency and the larger concept of user experience with its more holistic focus. Within user experience there are various factors that can apply at a macro level, for example an entire website or online application, or at the micro level, e.g. a specific online feature, piece of content, or tool. I will use the word product to encompass all such instances.

Various user experience factors include:

• Affective – the emotions a product provokes, such as fun, anger, and frustration
  
• Context – the physical and temporal aspects of the environment surrounding a given usage of a product
• Hedonic – the ways in which a product results in pleasure
• Social – how a product fits into a users social context, enables sharing and contributions from others
• Value/usefulness – based on the costs (monetary, time, and other) of product usage, does it result in a sense of justifying the costs and does it achieve or surpass expectations

Accessibility – I often treat accessibility (ie. the ability for a product to address the needs of disabled users) as a usability issue. All users will at some time encounter difficulties using websites, however, so it does become important to distinguish between when a difficulty using an online product is at the individual or disability level. Shawn Henry describes this distinction: “When a person with a disability is at a disadvantage relative to a person without a disability, it is an accessibility issue” (http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/).

This is a rudimentary list and there is (growing) research that examines these issues in much more depth. However, this list is useful to begin considerations of a larger range of product issues beyond just usability. As without a sense of the various components of user experience, it is impossible to build applications that fully meet users needs or to even understand where an online application is delighting or failing its users.