Confessions of a User Experience Junkie

Apple’s tech writers have done a pretty good job so far of rewriting the Human Interface Guidelines for Mac OS X. Instead of yet another addendum to the original (leaving us wondering which older parts are obsolete and which not), the Aqua HIG incorporates many of the universal recommendations of the original while replacing all the truly obsolete stuff with (mostly) concise rules for the current world. It started off pretty meager, but with each revision they’re bringing back more good reading. Kudos.

Unfortunately, there are some major topic areas yet to be covered by the new book. And go figure, the missing parts include the advice many of today’s developers most desperately need to hear. Here’s a sample from the “Human Interface Design and the Development Process” chapter:

During the design process, you may discover problems with your product design. You can use the 80 percent solution to help determine how to solve those problems. The 80 percent solution means that you design meets the needs of at least 80 percent of your users. If you try to design for the 20 percent of your audience who are power users, your design will not be usable by the majority of your users.

Developers are often forced to decide between two approaches to any given HI issue: On the one hand, there’s the design that is easy to work out and implement and whose result is a user experience is close to simple enough that it doesn’t get in the way of a user as experienced as the developer. On the other, there’s the design that may be hard to implement and even harder to plan, but whose result is a user experience smooth enough for Grandma to handle without help. All too often, we choose the former, with excuses the likes of, “That’s not at all difficult once you learn it.” But that’s not good enough for the Mac — the Holy Grail of HI design is the interface so intuitive you don’t have to make any conscious effort to learn it.

In today’s world of Internet-enabled instant feedback and worldwide user communities, this old HIG recommendation has an interesting corollary: Don’t just follow user feedback blindly. See, the users who are active in the Greater Internet Mac Community — the ones who grab the latest stuff on MacUpdate, who run OmniWeb sneakypeeks or Mozilla nightlies, who participate in all sorts of discussion boards to debate which release is “snappier”, who send copious amounts of feedback ranging from “it’d be so cool if it could wax my floors too” to “I can’t stand that it isn’t also a dessert topping” — they’re the ones you hear the most of. But those kinds of users are the experienced ones, and what they want out of your software isn’t always what’s best for everybody.

Okay, this has gotten long, though it’s sort of just the tip of the iceberg. More on this general topic in future updates, I guess.