Intuitiveness and adaptability

04 Sep

Posted by Scott as learning, usability, users

The other day, my wife pointed me to an interesting presentation given at the LIFT 2007 conference by Sugata Mitra. In this presentation, Mitra discusses his Hole in the Wall project — literally, putting a computer and a track pad in a hole in a wall in several locations in India, and letting children (who’ve never seen or used a computer before) discover and learn to use the device.

The results were very interesting. Mitra found that when they stumbled upon this, the children invariably were able to teach themselves to browse the Web within minutes. All with no outside assistance.

This got me thinking about so-called intuitive user interfaces, and the ability (or lack of it) of users to adapt to something different.

Admittedly, user interface design and usability aren’t my main areas of expertise. But I’ve been using computers for a while now — multiple operating systems, multiple window managers, hundreds of applications, and a plethora of UIs. From that stock of experience (some of it good, some of it not), I’ve been able to come to a few conclusions about intuitiveness and usability, at least from the perspective of one user. Your mileage (or whatever measure of distance you use) will vary.

Do intuitive interfaces actually exist?

With few exceptions, I’m not sure if they do. I definitely believe that most interfaces are familiar — we’ve come to expect the Print option to be under the File menu, and to be able to save a file by clicking the floppy disk icon.

When confronted with a new interface, the biggest complaint that you’ll hear is: It doesn’t look like program X. This is especially true when it comes to Web-based applications. The interface for BuzzWord, Adobe’s online word processor, is very unlike that of Word. But you can’t say that it’s difficult to use.

One of my pet examples is Photoshop versus The GIMP (a free image manipulation tool). Some people, when they give The GIMP a try, abandon it as unusable. Why? The biggest complaint being that it doesn’t look like (or isn’t as intuitive as) Photoshop. To be honest, I never found Photoshop or even Paint Shop Pro all that intuitive. I’ve been able to work with those applications — and many others — by learning them.

Don’t whine. Adapt

Am I advocating going back to the bad old days, when different applications had different hotkeys (for example, F1 and F3 to launch help), or used a wildly different array of icons to perform the same functions? Of course not. But I don’t think that developers should be afraid to take a few chances with their UIs.

Humans have an incredible ability to adapt. But often, we fall into the trap of complacency and embracing the familiar. Sometimes, developers need to shake things up a bit. Users shouldn’t whine about how one application doesn’t look like another. Instead, give the application a serious try, and try to adapt. Techncial communicators can help with that effort. Good documentation and good user assistance can ease the pain, and help make applications seem less than alien.

As my wife, who was in an unsympathetic mood at the time, said: if the kids in Mitra’s experiment can adapt, why can’t educated adults?

I’ve probably opened a huge can of worms here. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of people out there want to pelt me with stones or large pieces of masonry. Instead of doing that, why not leave a comment?