I’ve just canceled my Spam Arrest account. At least I think I have. Why would I be unsure? I’ll get back to that.

I signed up with Spam Arrest about a year ago after a trusted friend had strongly recommended it. I wasn’t too worried about spam because I use Gmail and it already has uncannily good filtering. But I signed up with Spam Arrest because I thought it might be a good safety net for my publicly exposed email addresses. Just in case.

Rigging it up to my various email accounts to Spam Arrest was one of those low priority tasks that I didn’t get around to for a long time. In fact I’d even forgotten that I’d signed up until I noticed the monthly billings appear on my credit card statement.

Eventually I set up my main Gmail account with Spam Arrest. Like their web site says, the concept is simple: the first time someone sends an email to that address, Spam Arrest sends out a verification request asking the person to do a one-time registration by clicking on a link.

As you can imagine, this should effectively weed out the bots and auto-morons who send junk mail to any address they can scrape. Basic human intervention is presumably the critical factor in this equation.

But the truth is that the rate of spam finding its way into my Gmail account didn’t change. Of course Gmail caught all of it anyway so it wasn’t a real problem. But it did bother me that I seemed to be paying for something that didn’t work. I expected I would have almost zero spam getting into my Gmail server. It was not a big issue so I put it on the back burner for a few months.

Yesterday, even Gmail dropped the ball and a bit of junk mail hit my inbox. This got me thinking about the whole thing again so I sent an email off to Spam Arrest’s customer support.

They responded promptly and courteously but the content of the reply was enough to end my relationship with Spam Arrest. I’ll include it here for you to quickly scan:

Michael, you are looking at the wrong place for your filtered emails. Since you protected your Gmail account with Spam Arrest, the emails coming to your Gmail account will be taken to your Spam Arrest account and will be filtered. Once done, your clean emails will be placed under your Spam Arrest Inbox and all the junk emails will be in your Spam Arrest Unverified folder. So if you look in your Gmail account, you will still see the junk emails.

You have a couple of options to read your emails:

1. Use Spam Arrest Webmail (http://www.spamarrest.com/members/)
2. Configure an email program such as Outlook in your computer.

If you want to configure your email program to collect the filtered emails, you can certainly do that. But you need to configure it according to our instructions. Its very easy once you follow the instructions from our online Client Configuration guide.

http://www.spamarrest.com/support/client/

Once you setup your email program as mentioned in the guide, all the filtered emails from Spam Arrest will get downloaded to your computer, leaving the junk in our server.

I won’t deny that I obviously didn’t configure something ‘correctly’. But how complex should the process be? Here’s what bothers me about the response I got:

While courteous and well intentioned, the response seems to be written with the assumption that I actually care to learn about the idiosyncrasies of Spam Arrest’s system. Strike One.

The language is ambiguous. The word ‘filter’ is one of the most problematic words to use in any user interface context. I simply do not know the meaning of ‘you are looking at the wrong place for your filtered emails’. Does ‘filtered emails’ refer to spam or the mail I want? Strike Two.

There is talk of another inbox, an ‘unverified folder’ and worst of all two entirely unwanted ‘options’ for reading my emails. I use Gmail to read my emails. It is far from perfect but it is my email client of choice. Strike Three, you’re out Spam Arrest!

As a customer and user, the entire perceived value of Spam Arrest was that the system would be non-intrusive and based on the very easy to understand concept of having email senders verify that they are human beings and not algorithms.

And getting back to my uncertainty about my cancellation: since I terminated my account, my contacts have evidently each been sent an email from Spam Arrest’s registration-bot requesting them to verify that they are real people and not spam-bots. 180 degrees wrong I’d say.

Here’s my main point. It is very easy for software vendors to stray away from the core value of their products – that is if they are out of touch with their user base.

Looking at it from the user side, I would say that Spam Arrest completely missed the point of my basic interest in them. Was it in their interface? Was it in their customer support strategy? Was it in the apparently bloated complexity of the system? Was it in not properly streaming their customers into appropriate market categories based on complexity of need?

These deal breaker issues can only be avoided by knowing the users’ needs.

It’s a sad truth that many software vendors simply do not understand this basic fact: usability requirements for an application need to be as clearly defined and understood as its functional requirements. Or their customers will go elsewhere.

Likewise we, as users, should not settle for less than what we need. The alternatives are only one Google search away.

As a user I chose to terminate my relationship with Spam Arrest to stop wasting time and money. As a user advocate I chose to write this post to send a message to Spam Arrest that their system of design, engineering and customer support is not working. At least not up to what I would call reasonable standards.

Software vendors, especially producers of such utilities as spam filters, need to be very careful about the learning curves they expect their users to tackle. Don’t make users go hunting around for functionality. Bring it to their door.

These corporate representatives described the ways in which they had used social media to engage with customers and therefore redefine, influence and transform the perception of their respective companies and brands.

Not an easy task to be on that stage - it’s a tricky thing to even describe let alone discuss in an energized room full of hundreds of highly intelligent people who are paying very strict attention to the slightest implications of whatever word or phrase a panelist might choose to use. There were some sparks.

It appeared that many of us in the mosh pit wanted to understand exactly where these panellists were coming from and perhaps had some doubt about the ability of large corporations to ever use social media in a genuine, authentic manner.

The question underlying all this is who speaks for the company? In the traditional world it’s the executive level that controls everything uttered officially about the corporate entity. But in the emerging social media world a variety of people within and outside of the company can greatly influence the meaning of the brand by engaging as real people in dialogs through blogs and other social media tools.

So how far are the old school bosses willing to go into this new social media world? I had an opportunity to put this question to the panellists, asking them to speak of it in terms of three words that had popped into my head: Authenticity, Authorship, and Authority.

I knew that these words had something to do with it but I couldn’t yet work out the relationship. I had hoped that their answers might have provided more clues. But my impression of their responses (confirmed by my neighbours) was that they didn’t really answer the question. I won’t fault them for this because these matters are hard to pin down without a meaningful metric. We need such a metric.

If there were such a scale then, based on the buzz around my section of the audience, I would say that Harlequin easily scored the highest mark. Jenny Bullough said some pretty amazing things about how her company from different levels had been engaged directly and meaningfully with their customer base for over 10 years. She summarized it for me in a subsequent conversation:

In other words Harlequin`s customer engagement through social media seemed to be the real thing, based on a substantial corporate policy and long history of interaction with customers and writers that has contributed much to their repertoire of published works.

On the contrary Chris Reid from Yamaha Motor got a low score in my books when he spoke about how he controls everything that is written in a social media context on behalf of the company. That did not seem to achieve the level of authenticity that I think many of us were hoping to hear. Did I hear it wrong?

During the session Natalie Johnson from GM seemed to be in the same camp as Chris and she took some heat from the floor (see first video above). But I caught up with her after the session and after listening to more details about GM`s practices and goals for social media I came away thinking that they did have a grasp of how to use social media in a genuine and meaningful manner. Based on that I would rate GM as pretty high in terms of its objectives and practice even though they don’t have the years of experience with it that Harlequin has.

(Keep in mind that I haven’t directly experienced any of the social media initiatives carried out by these companies. I’m just using my impressions of what I heard during the MESH sessions* to explore notions of metrics for use of social media in the enterprise. This is far from an ‘objective’ analysis of any of their practices. Just brainstorming.)

After emerging from the last of the three sessions on this topic, I breezed by a book promo display in the meetup area. I did an about-face. The word ‘authenticity’ had caught my attention so I checked out the book more closely.

It was called “Personality not included : Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity – And How Great Brands Get it Back”. It was written by Rohit Bhargava who had been on the panel in the final session of the day. Out of all the many things that were said in that session I remembered him saying “Don’t give up control. Share it.” Those words had stuck in my mind.

So I bought the book** and as I did so, Rohit happened to come by. We discussed the authenticity, authorship and authority thing some more:

After this discussion with Rohit I thought more about the fuzzy definition of ‘Authority’ and wondered if that might be the cause of confusion when trying to resolve how social media applies in the enterprise context. In my chats with people at MESH the word seemed to be taken to mean ’subject authority’ - i.e. the direct and meaningful knowledge on a given subject. But I imagine there is another meaning at play as the enterprise attempts to embrace (or just utilize) social media -i.e. the central power that has control over the enterprise and that might feel threatened by any attempts to disrupt the status quo.

With this in mind I formed an image of an ‘authenticity metric device’ in the form of a balanced interaction with the social media goal of optimum engagement placed appropriately in the middle. At one end is the old style, top-down control approach and at the other extreme is some form of PR nightmare.

I like this image because it visually identifies a point where an exciting balance might be reached between the two extremes. It allows a way for an organization to state their intended use of social media in a simple, graphical way. They could pick a point on the spectrum and identify it as a target or comfort zone.

It would be very interesting to do a survey of enterprises to see where they are in fact trying to place themselves on this scale. And it would be even more interesting to weigh that against a poll of where their customers actually perceive them on the scale. Of course you’d have to replace the numbers with descriptions that make sense to the participants and that could be cast in a variety of ways.

Call it a sort of social media barometer.

Footnotes

*Other speakers and attendees at MESH also had things to say about this topic. E.g. see Zoe Siskos’ posts at Social Media Group.
(back to story)

** If you’re interested in how social media can be used in marketing today, I highly recommend Rohit’s book for an enjoyable read with many valuable insights.
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There will be many great sessions presented over the two day meet and I’m looking forward to learning lots of very useful stuff and meeting more of the folks in this vital community.

I’m also looking forward to doing a presentation myself entitled “Drupal Usability : Looking at the Drupal UI from a Subject Oriented Perspective”. Here’s an excerpt from my session description:

Subject Oriented Design is a much needed and logical follow up to Object Oriented Design – but what is it and how can it help with improving the usability of Drupal’s administration interface? To begin to answer these questions I’m proposing a session with these goals:
• To explore some of the meaning and importance of subject oriented design.
• To encourage Drupal designers and developers to look at their work from a subject oriented perspective.
• To share some practical hints as to how to go about this. (Given that it’s an endless journey we can only take a few steps in one session.)
• To loosen some of the right bolts in the Drupal UX paradigm while still keeping the architectural pivot points in tact.
• To help me, as a usability expert and Drupal newcomer, understand more about what matters to you, as developers, designers and users of Drupal.
• To establish that Salsa dancing is the best benchmark around for evaluating user experiences.

In case you’re curious, I am dead serious about the Salsa dancing thing but I don’t expect there’ll be much time for any practical work in this session.

So all this lays out a rich area to explore for upcoming posts: Drupal, Subject Oriented Design, and Salsa. Looking forward to it.

Looking at it from a writer’s (i.e. end user’s) point of view, the problem all along has been deciding which ‘voice’ to use – the one that likes to push TUAG’s services or the one that is just passionate about usability issues? The logical decision is to let this site function as a soap box for user advocacy. So that means I need another web site.

And a new site I shall have. Eventually.

I’ve chosen to use the Drupal content management system as the basis for my new business web site. I’ve been orbiting around Drupal for as long as this blog has existed. But on my first approach to it I bounced right out of its dense atmosphere and decided to create my first major web app with my own custom made content management system.

Lately I’ve been taking another look at Drupal, coming at it slowly and more directly with an intent to get my head seriously around it. For the last couple of months I’ve been studying it closely, mostly from the code level, and getting some insight into its strengths, and weaknesses. Progress has been very slow and I would have to honestly say it’s to a large extent because the Drupal administrative user interface has significant issues.

Drupal is an open source framework for building dynamic web sites that has been built by dedicated engineers from all over the planet. It has a brilliant core architecture that, among other things, provides tremendous flexibility in the site presentation – i.e. what it looks like.

But shaping a given web site in Drupal is not an easy matter for the novice. Surrounding the Drupal core is its administrative user interface, a veritable asteroid belt of usability hazards. Much of this outer ring is functional debris emanating from the many moons, or ‘modules’, that orbit the main body. Here, nothing is simple because nothing is connected. Interface components float randomly everywhere, ready to tear through one’s productivity as if it were wet tissue.

Not surprisingly, beyond the asteroid belt there is a calm zone where countless Drupal web sites exist in a state of near identical placidity. In this zone one can hear the whispers of end users and clients asking their web developers “But can you make it look less … Drupally?”

Drupal’s difficulties are not unlike those found in so many other software development projects. In both the web and desktop worlds, software development frequently begins with functionality first, thus leaving the user interface design until much later – typically when screams are heard from the far outreaches of the end user domain.

Having spent 20 years or so working on both sides of the usability/engineering divide I could talk a lot about this phenomenon. For now I’ll just say that functionality created in a vacuum of usability requirements always produces a problematic mix of values. The potential for a confusion through the collision of multiple perspectives is indeed serious. It’s not a question of anyone being at fault - it’s just a state of evolution that can be surmounted with intelligence and good planning.

The discussions happening at Drupal.org seem to demonstrate that there is a growing awareness of this within the Drupal community. That is what impresses me. As a newcomer to the open source universe, I’m pleasantly surprised by the intelligence, civility and democracy in play here. It is certainly motivating me to roll up my own sleeves and pitch in.

I’ll leave other points for subsequent posts. Now that I’m officially booting out the ‘professional profile’ requirement from this site, it’s finally free to become a plain old blog and speak directly from the user advocate’s corner. In the meantime when that other site is launched, you’ll be the first to know.

The problem seemed to stem from the fact that there was no provision made to pay the engineers for the time it would take them to conduct a proper knowledge transfer to me. As independent business people like me, I would certainly not expect them to do this for free.

But the young manager at the helm of this project, seemingly on her maiden voyage, had very little idea about how to connect the crew of geographically dispersed contractors. Sadly, she exhibited an unrealistic faith in the value of the ‘Chat Tool’ (complte w. obscr abrev.s and speling mistwaks) for bearing the brunt of the knowledge transfer process. So much for context and clarity.

What was clear was that my need to communicate with the team through phone calls rather than emoticons proved to be an indulgence that lay far beyond the reach of this project’s budget. With no course corrections forthcoming I felt I had no choice but to jump into the nearest lifeboat.

I’m not used to backing away from a challenge and to be frank, this left me with a thirst for some sort of confirmation that bridging the gap between end users and engineers requires not only knowledge, experience and insight but also a solid channel of effective communication in both directions.

It so happened that last week, I was on a panel* for the Ottawa Software Executive Forum (OSEF) that discussed the topic of “Effective Techniques for Defining and Designing Product Features”. To my delight, our discussion gravitated towards the very issue of how to bridge the gap between end users and engineers. What a great opportunity to air out some ideas and validate my ‘obsession’ for high bandwidth communication.

As a panel of agreeable usability specialists we initially risked boring our audience of software executives with our collective head nodding. However there was an individual in the audience who had more than a little to say on every aspect of our discussion.

At first I misread his energy, thinking that this was going to one of those gruelling sessions where one overly-eager individual would dominate the proceedings and steer them into a deep ditch of irrelevant ideas. However the fact was this particular guy was talking sense – a lot of sense.

And by ‘sense’ I mean he was one of those rare software executives who seemed to ‘get it’ when it comes to recognizing some of the real issues behind getting engineering processes to be both user oriented and productive.

He understood the value of guiding engineers, designers, and product managers into a common mindspace that focuses on solving tangible real world problems for real world end users. Focusing on a common goal such as this, along with using the proper collaborative tools, greatly improves the chances of working more effectively together.

He repeatedly spoke about the benefits of ‘agile development methodologies’ which, among other things, stresses the key importance of high bandwidth, face-to-face communication between engineers and business experts.

My thirst was quenched. But it got better than that - it turned out that this man was none other than Dave Thomas who has an impressive track record as a thought leader in the world of innovative software development practices. Widely known for founding Object Technology International (now IBM OTI labs) he is a pioneer in Agile Product Development and one of the founding directors of the Agile Alliance . Confirmation from such an experienced source was indeed like coming home to a safe port.

In conversation after the session, Dave shared a revealing anecdote about an individual who no doubt contributed to his awareness of the need for proper production practices. He spoke about an uncle who had worked his way up to a very high position at AT&T. Technologies change rapidly and, over time, this wise uncle became concerned about the growing knowledge gap between himself as a senior executive and the ranks of engineering staff under his management. One day, to the horror of his peers and the surprise of his staff, he resigned his executive position and jumped back down to the level of engineer in order to re-immerse himself in the realities of the current technologies.

Throughout our panel discussion Dave had stressed, from his seat in the audience no less, the importance of software executives ‘walking the floor’ and staying vitally in touch with the realities of the day. He declared that far too many of today’s software executives approach their job purely from a theoretical ‘bottom line’ point of view and lack the critical knowledge required to steer the development ship away from dangerous waters.

I couldn’t agree more.

Footnotes

*The panel members were Scott MacEwen of Cognos/IBM , Lorraine Chapman of Macadamian Usability, Tom Hoferek, Corel Corp, and myself M Baynger of The User Advocate Group. The moderator was Marc Graveline of Cognos/IBM)
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When we think of a software application, most of us will conjure up the image of some sort of user interface splashed across a computer screen. As far as most of us are concerned, whatever is on the screen is the software. Period.

Engineers will tend to look at it a little differently. They are of course very aware of what goes on ‘behind the screen’ that makes all this stuff appear as it does and do all the things it does.

As a user interface systems designer I look at the screen as bit of a battleground. Two decades of working in the industrial software biz makes me intensely aware of the people behind a given application and sometimes I can almost hear the arguments and debates that must have taken place in the process of its creation.

In that sense I see a software application as an attempt by a small group of people (behind the screen) to communicate with a large group of people (in front of the screen). Typically, the purpose of this communication is so focused on some functionality that we usually see the software application as a thing unto itself rather than as a meeting point between engineers and users or vendors and customers.

What I mean is, we treat a software application as a distinct objective entity rather than as a measure of a complex relationship between two distinct groups of people.

From the point of view of a usability specialist, and standing just slightly behind the screen, I see a software application as an attempt to anticipate something significant about who you are as a user and what tasks you are trying to accomplish. It’s a sort of disembodied sketch of you and aspects of your life.

Your ease of use for a given application is directly related to the accuracy of the image that the software’s creators have of you. If the producers of the application never bothered to put themselves in your shoes as a user, then your experience of that software will probably be somewhat uncomfortable if not outright frustrating. Perhaps you can recall such an experience. Perhaps you can recall many.

On the other hand it is not always easy to do that envisioning work, especially if the application is a new invention or a venture into new territory. Unless the application designers have their feet on the ground and are truly able to see things from the users’ point of view, their efforts may be wasted.

And worse yet for the vendor’s business plan, the entire R&D and marketing efforts may be at risk because if a better alternative comes along, customers may well flee at the first opportunity.

I saw something the other day that illustrates this situation quite nicely.

This billboard serves as a wonderful analogy for the type of software application that misses the point. In this case, the ‘functionality’ is not distracting, in fact there may be no functionality at all beyond the intent to entertain pedestrians at a busy street corner.

I think it’s safe to say that the entertainment value comes from the mysterious trick that our eyes seem to be playing on us. The point being that the dot is objectively half way down the triangle but when we look at it, it seems to be closer to the top.

But in this particular deployment, if the Passerby User thinks to herself “but the dot really does look closer to the top” she would be perfectly correct. Look at the metrics up close.

This ‘Billboard Application’ was deployed on the roof of a building and, from the user’s perspective, the dot is closer to the top because of the non-linearity of the optics. However slight it may be, the subjective experience is in fact more accurate than the creators had perhaps anticipated and arguably the entire point of the application is lost.

So there is a similar kind of disconnect here between the intent of the application creators and the experience of the application users.

As a User Advocate my point is this: like a gigantic billboard towering over a streetscape, a computer software application may carry a certain air of objective authority. We, as individual users, are often made to feel very small and are forced to adjust to its way of doing things.

So often we have no choice, no matter how frustrating the user experience may be. We often don’t question the way an application behaves because we are too busy trying to use it. We’re trying to book a plane ticket or print out an invoice or find a bus route or whatever the task is at hand. We are usually so focused on trying to achieve that particular goal that we can’t step back far enough to see how this application could be made better - beyond wishing it would just place the right button at the right time in the middle of the flippin’ screen.

So, fellow users, if you can take away one thing from all this (listen up fellow designers and engineers) I would hope it is a strengthened sense that your experience is what really counts. It’s worth remembering that, from your perspective, the software is the tool and not an end unto itself. If you find yourself feeling confused or frustrated by the way an application behaves, you are entitled to absolve yourself of blame and see the problem as lying on the other side of the computer screen. Demand more.

With that in mind I set off on a project last year to learn about and work with web technology across the full spectrum - from front end design to back end programming. I had a unique opportunity to do this when I was asked to create a new web site for Pages Books and Magazines, a cool, indie bookstore that has been a long standing fixture in the hub of Toronto’s cultural center on Queen Street West. I began by interviewing at length the proprietor, Marc Glassman, his site editor Shaun Smith, and the Pages’ staff about what they required in the new web site. After coming up with a design concept, I then began a long trek across a new technological landscape and learning a lot about such fascinating areas as PHP, MySQL, AJAX, CSS, Templating Engines, and Javascript. Thus I gathered the materials and knowledge required to actually build the site.

My client’s key aesthetic requirement was that they wanted something ‘light and quirky’. This, combined with the use of the shop’s fabulous signage art, was my guiding principle for the emotional experience of the web site. The artwork, done by Toronto artist Michael Cho, perfectly reflects the character of this smart and hip alternative book store.

It turned out that building the front end (the part that you see) was a relatively easy task. Where the real challenge came was in building the back end content management system and the accompanying administrative interface. In striving to make the content creation process just as easy and pleasurable to for the Pages’ staff users as the site is for end users I chose to put some extra effort into making the interaction as clear and productive as I could and avoiding many of the usability pitfalls that many administrative Web UIs seem to possess because they are not seen as ‘important’.

The resulting web site (www.pagesbooks.ca) was launched a week ago. I approached the task of guiding users around the site with a number of methods including an ‘active home page’ where inner content can be surfaced to the level of one-click availability, and colour cues that gently inform users of the context for the information they are looking at.

I’m happy to be back from this journey and eager to apply the new knowledge to future projects. But I also want to take a moment to thank others who helped me along the way and got me out of a few scrapes. First of all, thanks to my associate Tom Kamil who collaborated with me to, among other things, help interpret the meaning of ‘light and quirky’. Thanks also to Adrian Karmel who got me pointed in the right direction to tackle the MySQL stuff. And to Gavin, Peter and Daniel of the Ottawa PHP meetup group and Brett and Steve of 76 Design who inspired me with their own projects and aspirations as well as graciously sharing their knowledge when I got lost in some dark technological valleys. And a big thanks to Tyler Brown who made a significant impact on the success of this project by providing important insights and expertise on a variety of topics across the technological spectrum. And last but not least, a big smooch to my partner Conchita Flores and a warm hug to the rest of my family, who put up with me being a total geek for so many months.

More and more I hear about the gap between ‘design and development’ in the arena of web site creation and the many ways that web sites just don’t meet the needs of the business owner and their customers. And as businesses require ever more sophisticated web applications, the challenge to keep them usable and productive for their customers grows exponentially. As a User Advocate and user interface designer with a detailed knowledge of the technology behind dynamic web sites, I can better serve my clients by truly bridging the gap between end users and engineers.

As a child I had often wondered if I would be an artist or a scientist when I grew up. Digital technology, particularly computer graphics, came along as a perfect middle ground where I could exercise both my visual imagination and my need to work through problems methodically.

Although I began my career as an artist and art gallery administrator I was drawn to working with software design and eventually committed to it full time. This was perhaps inevitable because of my precise but wide open definition of the meaning of art. While still in art school I formulated a practical definition of art based on investigations into information theory. I had become enamoured with the way scientists spoke of information as a combination of variety and redundancy and described the ways that signals could be transmitted through the mechanism of carrier waves.

As an artist I pictured various ways in which communication signals carry not just information but also meaning across the great voids that separate all human beings. It was this aspect of my studies that caused me to realize that I had become interested in art not necessarily to make drawings or paintings but because it was a system of communication. In that regard I understood immediately that the concepts of carrier waves and signals as described by scientists corresponded directly to the concepts of form and content that is studied by art historians.

My direct experience as a practicing artist led me to define art as nothing more or less than Minimal Redundancy.

The meaning behind Art=Minimal Redundancy is not really new and has been said using other terms by many who have thought about it.

Occam’s razor is not equivalent to the idea that “perfection is simplicity”. Albert Einstein probably had this in mind when he wrote in 1933 that “The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience” often paraphrased as “Theories should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” It often happens that the best explanation is much more complicated than the simplest possible explanation because its postulations amount to less of an improbability. Thus the popular rephrasing of the razor - that “the simplest explanation is the best one” - fails to capture the gist of the reason behind it, in that it conflates a rigorous notion of simplicity and ease of human comprehension. The two are obviously correlated, but hardly equivalent.
From wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_Razor

Art=Minimal Redundancy speaks of the idea that something special and meaningful occurs in communicative expressions that neither lack anything nor contain any superfluous parts. It is a perfect balance of form and content. It does not discount redundancy but regards it as the formal component of communication. Neither does it allow for unnecessary redundancy because that implies an unintended content component and hence a statement of lesser meaning. If you compare a masterwork to an amateur’s painting you may be able to see that the master is able to convey information about a subject with fewer extra bits and pieces than one who lacks that degree of vision, passion and control.

But you could arguably also say the same thing about tennis players or truck drivers although the specific outputs of such practitioners may not have the same impact on the hearts and minds of a wider public. In other words there is surely an art to volleying a tennis ball or backing a transport trailer even though the appreciation and valuation of such ‘art forms’ may not exist as such in our society today.

If you are grasping what I am saying here you may also see that defining art as minimal redundancy frees one completely from looking at it through particular forms or even disciplines. Suddenly the world itself becomes our studio. Anyone can potentially create ‘art’ in any context. Art and Life are indeed inseparable.

My working definition of art was conceived in a context of scientific and technological language. It was therefore perfect for helping me make the transition into a technology focused career. As a conceptual tool, this practical benchmark for creativity has helped me produce new and original inventions as well as provide a platform for critical analysis of technology itself.

And this perspective has naturally led me into the arena of user interface design – where user interface systems can be regarded as primarily human to human relations, mediated by significant technological components, and NOT as human-computer relations, as is implied by the term “human-computer interface design”.

Like “artificial intelligence”, the term “human-computer interface” is unsatisfactory for me because it implies a creative or responsible role for the machine component rather than regarding it as just a communication vehicle. As a blog writer I can talk to you through a ‘pipe’ that has a computer on each end – like tin cans on a string. As a software designer I can also talk to you through that same mechanism but the message, and user experience, will have a different quality.

Art forms such as painting, stained glass and architecture were the multimedia communication vehicles of the past. Cathedrals were the pinnacle of technological advancement in the middle ages and, like the computer today, were the economic drivers and focal point of many social communities. The purpose of this technological marvel was to uplift the human spirit and even today any visitors to the site of a medieval cathedral will still be able to see that it continues to function in this way.

The computer is the cathedral of today. Google is a ‘technological edifice’ that towers over much of our daily virtual landscape. Where medieval peasants may have entered cathedrals to search for meaning, we routinely come to Google to search for links. We stare into the brilliant colours of our computer screens and marvel at what see.

I think it is a relevant question to ask what is the effect of modern technology on the human spirit?

It may or may not be worth pointing out that, despite all appearances, even the most sophisticated computer algorithm possesses no more, or less, consciousness than a blob of paint. Philosophically I am deeply opposed to the idea that computers should be regarded as ‘conscious’ or ‘intelligent’ in some creative fashion that even remotely resembles human consciousness.

Furthermore I am very much opposed to human beings relinquishing their creative potentials to the straitjacket of bad software design. To varying degrees, this inverted relationship with machine, where we see ourselves as unable to control it, has the effect of quashing the human spirit.

As a software artist I am committed to finding ways of preserving and even stimulating creative activity on the part of end users. And the guiding principle I use for achieving this goal is to create designs with Minimal Redundancy.

“Bridge the Gap Between End Users and Engineers”

Why is there such a gap? Well, there are many reasons such as: “language” differences (”geek-speak” vs. “human-speak”); lack of effective communication channels; economics; priorities (technology-centric vs. user-centric); etc.

But here’s one that came to mind recently as I was making my daughter’s lunch. I call it the (in)convenience factor. (How you pronounce it depends, I suppose, on your perspective – a half full / half empty kind of thing.)

You might ask: What’s making a sandwich got to do with using a software application? Well for a start both can involve tasks that should be simple. Using a well designed software application should be basically effortless - or at least rewarding and pain-free. It should be as easy to do as say… making a sandwich.

I’ve made my daughter’s lunch countless times with no significant experience of effort – until this one occasion. I encountered one of those bread bags that was sealed with a bit of sticky tape rather than the familiar and easy-to-use plastic clip. My response was to utter:

“#@#$(*@$??!!!”

And by that I meant “Why is this unnecessary obstacle preventing easy access to my loaf of bread???!!!”

And that’s precisely the kind of user experience any good designer should seek to avoid. Sadly, the world of software applications is full of bits of ‘sticky tape’ that prevent us from getting our work done efficiently and stress-free.

Later I reflected on why these bits of tape even exist. The answer I came to is the (in)convenience factor. My guess is that it was deemed convenient for the manufacturer to use sticky tape rather than the standard plastic tags clips. But what was convenient for the production process in this case was highly inconvenient for this end user.

Perhaps the rationale was profit rather than ‘convenience’ but I, for one, will never intentionally buy a loaf of bread sealed with a piece of sticky tape again. If others happen to agree with me then this could become a costly inconvenience for the manufacturer.

This is precisely what flashed through my mind a couple of weeks ago as I was implementing a navigation feature for a web site. I found myself tempted to lean towards convenience in code production rather than building an interface that would be convenient for the end user. Shame on me!

It doesn’t really matter what the specifics were – the point is that I had two options: get it done fast and grab an early lunch or get it done right - maybe after lunch. As ‘inconvenient’ as it was to my personal agenda at the time, I chose to do it right.

These kinds of twists and turns are the daily reality of software engineers. The risk is that always choosing the convenient-for-production route may ultimately result in serious defects in the product and in the ability to reach customers.

Of course at the same time the profitability of the production process has to be taken into account. In a larger sense, the convenience of production should really come from having a good strategy to meet the needs of both the customer and the business. It’s very inconvenient to not sell yor product and it’s also pretty inconvenient to rewrite it after you find out users are fleeing to the competition.

Great code doesn’t necessarily need endless labour – just a clear and meaningful plan based on an accurate view of user requirements and a realistic assessment of R&D capabilities. Such a plan is in fact the bridge between the end user and the engineer. And building that bridge is what we do at The User Advocate Group.

For me, this time of year also means that I get to be an Occasional User for certain technology interfaces such as the button riddled panel on my car stereo and the monstrous web tool for managing expiring domain names.

In the past I’ve been completely stumped by the task of adjusting the little car stereo clock and for many years I just let the thing be off an hour throughout the winter months. Having of course lost the manual I was not able to get beyond the point where clicking the ‘Clock’ button would simply toggle the LEDs between clock time and CD song time.

One year I had a brilliant insight – or was it an accident? – and I held the ‘Clock’ button down for long enough to set the LEDs flashing in a promising fashion. Then all I had to do was figure out which of the many other buttons would actually adjust the time. Eventually, after enough stop lights, I was able to accomplish the task.

The problem is that I would forget all of this in the following six months. As an Occasional User I was perpetually untrained, at least for a number of years. It’s not so much a learning process as a forgetting-and-relearning-process. This year however I was very pleased with myself for getting the whole operation done in the space of a single stop light.

But then there’s that domain name problem. I decided, for convenience sake, to transfer all my expiring domain names to my newer registrar, GoDaddy. It turns out that GoDaddy uses the ubiquitous “Domain Control Center” for domain name management. The Domain Control Center is found on many registrar sites including, ironically enough, the site I am choosing to leave. I don’t know much about the mysterious world of domain name registrars but it appears that either one corporate entity controls a good number of disparate brands or many registrars license The Domain Control Center engine. Considering that www.domaincontrolcenter.com takes us straight to GoDaddy.com one might draw the conclusion that it’s GoDaddy’s baby.

That in itself is not a problem. Where the whole thing comes to a grinding halt for me is that this DCC is essentially unusable for anyone who has more than a tiny handful of domains to manage. I had about a dozen in this batch and after an arduous 2 hour struggle, several of my domain names had still not made it across the transfer chasm. Perhaps I’ll try again someday but in the meantime I have better things to do with my time.

So what exactly was the problem? Well largely it comes from two factors:
• The plethora of cryptic links on the interface
• The dogged insistence on doing everything piecemeal

These two conditions actually spell out a core usability problem. Each is a distinct design paradigm and each points in a different direction: the first towards a more Frequent User who has managed over time to learn the meanings of the links; the second seems to cater to an Occasional User who has only one or two items to manage and needs the task broken into a linear sequence of steps. I fell into a third, unsupported category as one who is an Occasional User who would like to be efficient in managing a significant number of items - in bulk.*

To make matters rather more stressful is the fact that the proper authorization codes and IDs must be reconciled for obvious security reasons. This is done through emails coming from both the old and the new registrar. One takes the information supplied in each registrar’s email and enters it into the process at the other’s site. Although this may sound complicated in words, the user who has a single domain name to manage may not notice a problem. But in my case I found my inboxes for my two respective email accounts (old registrar and new registrar) became populated with the likes of this:

Now what this means is that not only is one forced to deal with the numerous changes one at a time, but without domain name information in the subject line one must also play a rather silly lottery to guess which emails contain the info for the particular name that is being transferred. The option of true bulk management seems to not exist - or at least it is not apparent to the Occasional User.

So let me describe the user experience in terms of an analogy. Let’s say you’re cooking an omelette. This is typically not a complex task because you simply pull all the ingredients out of the fridge and get them ready on the counter. Then you crack a few eggs and place them in the bowl, mix ‘em up and cook. Very simple.

Now let’s do the same thing in a Domain Control Center style of working. You walk into the kitchen after entering your password (if you can still remember it from last year). You open the fridge and realize the ingredients you want are not there - you will need to transfer them from the grocery store. Your fridge gives you secret information that will enable you to acquire the eggs from the security conscious grocery store. You go to the store and at the front door you give them your other password (if you can remember that one). You want to get a dozen eggs but are told that you can only buy one at a time. You make numerous trips to the dairy section and return to the check out with a single egg. Naturally, you’d like to pack up the eggs in your shopping bag but are told that they will be delivered – for security reasons of course – to your home.

Back in your kitchen, you are told that the eggs (when they arrive) cannot be all put in one bowl. Instead, each egg must be scrambled in its properly assigned bowl, each of which you must select before bringing the egg into the kitchen. The eggs arrive in the back of a truck in individual, unmarked brown paper bags. You go to your front door and ask the delivery guy to give you a bag. He brings you one but in the kitchen you find it’s not the right egg for the currently active bowl. You head back to the front door and ask for another. You spend an hour or so trying to match eggs with their respective bowls, endeavouring to ignore the shouts of your kids who are due to expire from hunger at any moment. You begin to wish that there was such thing as a fast food restaurant in this strangely twisted world.

There are many instances in which our world is so strangely twisted and our time so amply wasted by systems that are poorly designed. On a happier note, today happens to be World Usability Day. I applaud the higher profile that this international event gives to the efforts of usability professionals who work hard to remedy some of these unnecessary and avoidable stresses. But they can only do that if software producers take the step to hire them. If you are creating a software application, do your customers a favour and hire a proper usability expert to help ensure your product caters to such factors as these significantly different types of users: the Frequent User and the Occasional User and, yes, the Occasional Frequent User. It can make a world of difference.

Footnotes

* To be fair, there is a ‘bulk transfer’ feature in the Domain Control Center. However it seems to be inconsistent and after entering multiple names at the start I found myself having to deal with individual items again. It could well be that I missed something in the interface - but then that’s my point about being a perpetually untrained Occasional Frequent User. (back to story)