Testing, testing, 1-2-3

There's no substitute for actually testing your product or interface with actual users. You can theorize all day long about how the product should work and how intuitive you think it is, but the people designing something know how it should be used. They focus on their own agenda and needs and often can't take themselves out of the equation to think of the user. This is why these positions have evolved: User Experience Designer, Interaction Designer, Information Architect, etc.

My mom works for the Navy and does most of her work for the DOD. About a decade ago, she was in charge of a project to evaluate the safety across the nation of bases, airports and high-level government buildings that might be vulnerable to attack. What they found was pretty shocking. The safety of our nation relies not on the technology of the machines but on the PEOPLE operating those machines. (Actually, in the worst case, the machines weren't even being used. They had been sitting in the basement of a local FBI building, unopened, because no one knew how to use them).

Turns out, our biggest weakness is that people are being paid minimum wage to operate a half-million dollar machine that's so complicated, they don't know where to start. The machine isn't designed with the user in mind and the user isn't trained properly so the machine is useless.

Apple was one of the first companies to design a product first and build it second. Function follows form. Not the other way around. The iPod was designed that way.

I'm a hobbyist user tester. When I first starting going to a gym that required scanning one of those plastic key chain cards, I tested three different ways to get in the door before I found the fastest.

First I tried handing the attendants the key chain cards BARCODE FACING UP to get in the door quicker. After all, the barcode is ready they just have to scan. But what happened time and time again is that they would take it and fumble around with it to FIND the right one - totally defeating the purpose.

I theorized that it was because they didn't recognize the gym's barcode, most of the time they're multi-tasking, so I starting handing them JUST the gym's key chain card LOGO UP. They took it, flipped it over and scanned it. Pretty quick but still not good enough for me. I did it this way for a time, while pondering a better way.

Finally it dawned on me, maybe the reason the first way didn't work is because I was handing them the WHOLE STACK of my key chain cards. They were thinking with their hands, not with their eyes. They felt the stack and didn't know the one they needed was ON TOP. Why would they?

So I started handing them JUST the gym's key chain card BARCODE UP. And it worked! They take it, scan it, and I'm in seconds later. This is a simple interaction and I'm a fairly smart gal so you can only imagine how many user experience mistakes are made by smart people who think they know. You don't know until you test.