Why Am I Not a Programmer?

I was recently in a meeting where I was enumerating what I did well and what I didn't. Although I have a lot of skills, there are some things I just don't do well. In user experience terms, those are primarily programming and graphical design. I can do both, but haltingly, and others do them much better, so I have a tendency to avoid them. At least with graphical design I tend to compare my meager skills to those I see on display on the finest pages, so perhaps my bar there is unreasonably high. I've never had much coursework in graphical design, at least in the past two decades, so I have little basis for comparison.

I have taken courses recently in programming, though, so I think I'm more realistic there. Java drove me crazy. I'd be looking for a method in the documentation so I could find its arguments, and to my annoyance I'd have to trace it up the tree several classes, because it was inherited a dozen times. The classes weren't hard, just tedious, frustrating, and boring. I've had the same problem in other programming classes. I was probably the only English major in history to sign up for assembly language programming class. It went OK, but I didn't feel any affinity for the subject. No spark. No gift. I concluded I would never be much good at it, and that was that.

But after my meeting, I started to reconsider my position, especially after I talked with a programmer and looked up some "how to think like a programmer" pages. To my amazement, it appears programmers don't like to code much more than I do. It's just that to solve their problems, which they love to do, they have to code.

It reminds me of my mathophobic days. Although I teach statistics now, I was once afflicted with math anxiety. That cracked away after I abruptly realized what math is. It's a modeling language, with enormous lossless compression. You can model reality with it, sort of. Once you learn the language, the rest is just fiddling with it until any given equation makes sense. Even mathematicians diddle and doodle. There are no born mathematicians, only those who have messed around with it for a long time until it's easy for them to manipulate the linguistic symbols. There may be a math aptitude, but no math gene. I could do it too.

Maybe programming is like that and I'm being too critical with myself. I have yet to meet anyone who enjoyed programming courses and having to memorize languages, any more than I've met mathematicians who liked algebra classes. The essence of math is modeling; the essence of programming is problem-solving. Indeed, a lot of programmer-pundits say that formal college training in programming is counterproductive, because it confuses syntax with thinking. Many advocate starting programming careers by learning calculus, linear algebra, or even physics, just to get into the swing of thinking through complicated problems. Maybe I don't want to earn my living inside a compiler, but maybe too I'm too hard on myself when I sneer at my programming skills. Maybe I'm not much worse than anybody else.

Boeing Turns to Psychology to Design 787

The September issue of Air and Space Magazine has an article about how Boeing designed the interior of the new 787 using psychologists, focus groups, and other user-centered design techniques. They hired renowned marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille to help. Apparently together they did a load of research about how fliers like to see aircraft interiors. And they're not publishing what they learned, either. Usability as trade secret.

New Data Visualizations

One of my enduring interests is data visualization. It hits so many user experience hot buttons: cognition, potential for confusion, Gestalt principles, and so forth. Research in the past few years seems to have slowed considerably in this area, perhaps because much of the breakthrough work has already been done. We're not seeing new methods of visualization now, but refinements of old ones. Fisheye views (PDF) have been around for a very long time now. So have heat maps, tree maps, network maps, and so on. They're just getting new treatments and makeovers. If you want to see how a lot of them have been retooled with modern computing power and pretty colors, check out this article in the online zine Smashing.

Most of the applications are intriguing and professionally done, but I'm not seeing anything that makes me sit forward in my chair. Many old standbys have been dusted off, like the radar chart, but everything here has been done elsewhere. I don't suppose there are many more visualization methods to be discovered. But the flip side of this is that these techniques are getting more common and less expensive, and therefore more accessible to us. I've wanted to do tree maps forever, but no client has ever warmed to the idea. If you want to see how the principle can be applied well, if a bit understated, look at the daily stock market data here.

Control is Everything

Scott Adams got me thinking. In his blog entry for August 17, he mentions that one of our strongest needs it to feel like we're in control. He used an old example: A genie offers you two choices. In the first choice, "You can eat at the finest restaurants in the world for free, twice a week. The only catch is that the genie picks the day, when you are not already booked, and he picks the specific restaurant." In the second choice, "You can eat at “good” restaurants, again for free, twice a week. But this time you can schedule it whenever you want, up to two places per week, and pick whatever “good” restaurant you want."

He goes on to develop the theme that the first choice probably wouldn't make many people happy, because they would eventually feel the keen sense of loss of control. The second choice, while gastronomically less appealing, is probably a better one for most of us.

It reminded me that one thing users dearly love is control, or at least the illusion of it. This is something that subconsciously irks me about lots of software and websites, I think. It's why I'm irritated with Flash so often. It just takes off and does things without asking me. The same thing annoys me about flashing ads, shifting menus, and other things that don't help me do things, but invade my locus of control. We humans don't seem to resent losing control if we don't expect it. We accept that the good guy may die at the end of the movie, but we'll shriek in fury if we can't change the channel to another movie. And we accept a loss of control when it benefits us. My car's engine does hundreds of things that I don't need to approve as they're happening. But there are some places where humans just won't accept interference. I wouldn't pay less for a car if it decided by itself when it would start. The same thing is true for software and websites, I think.

Decluttering

A group of scientists at MIT headed by Ruth Rosenholtz, a long-time researcher into vision and technology, has developed a prototype application in MATLAB that determines the amount of clutter on-screen (Link). The HCI profession has long needed something that could separate figure from ground reliably. The program is only in prototype, but apparently it's rather promising.

The problem of figuring out what's vital few from trivial many isn't trivial itself. Nuclear facility control rooms are a case in point. Rows of lights can go from being background hum to suddenly becoming extremely important. How much do you expose to an operator, or to a website user? Hicks Law was an early attempt at measuring how much stuff was too much, but the sophistication of control schemes today needs a better way of knowing when you've overstuffed the interface.

Are We The Way of the Future?

Computerworld recently published an article listing twelve job skills that no employer can refuse. The usual suspects hopped onto the list - whatever's hot, that is. Wireless, for example. But one of the twelve was usability. That surprised me, for several reasons.

First, usability isn't a universally-needed skill, at least not at the level a specialist brings. It kicks in only when the stakes are high and failure is all too expensive. For websites, it's primarily for ecommerce and other high-end sites. And those are designed and built on the coasts, not in the flyover zone where I live. Check out monster.com, dice.com, UPA's career page, or careerbuilder.com, and you'll see what I mean. Jobs are plentiful in Massachusetts, Washington State, California, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. There aren't many in Iowa, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, Alabama, and most of the other flyovers. So how do we qualify as owners of a "can't miss" skillset?

HCI of Casinos and Slot Machines

This is the kind of article I love to read. It's about the human factors that go into designing slot machines and casinos. The article says that a slot machine is designed to be loud and visually appealing, especially when it pays off. The three wheels encourage the victim player to think that he's almost won when two of the wheels align, when there's no such thing as "almost". The slots are positioned just within easy walk of the tables, because table players don't like to hear them, yet the spouses of table players may well play the slots while they're waiting. It also talks about casino design in general, arranging that players can't see the outdoors, or even real outdoor lighting. No clocks, either, no way of knowing how long you've been there.

The slots are insidious in that they pay off only sporadically, which is how positive reinforcement works best. They pay off publicly, so everyone around is encouraged to keep playing. And they keep nurturing that "almost there" feeling.

Usability as a Path to Failure? Surely Not.

Todd Wilkins at Adaptive Path has thrown down a gauntlet to usability professionals, claiming that usability is not only overrated, but even injurious and a path to failure. He cites successful artists who didn't worry about "usability" either. He says:

So, why oh why do people in this day age still hold up “usability” as something laudable in product and service design? Praising usability is like giving me a gold star for remembering that I have to put each leg in a *different* place in my pants to put them on. (Admittedly, I *do* give my 2 year old daughter a gold star for this but then she’s 2.) Usability is not a strategy for design success. The efficiency you create in your interface will be copied almost instantaneously by your competitors. Recently, I’m even coming to believe that focusing on usability is actually a path to failure. Usability is too low level, too focused on minutia. It can’t compel people to be interested in interacting with your product or service. It can’t make you compelling or really differentiate you from other organizations. Or put another way, there’s only so far you can get by streamlining the shopping cart on your website.

Ahem.

Rarely do I see a designer get this blatant. They may think this drivel, but they don't usually voice it before a plunge into happy hour. First, usability here might seem synonymous with "make stuff easy to see". We professionals know this is not anywhere close to being true. Second, it entirely overlooks that websites aren't works of art, unless they're private, non-commercial ones. Commercial (e-commerce) sites are for making money, and every visitor who snorts in frustration and leaves is a financial failure, not a failure to make a friend. Visitors don't need to be engaged, or have fun in most cases. They need to transact. They need to do the tasks they arrived to do. Much "design" merely gets in the way of that simple goal, and ought to be cut out like a splinter under the fingernail, because it provides about as much value. A big-time website isn't an opportunity to dance the visitor about. It's to enable him to act.

Of course any successful design will be copied. But then, there are only a few designs in human experience, and they're all copied every day. Graphic designers tend to think that their designs are unique and powerful. Most often the ones that are sold this way are actually glitz with no go, at their core simply reproductions of past designs with a few cosmetic changes. There are only so many ways to arrange elements on a surface.

In my view, websites are not akin to artworks, but more like cars. First you make sure the damned thing drives properly, and then you dress it up. Not the other way around. We tolerate few physical objects in our lives that are as poorly designed as "cool" or "artistic" websites, yet we complain about the physical and work our way around the virtual. This seems asinine to me.

In The Same Room, But Apart

It's possible that the next frontier for social technology is to connect people locally, rather than across continents. When I work at home and my wife is in an adjacent bedroom/office, it's easier for us to use IM and email that goes out to servers from Memphis to Mongolia, than to use our own little network. Laptop users in public places can't readily recognize each other in cyberspace, not even through cell phones. Bluetooth has some limited capability, but it has a short range.

The problem is everywhere. If I see somebody with a cell phone and want to talk to them, I can't look up the number or ping them, even from just yards away. I have lots of occasion to be with people in short bursts of time, such as conferences, classes, professional group meetings, and the like. These are people I see rarely, but may desperately need to contact with questions or to have them render quick decisions. I may not even know them by sight, or by full name. For example, I'm a member of the local UPA, and we put on a yearly conference for World Usability Day. It attracts speakers I don't know, members I haven't seen in a long time, sponsors, attendees, and many others I might not be expected to pick out in a crowd. Another organizer comes up to me and asks "Does Dr. Willoughby (a speaker I haven't met) still need this wireless mouse?" Beats me, and I can't just ping him to find out. What would help is to have a short-distance option in my cell phone that would operate much as my laptop does when it enters a wireless field. My laptop seeks out whatever signal it knows, and if it doesn't find one it knows, it tells me that. Otherwise, it just logs on. I'd like to see something similar in cell phones. I could haul out my phone and open a screen that lists the profiles of everyone within, say, 100 yards. You could hide your profile if you wanted, so the phone would show only "Hidden Account". But prominent people who speak at conferences usually want to be noticed, so I would scroll down until I found "Dr. Lance Willoughby", highlight him, and press the "Go" button. I'm connected to his phone.

Keeping a Usability Portfolio

When I scan the want ads for people in the design end of usability, I often see language like "Must show portfolio". Huh? Most of us would find that requirement very hard to fulfill, no matter how long we've been in the business. It's not like we're artists in a garret, and our work endures down the centuries. It may last only days or weeks. And it may be buried in the overall design of the site. Further, we may not be the graphical designer, who will get credit for the look of the site. Perhaps more importantly, websites are inherently team affairs, largely produced by committees. After the wrangling is over, any usability person might question where his or her work might be found and pointed out. Add to this the short life spans of many design companies or design departments. Even if the company name sticks around, the personnel turn over rapidly in some places. After we've been gone for a year or so, nobody there remembers us. The lesson here is that when a site goes live, we should take screen shots and put them away on a CD somewhere so that later we can make up "portfolios". Forget, and the opportunity may slip away forever. Put it into your design process.