Could better usability save the economy?

Okay, maybe that headline is an overstatement, but I'd say usability is an overlooked component in saving the economy. Like any American who pays attention to current events, the economic downturn is at the forefront of my mind right now. And there is one area that has troubled me quite a bit -- the whole mortgage meltdown.

There are kind of two sides to the mortgage problem (ignoring for a moment the whole "credit swaps" thing -- which is a pretty big piece to ignore but just roll with me here): there are the individuals who bought homes they could not afford, and there are the lenders who signed off on mortgages they likely knew the buyer could not afford to repay.

Much has been made of the "predatory lenders" -- the system is set up such that a lot of the places granting the initial mortgages get a few years of high (or all) interest payments before passing the mortgage off to some larger firm for the remainder and letting them deal with the fallout of potential foreclosure. Ultimately, the initial lenders don't really care about whether or not the lendee can pay it all back -- they just want that initial burst of nearly pure-profit payments.

But what bothers me about this attack on "predatory lenders" is that pretty much any business out there seeks to increase profit, so why pick on lenders? It seems to be to be attaching some moral expectation to something that is amoral (not immoral, mind you). Paying for goods and services is a mutual exchange where each side gets something they want.

The consumer-minded side says this is unfair, but I think it's risky to remove any responsibility from the individual. If you sign a contract that requires you to pay a certain amount of money, it's ultimately your own fault if you end up unable to hold up your end of the bargain. Really, a foreclosure is the fault of the homeowner, not the lender -- even if the lender suspected you wouldn't be able to pay it back, if you have stated that you can and will pay things back, you're the one who's made the promise you can't keep.

Where this all breaks down is that not every lender is going to be explicit in terms of costs, not every homeowner is going to know to check all the fine print, and those two problems can feed off each other into a pretty dangerous spiral.

This is where usability comes into play. One of the tenets of good usability is that you don't blame the "user" if they have a problem. Even if everything to accomplish a task is there, if your users are failing to do it, then you have a problem with the presentation. You don't just say your users are stupid (because then you're both insulting your customers and losing business), you try to adjust things to make it clearer and easier to understand.

I am not familiar with the rules and regulations around signing a mortgage, but I am virtually certain the amount of paperwork involved would be confusing to even the savviest person. From a usability perspective, it's a nightmare. I have no doubt that people have signed contracts not realizing that the initial $800 a month payment is going to balloon to $2000, or that the total they pay for a $300,000 home is actually going to be something like a million dollars.

Imagine for a moment that regulations required that all major contracts have a one-page cover sheet that included clearly the monthly payment, how the monthly payment may change over time, the breakdown of interest and principal, and the total amount to be eventually paid. All of this in nice big fonts with a clear layout that is easy to read.

I fear getting too political in this blog, but I can't help but think that so many of the problems in our current economic crisis boil down to people making decisions without knowing all the information. And while many people think that the problem was a lack of regulating the kinds of decisions that could be made, I would say that the greater problem was not requiring full disclosure and clarity be provided before anyone makes any major transaction. Whether that is a potential homeowner or a potential investor, if there was a requirement of a crystal clear one-sheet explanation of the pending transaction in layman's terms, you may find fewer questionable decisions being made in the first place.

As an analogy, New York City recently began requiring chain restaurants to print calorie information next to meals. The caloric totals shocked people (some salads have more calories than a burger and fries!?), but those trying to eat healthy had full information at their disposal rather than uninformed guessing. Compare this regulation to some alternative legislation that may have required that restaurants stop serving high calorie dishes altogether. The former regulation puts the onus on the individual, but provides them with full disclosure in a clear manner. The other is the government deciding what's good for you, expecting that you won't make the good decision for yourself and taking options off the table. I'm sure some people would still prefer the latter, but I really think that letting people make their own choice, for good or bad, is better than trying to make it for them -- just make sure they know the consequences of their choices.

Usability is ultimately about providng clear information. If we can manage that, and let people make fully informed decisions, we can encourage responsibility without removing choice.

So I got an iPhone

I'm not really a gadget-head. As a diehard skeptic of, well, everything, I typically meet any new gadget with the question "why would I need this?" And usually there is no compelling reason.

But after spending months with a phone that repeatedly shut itself off upwards of ten times a day, sometimes mid-phone call, I was ready to switch, and decided to just go ahead and plunk down the dollars for an iPhone. I'm so happy I did.

I knew that it would combine my phone and MP3 player into one device, which I liked. I also knew it'd allow a few more things, namely web browsing. But I didn't realize the extent to which its app store would make the device an all-in-one EVERYTHING. I can play video games, control my desktop from the phone, update my Facebook status, listen to radio stations... it's pretty cool. (I should note, for the record, that lest this read like an Apple ad I am sure that similar smartphones like the G1 and Blackberry Storm are capable of doing many of these things as well.)

But as I was browsing reviews for good apps and downloading them on my laptop, it struck me as odd that I still have to actually attach a wire from the laptop to the iPhone. A minor problem, really, but it got me thinking about the future of computing and the whole concept of syncing. We are moving further and further away from a hard-coded "this machine does this" mindset to a software-driven wireless world where you can do anything from anywhere from any machine. We've already moved past some of the typical physical limitations of the world -- I haven't bought a CD in 2 years for example, yet have bought tons of music. Virtually every piece of software people get these days no longer requires a box with a disc in it, and can be just downloaded online. And as hardware limitations decrease to the point where, in all likelihood, we are just a few years away from pretty much every new computer can do pretty much everything, the actual machines we're on may reach a point of irrelevance as well. Imagine going up to any computer anywhere, logging in with some password, and having all of the same data and programs available to you anywhere. Services like this already exist, but this is by no means universal.

We're going to just all have our own "clouds" at some point soon. An amalgamam of files, programs, software, data, etc. that requires no physical anything except for the data storage facilities of the providers.

Not to get all sci-fi on you, but this basically means there will be two versions of any of us. The physical being, and the data identity. Some people find that scary, I find it fascinating.

And to me the most interesting part of all of this is that it happens so quickly and seamlessly. Just imagine ten years ago, the whole concept of your whole world reachable by one device in your pocket was probably hard to fathom. But it has happened, and is getting more dramatically omnipresent every day.

Which is just. So. Cool.

Designing for failure

It only takes going through a handful of creative projects to realize that virtually every tiny thing is done purposefully. Very little happens by accident, and because of this, one of my mini-pastimes is looking at common designs and trying to figure out how they came to be (or, in contrast, why antiquated designs went out of style). Last night I was pondering how the anthropomorphizing of food -- a smiley face on a popcorn box or a cup of soda -- became a successful marketing technique. And I've been wondering for months about the process that led to the creation of traffic signs -- perhaps the most vital instance of usability in action, as a failure to communicate properly could be fatal.

But I'd like to focus right now on the concept of designing for failure. Of course, an ideal system would make it virtually impossible for someone to fail, but even the most simplistic and clear designs are going to stump a few people, and sometimes failure can occur due to other complexities in the system. My shining example? Copy machines.



(Okay I know that's not a copy machine but at least it involves a cat.)

Jams in the copy machine are obscenely commonplace, as anyone who has worked in an office knows, and they can be extremely frustrating. But they're unavoidable; the mechanics of these machines are so complex that the smallest problems can trigger a jam. I imagine that early copying machines broke down so frequently that calling for a repairman became an untenable situation, and the "fix it yourself" process for un-jamming a copier became a standard for the industry. You know the drill, open the side of the machine, pull out tray 3a, take out the jammed paper from some spinny thingy labeled 5c, etc. It's annoying, but it usually works, and you can get back to copying. The time and cost savings of not having to call a repairman is well worth the minor inconvenience of having to fix it yourself.

This same concept can be applied to just about any design, including a website. You can have what you think is the most sensible site structure and design possible, with a big clearly labeled button for some key task, only to find that sometimes your visitors just miss it entirely or click the wrong thing or otherwise end up lost and confused.

The keys to anticipating error involve eliminating opportunities to make a mistake (ahem), and offering alternative paths to get to the desired result if the visitor misses or doesn't understand the primary path. While a lot of web visitors will resort to the back button and try again, you have to remember that the back button may be taking them off your site altogether. For example, let's say they search on Google for something in your industry and use the word "compare" -- this may take them to a page on your site which compares your various products. But if the visitor was looking for comparisons across a variety of brands, rather than just within one brand, the page won't be what they want, and they may end up at another site altogether. But if you have a prominent link that says "Compare to the Competition," well they just may click on that and stay with you on your site.

Other suggestions to keep visitors on the right path: use logical naming conventions (e.g., "About Us" is much more intuitive than something like "Our Way of Thinking"), provide alternative paths (e.g., include a search option, and highlight relevant contextual links on key pages, etc.), and remove anything that does not hold a lot of value to the user (a page full of marketing copy may show up high on search results but will likely not actually provide the hard info the user is looking for).

Plan for the copy jam. If you do, your visitor will be able to get back on track to find what they want rather than abandoning you entirely.

A handful of basics

There are some rules of thumb ("heuristics" for you fancy types) for designing with usability in mind that are helpful to remember. These are some of the things I try to keep in mind:

• People don't read
  They really don't. Sure, they'll read your blog if it's a topic that interests them, but on your marketing site, keep your text concise and support it with other visual clarity. People love to look at imagery and photos, but they will only scan snippets of your text until they find the one thing that interests them.
  
• Make your text readable
  When your visitors do read, they want it to be easy. Use medium-to-large fonts, use high contrast (no light gray on white, please), and don't use jarring color combinations, like red text on a bright green background. Also, avoid caps - we read based not just on letters but on shapes too, and all-caps denies us this.
• Don't use "splash" pages on websites
  Hoo boy is this a big one. No one, I repeat no one, wants to watch your fancy flash intro to your site. Visitors are there to get information, and all this does is slow them down.
• Less is more
  Is it vital? If not, get rid of it.
• Good-looking does not equal good
  Very pretty sites can be horrible to use. Ugly sites can be easy to use (hello, Craig's List!). Ideally you can be both visually appealing and usable, but never assume they go hand in hand.
• Separate personal taste from your customers' taste
  This is so hard to get past -- we want things to look and act in ways that meet our individual tastes. But if you're creating something for a particular audience, make sure it appeals to them -- not necessarily to you. I once watched a project that involved a camp brochure aimed at kids go from being bright, colorful, and fun to plain, conservative, and "elegant" in order to please some boardmembers. Wrong move. What appeals to 13 year olds and 53 year olds is going to be very different.
• Be scannable
  When creating lists, particularly in navigation, keep them left-aligned, and make each line start with the most key word. For example, on a site that lets you register copyrighted material, don't start each line with "Register Your Song" or "Register Your Album." Change that to "Song Registration" and "Album Registration" -- the leading word now carries more value and is easier to scan in a vertical list.