Your Mind Builds Our Software
I love designing software for people because it is all about taking a complex goal and making it easy for people to achieve. And as the Dalai Lama once said “Simplicity is the key to happiness in the modern world.” Here are 2 methods I used to accomplish simplifying a complex goal within the ADSDAQ Selling Desk:
Method #1: Map out all the customer decisions and the application’s messages back to the user in a process and then eliminate as many as possible from the primary customer process flow. Keep it as simple as possible at the foundation, and let the users explore to find the more advanced options over time.
The Real World Execution: All the info that a user must supply to our application (like the CPM price they demand for the ad space they are making available) lies right in the main path of the basic setup. All the info that can have generally acceptable default values lies tucked away into Advanced Options groupings (like Ad Blocking and Text Ad Settings) that are initially collapsed and hidden unless a user chooses to take the time to customize them.
Why It’s Important: People don’t want to learn how to use systems that are overly complicated, but people like to explore and expand their grasp of greater complexities over time. This is the basis for most interaction design.
Method #2: Make the exchange of information between the user and our application as easy as possible by chunking it into tiny pieces. It is easier to answer a question if your concentration can be locked in on one specific task.
The Real World Execution: Daunting tasks are always easier to achieve when they are broken into chunks because they have beginnings and endings that are easily visualized. In our application, we use AJAX technology to break down alert messages to the users into short headlines which can be discarded easily or explored if the user is interested in the headline presented. Also, we collect info from our users on crisp new interaction layers when the users are entering potentially complex information. That way the users can easily focus on one task at a time and feel good upon completing it.
Why It’s Important: We live in a world of sound bites and bullet points, but the applications we use often lag behind the news/entertainment media that conditions our cognitive processes. And when we endeavor to communicate back to an application, we need a little bit of positive reinforcement (like a head-nod or a slight smile when communicating with a human). One easy way of doing this is letting people successfully enter in smaller chunks of info sequentially and then experience the positive feeling of completion more often. It is as close as an application can really come to a nod and a smile (because no one wants a creepy little animated paper clip or dog telling them that they’ve done good! Sorry “Clippy” from MS Word….).
In this modern world where so much of our work and leisure interactions are with online software applications, I think it is important for users to understand some of the theory behind creating the software systems that are designed specifically for them. And this can be the beginning of a constructive conversation between users and software designers if we can start speaking the same language.
So go ahead and tell me what you think about this as a user. Does this geek theory stuff interest you or should I just concentrate more time on telling you exactly what you can do with the applications we are building?
-- Derek Brinkman
Sphere It