I draw boxesA blog on user experience & design

May 20, 2011

What ‘The Social Network’ can teach UXers

The Social Network

Mark Zuckerberg creates facebook, as portrayed in The Social Network

I’ve always loved the democracy of the web – the fact that anyone can create their own site relatively easily and cheaply alongside that of a global corporation is what first attracted me to it as a medium. Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and youtube have only served to increase this effect by lowering the barrier to entry to the general public. Everyone with Internet access can have their own place on the web.

Since my move in to digital user experience design, I do somewhat miss building websites, and watching The Social Network recently made me think of a fundamental tuth: you always need someone to build a website for it to exist.

Being able to code and build gives you amazing power over an end product, and an ability to actually create what others can only sketch or wax lyrial about.

I would always advocate bringing your developers in to your UX work, and at a higher lever having developers on the board of a company or at Creative Director level. Developers are incredibly creative and up-to-date with their thinking and awareness of technology. Many understandably resent the term ‘creatives’ to refer to UXers and designers. Granted, some developers are not the best in other areas (and who is strong in every area?) but a brilliant developer inputting in a timely manner can be invaluable.

“my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing”
Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network

From what I can see from the film, Mark Zuckerberg puts great faith in his own skill – pure web development, hacking. The developer contests at facebook are legendary, and feature in the film too. It seems to me (and I would love to know if this is the case) that he puts a lot of emphasis on developers at facebook rather than other disciplines, for example user experience design or visual design. I bet developers run the show.

A key storyline in the film follows the Winklevoss twins who claim to have ‘invented facebook’ because they described a similar idea to Zuckerberg at some point. This should be a scenario familar to anyone who has worked at a small development agency – potential client comes to you with a ‘great’ idea. This idea will change the world. It’s amazing the world has survived so far without it. They will probably swear you to secrecy and brandish NDAs. In fact, you’re lucky they’ve chosen you to be a part of it.

“When everyone is looking for gold, it’s a good time to be in the pick and shovel business.”
Mark Twain

And so it was (and still is) with websites, especially in the dotcom boom.

And here is the key point: Zuckerberg is brilliant because he actually created facebook. This was only possible because of the democracy of the web. In theory, anyone could buy a domain name for £10 and create the ‘next big thing’. He coupled this with an acute awareness of what users liked about the product: exclusivity, 100% uptime, the ability to ‘stalk’ your friends and people you meet. These are the fundamental tenets of the facebook user experience – and he didn’t need a UXer to tell him.

“You know, you really don’t need a forensics team to get to the bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.”
Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network

As user experience designers and visual designers it is easy to get carried away with big ideas and things you’d love to see on screen. But we cannot make anything on our own. I fundamentally believe in the viability of our unique role and the special skills we bring to a team (empathy for users, user research, detailed planning, communication skills etc.) but it’s important to be able to do as much as we can to create websites. Get your hands dirty. Maintain your own site. Better, learn to code. At the very least, have great respect for web developers.

Let’s not become the Winklevii.

July 24, 2008

The user experience of a toilet on South West Trains

Whitney Hess’s recent post about the user experience of a staircase reminded me that user experience design is everywhere and affects us everyday. Don Norman’s seminal work The design of everyday things analyses the design of many objects, such as telephones and doors. I came across this terrible design recently and had to share it here.

There’s not a lot you ask for when using a toilet. A reasonably quiet, clean & private space will usually do – of course with a functioning lavatory.

We’ve all used the loo – or ‘restroom’ a million times, so you’d think it was not a difficult thing for designers to get right. They’ve had enough practice over the years.

Toilet door

Bog standard: a normal toilet door complete with lock, coat hook and roll

The user’s goals are quite simple: relieve myself in private, quickly and cleanly. We need a cubicle with a lockable door, preferably with a coat hook. The lock should ideally be some kind of obvious knob or handle that provides visual and/or tactile feedback to confirm it is successfully locked. The user can always pull or push the door a little to confirm that the door will not open.

There are rarely instructional signs or notices in a restroom – it’s obvious from the design of the elements along with our own experiences how to achieve our goals. The Please wash your hands reminder provides a different, ‘reminder’ function and is not instructional as such.

We’ve all used the restroom a million times, so you’d think it was not a difficult thing for designers to get right

A visual indicator on the outside of the door is a nice touch – it provides reassurance for the user that they will not have others pushing on the door; and it gives anyone sizing up the cubicle considering whether to try the door a clear indicator that the door is locked. A red/green indicator is common.

The key point is that privacy is a massive issue here. There should be no possibility of an embarrassing situation involving a user literally caught with their trousers down. It is unthinkable, particularly in the workplace but everywhere.

Toilet cubicle

Topographic view of a standard toilet cubicle

The standard toilet cubicle, such as the one shown here, has worked for centuries and is intuitive to use.

The toilets on South West Trains

So why, then, have the UK’s South West Trains got it so wrong? Their trains are otherwise great. They seem clean, fast, efficient and comfortable.

The toilets are an attempt to use a ‘high-tech’ system to operate the toilet. There is a large, rounded sliding door which is operated by buttons positioned on the outside and inside of the cubicle, as shown below:

South west trains toilet diagram

The design of a toilet on South West Trains

The buttons to enter the cubicle work ok. You have a set of Open and Close buttons, which are in the same style as the ones used to open the main train doors when boarding.

So you hit open, the door slides open, and you go inside. You have to look around for the close button because it is not immediately obvious where it is – it’s positioned opposite you as you enter, quite low down. The three buttons in a row are shown here.

Once you have located the close button the door slides shut, and the Lock button flashes slowly to indicate it needs to be pressed in order to lock the door. But this is far too subtle, and not intuitve. Consequently, it is very likely that the user will assume the door is locked and proceed with their business. Once the Lock button is pressed, the light stays solidly lit, as shown in the photo.

Buttons on South West Trains toilet

3 buttons for operating the toilet door

The key point is this: the feedback mechanism of the light on the lock button is not sufficient to communicate to the user that the door is locked or unlocked. By trying to emulate the door mechanism for the main train doors on the toilet doors the designers have made the toilets very difficult and unintuitive to use.

The net result is that it is very likely that embarrassing situations will occur. This is not the fault of the user but the designer.

I would question the need for a Lock button at all – as a user, when are you going to want to go in to a toilet cubicle and not lock the door? The designers should just make the door lock automatically – as the user might reasonably assume it has from the flashing light on the Lock button.

This is an example of very unfortunate bad design – not quite the Chernobyl incident cited in Norman’s The design of everyday things, but nonetheless a bad design that I bet has lead to hundreds or thousands of uncomfortable situations for users.

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Update: I found Anders Ramsay’s article on New York City public toilet design. There’s also an OK/Cancel article on the usability of urinals.

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