Visionary insights come from thinking more about human needs than technological possibilities. Ben Shneiderman Leonardo’s Laptop: Human needs and the new computing technologies
Shneiderman writes about the success of Palm handhelds:
The surprise was that users were willing to learn a variant of the English alphabet called Grafitti so that they could enter data … [a great surprise] in light of the [earlier] failure of the Apple Newton, which offered recognition for handwritten words…. Most users feel responsible for Graffiti stroke recognition errors, whereas they tended to blame the Newton for word recognition failures.
I would like to think that the lesson is something about the simplicity of the Graffiti stroke system, vs. the complexity of handwriting recognition … but I’ve used a Palm, and I haven’t found the Graffiti system is astonishingly accurate, so I think that Shneiderman has given us the right answer: users feel responsible.
So, the real lesson is very simple, and it’s about expectation setting. Palm, by telling you up front that there was no handwriting recognition, but that instead you needed to communicate with the tool using these special strokes … put the burden on you. Apple, by telling you the tool could read handwriting, put the burden on the tool. Of course, there were obviously many other factors involved — and timing was certainly one of them. But it seems that the important lesson is about controlling the expectations of your users.
What we learned is that people are willing to put up with quirky software if they can be convinced that any problems are their own fault. Based on what we know about users, you would expect them to be annoyed when they first start using the tool at how hard it is (ok, I know it’s not that hard, I have a Palm — but it’s significantly harder than writing in a Moleskine). Because of the way that it’s marketed, pitched, and explained … the users of the Palm blame themselves, and thus don’t get angry at the technology.
Incidentally, this expectation stuff might help fans of Linux and Mac OS X understand the current computer marketplace. In fact, I’d wager that this is the only way that Windows’ market share dominance can be attacked. If you can figure out how to advertise (without insulting Windows users) so as to raise expectations of software … you may be able to reach a point where the majority of people will become dissatisfied with their current platform.
Technorati Tags: lessons, newton, apple, palm, user experience, friction, expectations
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