The day started wet, very wet. It had rained all night and still was raining. Initially I did not have any interview but then I received and email from Miles Rochford a User Experience Manager working for Google. Due to a conflict of timings on Thursday our initial meeting was cancelled. Miles indicated he was available today and if I headed into town he was happy to catch up. After receiving instruction on how to get to Victoria Station I was off come rain, hail or hopefully sunshine. Well it was not the type of sunshine I was hoping for, it was liquid format again. Two trains and a walk around the block and I arrived at the home of Google in London.
I meet Miles on the 5th floor of the building and we proceeded to the canteen to chat. In my rush to get to the appointment I had forgotten my recorder so I am relying on memory and Miles kind offer to stay in touch. We discussed a variety of things from Apple to Microsoft and Google. Some of my discussion that I had, had with these companies as well. Discussing in general my feel and the approach these companies were taking in the areas of User Experience.
Miles then discussed his background which was interesting to find out that he too was an Australian from Tasmania. He discussed his work before heading to Europe and then his time with Nokia and finally joining Google a year ago. Our discussions covered how companies are starting to change even thought still slowly with some. Finally realising that User Experience is a consideration which can potentially save money. An example was of a company which was having to reset password for their clients. It was calculated that each interaction cost twenty pounds of time, effort and resources. Not much when looking at one or two interactions but when you start to look at thousands and hundred of thousands this can become very expensive. Providing better user experience in being able to retrieve their own passwords and resetting them saved thousands of pounds.
The discussions covered many aspects of what Google is doing to improve their situation with respect to developers and assisting them to produce applications. Not only providing them Software Development Kits but principles for developing in this space and a many different examples to demonstrate the application of these design principles. The one nugget that I took away from this meeting was the discussion we had about legacy issues faced by all companies and how they handle it. Even Apple who own the total user experience is now having to face this as does Microsoft and other companies. Google too has to handle the situation where the manufacturers trying to create a difference also create issues for developers having to develop for multiple versions. This is similar to the situation with the browser wars in the past.
Hopefully with the new standard of HTML5 this may finally start to settle, but we have to wait and see if Microsoft comes out with a Microsoft HTML5 which will put them back into the same situation as Google with their multiple versions of Android. Fingers crossed and we don't have to go through that experience.
The issue with Legacy is where in trying to be innovative, that innovation has to be held back due to designed and constraints of the past. The other aspect is backwards compatibility. Microsoft has started to address that and have indicated the IE10 will not be backward compatible. So in some respect they are starting to draw the line. The other part is the user has a set-up of learning experience and to change totally mean that you are creating a new learning curve, with some users that will just frustrate their efforts to carry out their work. Consideration need to be made with the user in mind and the learning experience needs to offer a benefit and savings and not just for the sake of being different or new.
This is where User Experience really comes to the fore, by applying the knowledge of the user process required to carry out a task, we take advantage of that knowledge and reduce the training. That is based on the interface being intuitive to that process. In discussing this it highlighted some of the examples I have been seeing around the world being used by small business. I saw an example with a food truck. Who remembers everyone crowding around the truck to get your order in and waiting for the food. 1 or 2 people that's fine but what happens when there are 20, 30 or 50.
When I was at Microsoft in Boston we went around to a local food truck which produced vegetarian food. The interesting part was there were lots of people around but they were all waiting away from the truck. There were two ladies taking orders and money but they were entering the order on an iPhone. Your name and order were entered on the phone and money was handed over. I then noticed two more phones hanging up in the truck where the orders were received in order of them being placed. The food was prepared and the name called out. This was a very simple application using four iPhones and they were serving upto 40 people.
Another example which was in New York. A couple of years ago there were some mates who wanted to go to dinner. When they got to their favourite restaurant they had to put their name on a list. They were informed of a wait of 45-60min and to call back or hang around until they were called. They asked if they could be sms on their mobile, but this was too hard. At that point they came up with the idea of a OpenTable. This is an app which one can take requests at the door and then sms you when your table is ready but now they have to app where you can look up your favourite restaurant look for a vacancy at the time you want, book the table and then turn up. The responsibility being put on the patron but giving them the flexibility.
This is the new para-dime which Clay Shirky discusses in his book "Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age". Using social media and the generosity of users to supply the service and information to a task that would have cost businesses in the past someone of their staff to do this task. Now the customer manages their time and flexibility and books their own table re-leaving business of that task. Thus freeing them to provide more and better services.
So in taking a situation which was frustrating for both the patrons and the business. This application now give the user the ability to manage their table bookings and the business to better server the customer just by looking at the user experience as well as taking advantage of the Connected Age.
Tomorrow, well its now today I will be going to Maidstone in Kent to talk with the people responsible for Child Protection and their use of mobile technology and see how they have addressed the issue of usability.
Signing off 1am
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