MobHappy on: Never Underestimate the Ingenuity of Fools

I had a boss who would always said to me that one never can never underestimate the ways someone can screw something up (he meant scientists in the lab) - one of his many great managerial suggestions. So, it is with a smirk of appreciation that I read Russ' ruminations on the same topic, in consumer electronics (link below).

I'd like to wave my own banner here and say that when I was in the early days marketing s60, I kept jumping around saying how we should create some sort of Help Corps of folks who go around and provide free tips to any s60 user.

One counter-comment was 'if it's so easy to use, then why do we have to show people?'.

Eh. Wrong thought. And now I have an answer: 'Yes, it's easy to use - IF you know the usability metaphor.'

I saw this first-time-use issue pop up a number of times (here, a story about my clever, inventor, niece). The last time this came up with me was with my new Suunto t6. I fiddled with it for a few minutes when I got it, then realized I couldn't figure out the metaphor (it was slightly different than other simpler watches I was used to). A quick trip to the manual revealed the basic UI metaphor, and that was it - I have no problem navigating and setting things on the phone.

Basically, first-time use is a major hurdle we all need to help folks over.

As for the unused features. Well, I have always said we are overserving the user.

Link: Never Underestimate the Ingenuity of Fools at MobHappy.

User error seems to be something of a theme here this week, with loads of comments on my What a Waste post about the ineffectiveness of Wap Push. The consensus seems to be that at least part of the problem is the user not knowing how to respond to a message or being unable to find it when it does arrive.

So it’s interesting to read about a new survey that suggests that of the one in seven phones returned by users as faulty, 63% have nothing wrong with them whatsoever. Let’s not forget, these devices aren’t something that have been rushed out in someone’s lunch hour, but something that incredibly intelligent and dedicated teams have spent many hours and much money designing, creating and honing and (you’d hope) running exhaustive usability tests on them.