(illustration: ExhibitorOnline via Church of the Customer Blog)

Some people make usability a priority because they think it's important to make the product as good as possible (intrinsic motivation), others are motivated because of what a lack of usability might cost them in terms of product returns, help-desk calls, or degradation of brand image. An argument that is often heard is that poor usability will damage your brand image because it will result in poor word of mouth and that good usability will result in more satisfied customers and thus good word of mouth. Seth Godin gives a number of reasons why word of mouth might not happen, among which:

It might not feel cutting edge enough for your crowd. So, it's not the thing that's embarrassing, it's the fact they you just found out about it. Don't bring up your brand new Tivo with your friends from MIT. They'll sneer at you.

I recently flew with KLM to Asia on a Boeing 777-200/200ER and was overjoyed: KLM finally switched to personal inflight entertainment systems (previously KLM still had a couple of these big CRT screens hovering over the isle like this). However, the joy was not to last for long.

Tilt screens that don't tilt (enough)
As you might know the viewing angle of an LCD screen can be somewhat limited. As you also know people come in varying sizes, ranging from 1.6 to a good 2 meters long. To overcome the resulting variation in eye height, the LCD screens were mounted so they could be rotated up and down. Slightly. And there was the catch. As soon as the passenger in front of me tilted his chair backwards it turned out that my screen couldn't be tilted enough to compensate, and I couldn't see my movie anymore. And it wasn't just the passenger in front of me: people are bound to tilt their chair backwards on a 13 hour flight. The only way to finish my movie was to retract my head between my shoulders and slouch down in my chair. To ease my aching back a little, I could take a look around and see everyone who was watching a movie in a similar position.

Remote control stowing location (+no lock)
Then I decided to go to sleep and bumped into the next unpleasant surprise. Literally. The remote control of the entertainment system was stored in the armrest. However, while asleep you move around a little to find a comfortable position (which actually means you move around quite a lot if you are in economy class chairs). Unfortunately, there was no 'lock' on the remote control (or non that I could find). And as a consequence I accidentally activated the entertainment system with my hip time and time again, each time being woken up by the light from the LCD screen. Just to show you that it is possible to do it differently: here's a system where the remote is stowed in the backrest, just like the screen.

Puzzling UI and controller

And finally there was the puzzling controller and UI (photo: similar controller, different airline) which had the most peculiar mapping of controls and behaved differently in each part of the system (third party components maybe?). Here's how 'vandewal' describes it on Flickr:

The m&m's are the game pad with normal colorings if you turn it 90 degrees to the left. Having them as dual use, depending on what part of the entertainment system you are in is rather wonky. I got used to it after a bit. The menus did not keep to the same convention even in the same part of the system.

Why did nobody see this?
I was (and still am) wondering how it was possible that Boeing, KLM and their supplier could have missed out on such basic ergonomic issues. It's something that a first year Industrial Design Engineering student with an ergonomic handbook could have figured out. And then I ran into these pictures of a Thales demo setup of a new in-flight entertainment system for NWA staff and management. And yes, you're seeing that correctly: only the row in front of the 'participants' are actual airline chairs. The test participants are sitting on office chairs. I don't know who tested the system I ran into, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was done in a similar way.

Will it be fixed?
Wasn't there anything good about the system? Yes: a good selection of movies, you could switch to the flight data any time you wanted (I have a curious nature), and you could learn about the language and culture of your destination. Pretty decent. However, because of all the discomfort I was still disappointed enough to e-mail KLM customer service to bring the issue to their attention. I got a nice reply saying that they would mention the issue to the management responsible for in-flight entertainment. I'm not really expecting any short term changes (ergonomics usually is not very high on management's agenda, because you sound silly when you pronounce that word), but then again, they might complain to their suppliers. Because on its website Boeing says about the in-flight entertainment on the 777:

When properly integrated (hear, hear, ed.), in-flight systems can create strong passenger loyalty and revenue for you. [...] Our unparalleled industry knowledge as an OEM and willingness to listen to your needs will result in getting the maximum benefit from your systems.

One recommendation for KLM and Boeing management: travel economy class every once in a while...

Note: the picture of the screen at the beginning of the post is not the system that is discussed here.

Back in the beginning of 2007, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer explains why a Motorola Smartphone running Windows Mobile is a better choice than a $500 iPhone.

You can get a Motorola Q-Phone now for $99. It'll do music, it'll do Internet, it'll do e-mail, it'll do instant messaging. I kind of look at that and I like our strategy, I like it a lot.

Steve makes an excellent point here. And that it is not just about what your device "will do", but also about how it does that. I get the feeling that iPhone is competing more on its UI than on its feature set. Well, as Ballmer said: let the results speak for themselves.

In six months they (Apple, ed.) will have the most expensive phone - by far - ever in the market place. And... let's see. Let's see how the competition goes.

Anyone seen any Europeans importing and hacking a Motorola Q-Phone lately? Because that's how badly people want an iPhone here in the Netherlands.

UPDATE
Dismissing the iPhone might be a Chief Execs disease. Chiquita's CIO: "I don't think iPhone brings anything new to the table. It has a great user experience, but that's all." [Via Etre]

UPA2008: Usability Through Holistic Practice, June 16-20, 2008, Baltimore, USA
"Many types of professionals touch the user experience of a product. Marketing specialists, graphic designers, computer scientists, business analysts, psychologists, information architects, technical writers and others bring valuable perspectives to usability and user experience. UPA 2008 invites you to share perspectives and learn from the experiences of other practitioners."

MobileHCI2008, 2-5 September 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
"The MobileHCI series provides a forum for academics and practitioners to discuss the challenges and potential solutions for effective interaction with mobile systems and services. It covers the design, evaluation and application of techniques and approaches for all mobile and wearable computing devices and services."

52nd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, September 22-26, 2008, New York, USA
"The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting is the primary gathering of researchers and practitioners in the field of human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) and related areas. The 52nd Annual Meeting will be a special celebration of our historical foundations and views of the future of our profession."

NordiCHI2008: Using Bridges, 20-22 October, 2008, Lund, Sweden
"NordiCHI is the main Nordic forum for human-computer interaction research. NordiCHI is the meeting place for researchers from academia and industry, designers, practitioners, educators and others from a broad range of traditions and communities."

UPA Europe2008: Usability and Design, December 4th, 5th and 6th, 2008, Turin, Italy
"Usability and design are professional approaches that are often seen separately. Usability is perceived to be focused on establishing standards, rather than a culture of practices to make products and services simpler, easier, and more pleasant to us. Design on the other hand is often connected to creativity and innovation. This conceptual separation - which this conference sets out to overcome - is reflected in how the consultancy market is composed, how companies organise their staff, and the different professional languages in use."

CHI2009, 5-9 April, 2009, Boston, USA,
"Computing is reaching into all parts of modern life. CHI 2009 will be the showcase for the technologies, designs and ideas that will form the new world of digital life. There are many exciting new ways in which computing can improve life in many parts of the world. CHI 2009 will be the place to see that happen."

HCI International 2009, 19-24 July, 2009, San Diego, CA, USA,
"The HCI International 2009 invite you to participate and contribute to the international forum for the dissemination and exchange of up-to-date scientific information on theoretical, generic and applied areas of HCI. The Conference will start with three days of tutorials. Parallel sessions, poster sessions and the exhibition will be held during the last three days of the conference."

UPA 2009 Annual Meeting, 8-12 June, 2009, Portland, Oregon
- No information available yet -

17th World Congress on Ergonomics, IEA2009, August 9-14, 2009, Beijing, China
"The theme of the congress is 'partnerships in ergonomics: changes, challenges and opportunities'. This theme reflects the current debates in the ergonomics domain. As a multidisciplinary science, ergonomics has changed and grown over the last 50 years to now cover 26 different technical areas operationalize through technical committees (TC). Each TC enables researchers and practitioners to share together in a wide diversity of areas from agricultural challenges in developing countries to aerospace ergonomics. The relative size of the ergonomics science is small compared with the primary sciences such as engineering and medicine. The future growth of our domain will depend on mutual recognition and partnerships with external groups such as related professional associations and international bodies who also research and practice in industry."

Complete overview of UI, UX and usability conferences
For a complete overview of interaction and usability-related conferences, check the UX-networks calendar page.

Three-in-one laptop sleeve/stand/cooling aid
The Computer Couch is a laptop accessory that is ergonomic, aids cooling and can be used as a sleeve as well. Bram de Zwart, Master’s student at IDE in Delft, conceived the accessory during a scholarship at the Politecnico di Milano, together with fellow exchange student Martin Fleckenstein. For the Concept Design Studio course under Scottsman Norman McNally they had to conceive a product, make thirty prototypes and sell these during a concluding fair annex presentation. They sold all thirty prototypes and got a 10 (maximum grade) for their design.

Inspiration from observation
The inspiration for their product came from observing students that were using all kinds of solutions to work outside with their laptops. “Often they'd put a book underneath it to be able to type more comfortably, and to cool the device better” (which in warmer cities like Milan is an issue).

In the shops by the end of 2008
The Dutch company BakkerElkhuizen Ergonomie, which has obtained the exclusive rights to develop and sell the product, is expecting to have the device in the shops by the end of 2008. Zwart made the original prototype from a bathroom mat, velcro, some string and elastic band. I wonder what BakkerElkhuizen will charge for that.

See also:
Design.nl: computer couch helps laptop users
English page, TU Delft university newspaper: bright idea

User-Centred Design for Sustainable Behaviour
Time for a small celebration. A paper that Renee Wever (also from TU Delft), Casper Boks (NTNU Norway) and I wrote together has been accepted for the first issue of the new International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, published by Taylor and Francis. It is entitled 'User-centred Design for Sustainable Behaviour' and in it we explore the possibilities of using product design to nudge users towards more sustainable product use. Most 'traditional' eco-design approaches have focused on cleaner production, creating more efficient products (using less resources), and recycling issues, however, less attention has been paid at how to include the users in this picture.

Getting users to behave 'green'
Many modern cars prevent us from making mistakes that will cost us a lot of time and effort. For example, they make it impossible to lock the driver-seat door from the outside without using the key. This prevents you from leaving your keys inside the vehicle and locking yourself out. In other words: the car prevents you from producing unfavorable side-effects. In this paper we explore the possibility of influencing user-product interaction through the design of the product with the aim of improving the sustainability of product use.

Four design strategies
We provide a typology of four user-centered design strategies for inducing sustainable behavior.

• Functionality matching: adapt a product better to the actual use by consumers and thereby try to minimize negative side effects;
• Eco-feedback: the user is presented with specific information on the impact of his or her current behavior, and it is left to the user to relate this information to his or her own behaviour, and adapt this behaviour, or not;
• Scripting: creating obstacles for unsustainable use, or making sustainable behaviour so easy, it is performed almost without thinking about it;
• Forced functionality: making products adapt automatically to changing circumstances, or to design-in strong obstacles to prevent unsustainable behaviour.

The four strategies are supported with examples from packaging, automotive and consumer electronics.

Download
You can download a full (preprint) version of the paper from my research website. In time the final version will become available through the website of the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering.
UPDATE: the full version is now available online at the journal website.

Abstract
Traditional eco-design has a strong focus on the supply side. Even when focusing on the use phase of products, still impacts directly under the control of the manufacturer dominate. However, the way users interact with a product may strongly influence the environmental impact of a product. Designers can try to influence this behaviour through the products they design. Several strategies have been proposed in the literature, such as eco-feedback and scripting. Existing literature in this field has its limitations. Publications either focus on a single strategy, or do not take a design perspective, or lack empirical data.  This paper will present a typology of the different strategies available to designers. This typology will be illustrated with examples and experiments related to two sustainability problems, namely littering behaviour and energy using products. Furthermore a methodology will be presented for applying these strategies. This will be demonstrated in a case study on an energy meter.

Keywords: product design, user-centered design, sustainable behavior, sustainability, eco-feedback, scripting.

Disclaimer
This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form will be published in the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering. © 2008 Taylor & Francis; International Journal of Sustainable Engineering is available online at: http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/

Business Week reports on two initiatives of Nokia to actively include users in product development and innovation. The OpenStudio project had Nokia designers travel all around the world to ask users to sketch their dream cell phones, which included the inhabitants of shantytowns in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Accra in Ghana. See some examples of the dream phone sketches here.
On the Nokia BetaLabs website users can download, try, and comment on a beta release of applications that Nokia developers are currently working on. The site seems to hit the mark. The SportsTacker application was wildly popular, users provided tons of suggestions, and gave the developers the insight that the device could be used way beyond it's original intention.

Eventually more than 1 million people downloaded the program and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding. More importantly, the users avidly provided criticism that Nokia then used to make improvements

The BetaLabs site also features a blog to in turn respond to user feedback. Currently it's written by one person, Tommi Vilkamo, manager of Beta Labs. However, Vilkamo is planning to turn the blog over to software developers themselves, so they have direct contact with customers. "Before, there were too many middlemen between developers and users," he says. Hear, hear.

Read the full article at BusinessWeek: How Nokia Users Drive Innovation.
[via Core77]

(Illustration: simplicity according to Soaphia.com)

Simplicity is something to strive for apparently. Muji does it. Philips does it. Paris does it. It just might become the 'user-friendliness' of this decennium: an appealing, but somewhat vague notion of 'goodness' in interaction. We all agree: it should be there, but no one is exactly sure what it is. Or is really sure, but everyone else disagrees. To some it means getting what you need, to others it means leaving out the frills.

So, time for some clarification. Or perhaps we should say diversification. In Simplicity, the Ultimate Sophistication Joshua Porter brings a number of authors (gurus, blog-heads and indeed some actual designers) to the stage to speak their minds on simplicity, such as Don Norman, Mark Hurst, Scott Berkum and John Maeda. Porter himself adds some flavor to the subject by bringing out Barry Schwartz' paradox of choice and applying it to product design:

Users face a trade-off when they must make a choice between a simple product or a complex product with more features. If they choose the product with fewer features and eventually need some functionality that is missing, they've made a bad choice. However, when users choose the complex product with more features, they don't have to make this trade-off. The complex product is more likely to have the feature users may need in the future.

I usually call that the 'I-don't-know-what-that-feature-is-exactly-but-I-might-need-it-someday'-syndrome. Another worthwhile observation about simplicity can be found at GUUI.com, where Henrik Olsen points out the difference between avoiding visual complexity and providing true simplicity:

Usability is based on principles such as "Less is more" and "Keep it simple, stupid". But there is more to simplicity than meets the eye. By reducing visual complexity at the cost of structural simplicity, you will give your users a hard time understanding and navigating the content of a web site.

In other words: reducing the amount of buttons and adding a deep menu structure does not necessarily make a product easier to use. See also earlier uselog posts on expected usability. Meanwhile PresentationZen reviews John Maeda's book 'The Laws of Simplicity', and illustrates it (how appropriate) with some appealing visuals.