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By Root 2596 0

can design something for other humans just as well as the trained interface expert. It’s really interesting to watch engineers and computer scientists go about designing a product. They argue and argue about how to do things, generally with a sincere desire to do the right thing for the user. But when it comes to assessing the tradeoffs between the user interface and internal resources in a product, they almost always tend to simplify their own lives. They will have to do the work, they try to make the internal machine architecture as simple as possible. Internal design elegance sometimes maps to user interface elegance, but not always. Design teams really need vocal advocates for the people who will ultimately use the interface.”15

Designers have become so proficient with the product that they can no longer perceive or understand the areas that are apt to cause difficulties. Even when designers become users, their deep understanding and close contact with the device they are designing means that they operate it almost entirely from knowledge in the head. The user, especially the first-time or infrequent user, must rely almost entirely on knowledge in the world. That is a big difference, fundamental to the design.

Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made. And if the designer cannot anticipate errors, then the design cannot minimize their occurrence or their ramifications.

THE DESIGNER’S CLIENTS MAY NOT BE USERS

Designers must please their clients, who are often not the end users. Consider major household appliances such as stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers, and clothes washers and dryers; and faucets and thermostats for heating and air conditioning systems. They are often purchased by housing developers or landlords. In business, purchasing departments make decisions for large companies and owners or managers make decisions in small companies. In all these cases, the purchaser is probably interested primarily in price, perhaps in size or appearance, almost certainly not in usability. And once devices are purchased and installed, the purchaser has no further interest in them. The manufacturer is primarily concerned about these decision makers, its immediate customers, not the eventual users.

In some situations cost must be put first, especially in government or industry. In my university, copying machines are purchased by the Printing and Duplicating Center, then dispersed to the various departments. The copiers are purchased after a formal “request for proposals” has gone out to manufacturers and dealers of machines. The selection is almost always based solely on price, plus a consideration of the cost of maintenance. Usability? Not considered. The state of California requires by law that universities purchase things on a price basis; there are no legal requirements regarding understandability or usability of the product. That is one reason we get unusable copying machines and telephone systems. If users complained strongly enough, usability could become a requirement in the purchasing specifications, and that demand could trickle back to the designers. But without this feedback, designers must often design the cheapest possible products because those are what sell.

Designers face a tough task. They answer to their clients, and it may be hard to find out who the actual users are. Sometimes they are even prohibited from contacting the users for fear they will incidentally reveal company plans for new products or mislead users into believing that new products are about to be developed. The design process is a captive of corporate bureaucracy, with each stage in the process adding its own assessment and dictating the changes it believes essential for its concerns. The design is almost certainly altered as it leaves the designers and proceeds through manufacturing and marketing. All participants are well intentioned, and their particular concerns are legitimate. The