experience, human interaction, & process improvement brought to you by Matthew Oliphant

I was wondering what to write today, staring at the blank textarea as usual, when I realized I really needed to pee. Stay with me here.

And so, I walked to the restroom and did so. And that’s when I realized what I wanted to write about.

Here Begineth the Rant

… Men… honestly. How can you aim wrong while peeing into a urinal? Are you in that much of a hurry? Do you think you need to stand back 10 feet? I don’t understand …

This is what goes through my mind, more often then I’d like, when I use a public restroom. I become greatly annoyed and I can’t for the life of me figure out how anyone could do it wrong.

Which got me thinking: is this a situation of user error or a flaw in the interaction design?

A Peeing Experience By Design

Let’s think this through… If the Urinal was first patented in 1866 that means there’s been 142 years of opportunity to iterate on the design and the experience. And yet we still see yellowish stains or puddles on the floor in front of most public urinals.

I know, kinda gross but let’s leave our willies at the door on this one. I mean, the heebie-jeebie kind of willies, not… oh never mind. Just accept that all humans pee and it’s a natural thing and there’s something wrong with the way it works in public. I mean public restrooms. In public is another issue altogether.

The urinal is designed such that a man can aim in a limited arc along a horizontal plane. The sides of the urinal wrap some to allow for left or right side aiming to take place, thus limiting the amount of splash-back from the main “face” of the urinal. A protrusion at the bottom helps to catch the stream of “down aimers.”

Ideally, if the man stood within a few inches of the opening of the urinal he should have no trouble urinating without making a mess. At least, that’s the intention of the urinal’s design.

Why No Iteration

A lot can be assumed about the Peeing Experience by experiencing it oneself. One can also easily assess environmental factors. It’s even possible to understand some of the ergonomic hurdles to urinating successfully.

But one of the best ways Interaction Designers figure out what’s wrong with the current state of a design or experience is to observe the practice in its natural setting (contextual inquiry).

But therein lies the problem. Can you imagine the recruitment process?

Hi, I’m a designer currently working on a new interaction paradigm for the excretion of bodily fluid of the wastial variety. I’d like to observe you “doing your business” so to speak from 10:00 to 10:15 this Friday at your workplace.

I’ll watch you urinate and ask you some questions about your experience; about your approach to the urinal, what problems you might have urinating, and what you like most about using a urinal. I’ll also ask you to fill out a short demographic survey (after you wash your hand of course!).

We likely won’t use the entire 15 minutes, but I’ve padded our time just in case you aren’t able to relax enough to make.

Um… no.

More Research Is Needed

This is physical harm problem. I’ve taken a light hand here, but puddles of liquid on a tile floor are often a recipe for disaster and pain. Hence why companies put up “Caution: Wet Floor” signs after one-too-many courtroom appearances.

It’s a public health problem. Many diseases are transmitted via bodily fluids. A good design can help limit the likelihood of transmission, but perhaps it is also about behavior.

It’s a trust issue. You’ve been to restaurants that have messy bathrooms, right? How does that make you feel about the quality of the dining experience? Maybe you don’t think about it consciously at the time, but restroom cleanliness is one of the review factors for health inspections. Dirty restrooms are often an indication of a larger sanitation problem.

Yes, I thought about peeing from a Design perspective and tried to make you think about it too. Hopefully I did that in a non-icky way.

What gross thing/experience have you redesigned recently?

Sagan and I have been singing Bad Horse from Dr. Horrible off and on since it came out last month.

There was an open mic night at the café across from where we live and Sagan got the idea that we should sing.

And of course, as these things often go, I ended up… Well, let’s just say that tonight I put the horrible in Dr. Horrible.

Minor caveat before we get going here: Yes, I’ve been getting coffee at Starbucks of late. There isn’t a better place for coffee that’s anywhere near my home or work. For those that know me… well, I am sorry.

A long time ago, in a state far, far away I used to be a Barista. Of course back then we didn’t call it “Barista.” We called it “working in a café.”

When I first started, we had a real hard-ass manager. Thankfully.

He’d sit out with the customers and watch us work, every once in a while glancing at his stopwatch. I worked in a place that would often do 2000 drinks in a day. I’ll do the math for you. That’s about 2.5 drinks a minute (on average).

When you are producing 2.5 drinks a minute you can’t have any bottlenecks in the process. Here was the set up with 4 people:

Register This was the person who took the drink orders, took the money, and got the regular coffee (non-espresso) drinks.

Shots This person pulled all the espresso shots, syruped up the cups and told the Milk person what was coming down the line.

Milk This person steamed all the milk, did whipped cream, capped the cups, and was the last customer contact in the process so they were also the “have a good day” person.

Barback Very important position. Kept everything stocked, cleaned tables, dealt with bean orders, washed dishes. Made sure they place runs smoothly. Which is everyone’s job, but particularly the Barback.

Every half hour or so we’d all switch one position down the line so we wouldn’t get bored and to just shake things up. We would also randomly spring into dance, singing Hava Nagila, but that’s another story for another time.

“Interesting.” But…?

Here is where Starbucks comes in…

This morning, I stopped by the Starbucks that’s about half-way between my house and work. I was there for almost 15 minutes. All for a quad Americano.

There were 5 workers behind the counter. One on the register, one doing all the drinks, two taking orders and getting backed goods, and one cleaning tables. As I stood there, I channeled that hard-ass manager, looking for the single point of failure. I found several.

There were 6 people waiting for their drinks ahead of me. There were 7 people waiting in line behind me by the time I ordered and by the time I left there were roughly 20 people in the place, none of whom were sitting at the tables.

Earlier this year, Starbucks shut down for a day to retrain everyone. Quality is important, and whether the Training Day worked in the respect is up for debate, but in a café where your primary customer is a grab-and-go, speed is almost more important than quality.

How to Fix it

The café model I learned from is a good one. But there are some specific factors to take into consideration in any redesign. Start with asking good questions.

Environment Such a key factor when designing a physical space. Where do customers enter? Do they exit the same way? How long can the line be before people are waiting outside? Where do people wait for their drinks?

A café is entirely about Flow. When the Flow breaks down, the customers lose confidence. Confidence in quality and in their ability to get to their next stop on time. You have to take the customer’s goals in mind. If you are building a Café where you want people to sit for hours on end, obviously you are going to make different choices, but here we are talking about speed.

Efficiency Where are the bottlenecks? What blocks you from achieving your goals? What do you lose by completely removing those blocks?

Let’s say instead of keeping me there for 15 minutes you want to keep me there for less than 3 minutes. How can you make that happen?

Effect Okay, so I am enjoying some alliteration here… If you are able to answer the previous questions, you need to know how things are changing. You know how many people you get during the morning rush so you need to keep track how that changes based on the changes you make. This is more of a long-term measurement, but one that needs to be looked at daily.

How much time passes from when I enter the building to when I leave? You have to keep track even if that means someone sits in the corner with a stopwatch.

Great. Now I know how to redesign Starbucks. Thanks.

I am only using Starbucks as an example here. When you start to think in terms of “everything is an interface/interaction” you can do a lot to make things better by applying general Design methods and principles. I think talking in terms of concrete example is the best way (for me at least) to get a point across.

Everything gets designed. How well things are designed usually depends on how good your questions are at the beginning.

What did you design/redesign on your way to work today?

I have wondered before whether an architect or interior designer, upon starting a new project, goes back to see how their previous work is being used.

Do they wonder how the inhabitants of the buildings they’ve worked on changed the space or if the inhabitants have adapted in negative ways?

Here’s my case in point.

Someone here at work, probably walking up the stairs, likely hit or scraped their shoulder on the post that attaches the glass retainer above the stairwell to the wall. My guess is it has happened more than once and someone got fed up and redesigned the post.

If I were the architect or interior designer (not sure whose shoulders this falls on) of this building and I saw this… I’d feel ashamed. In software terms, this is the equivalent of sticky notes on the monitor, or cheat sheets, or… training! Something that had to be made in order to get the user safely around the poorly designed interface.

Post-Launch Assessment

Design is a cyclical process. At least that’s how I view it. And viewing it that way provides me with more work, which equals more money so you should agree with me. :)

It isn’t enough to design something, test it, build it, then launch. If you plan on maintaining what you launch (or your client does) you need to understand how people interact with and use what you’ve made.

That means giving them a few months to use it, then going out and seeing what they’ve done to make things better. Your findings can lead into the next round of requirements for v2. This is why having someone who is good at interviewing people (interaction designers, HCI people, usability specialists, whathaveyou) involved in all aspects of the design and development cycle.

These are the people you can rely on to tell you about the sticky notes, cheat sheets, and tennis balls.

Artifacts

Some of the workarounds I’ve mentioned are artifacts: physical items that help users deal with their everyday world. You won’t find them with a survey, or a remote usability test, or reading tech support tickets.

You have to step into the user’s world and see how they live. If you are in the biz, this is your Contextual Inquiry or Ethnography. But you don’t need fancy names to make a case for getting out into the user’s domain and talking with them.

Yes, it has a cost and it can be high. But it also has a distinct reward: you never know what people are really going to do with your product until you watch them use it. There could be opportunities abound.

Opportunities not only to fix problems you introduced in your design (for you will introduce problems) but gaps you didn’t know were there in the first place that you can fill with future revs or alternate products.

Consider

The next time you deliver a design to a client, or ship a product from your company consider including a free tennis ball for your customer. They probably won’t understand why, but then again you never know when a tennis ball will be handy to have around.

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Actually, I haven’t slept well for the past 7 years, 9 months, and 19 days. Guess how old my daughter is!

But I can’t blame my daughter. The fault is entirely mine. I need to design a better sleep experience for myself. The following post may make you think, “Well, duh” and possibly “What does sleep have to do with design and usability?” Both of which are fair. But I think people often take certain things for granted, like sleep, and if you break the process down you might find areas for improvement.

Like any redesign (or realign, if you like), you can’t (or shouldn’t) fix something until you identify precisely what’s broken.

Break It Down

I am going to use me as the template for this, but hopefully you can extract something relative to you.

What’s the goal? Better sleep. Feel more rested. Feel less tired during the day. Stop having nightmares about Vidal Sassoon.

What is happening now? Have trouble going to sleep. Mind is overly active when it’s bed time. Wake up a lot at night. Have trouble getting out of bed when it’s time.

What can you control? Bed time. Wake up time. Room temperature. Pillow type. Mattress type. Before- and after-sleep routines. Exercise.

What can you influence? Sleeping arrangements (alone, dealing with a blanket hog, etc.).

What is out of scope? Killing neighbors who play loud music late at night. Getting prescription medication (at least for now). Entering into Sleep Therapy (for now).

Design Solutions

That’s a good start. It may not be all-inclusive but it’s probably enough to get up and running. Er, I mean, down and sleeping.

Turn off the TV. Turn off the computer There are plenty of studies referencing this. Google it if you don’t believe me. But likely you aren’t surprised by this. The light from monitors, especially modern LCDs, is bright and can trick your brain into thinking it’s “active” time. That and the fact that TV kills your brain.

At least a half-hour before bed, turn off all electronics. Give your brain a chance to finish processing some of the stuff you were watching/doing and start thinking in terms of sleep.

Don’t read. Reading makes your brain work. Much the same with TV or the computer, stop reading at least a half-hour before bed.

Breathe deeply. Take a few deep breaths. “Deep” meaning your stomach pooches out, and you inhale and exhale slowly. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Doing this 5 to 10 times in a row, at any time of the day, will calm your mind and body substantially.

Create a routine. Decide on a time that your bedtime routine will begin. Take into consideration how long you want to sleep and work back from that. If you want to sleep for 6 hours a night, start the process 7 hours before you need to get up. Always do the same things (brush teeth, etc.) in the same order.

When the alarm goes off, get up. Read that last sentence again. Then do it. Seriously. Before I was introduced to the concept of a Snooze Button (thanks for nothing, Claire!) I would get up when the alarm went off.

I realise this sounds tedious, but repetition is a way to learn that most people respond well to, and you are teaching your brain and body to sleep better.

Measure Success

How will you know it’s working or not working? Having a general feeling about your progress is fine, but if things aren’t progressing the way you want you’ll probably want to be measuring daily.

Keep a sleep journal. If you are like me, this sounds like a lame idea. But when I think in terms of being able to measure something, notes over time (trending) can be extremely helpful. Note the time you stopped interacting with electronics. Note if your mind felt active before falling asleep. Note how many time you wake up at night. Etc., etc., etc.

Define your trial period. How long are you going to test your solutions? I’d suggest a month with this one. There are so many factors that are outside our control or influence that can hinder our ability to get good sleep. Stress, weather, sickness… these factors need to be taken into account. You can then adjust for them with your sleep journal to see how well you are making progress.

Iterate. Iterate. Iterate.

You might get lucky and your first month gets you where you want to be. But if your first test doesn’t work out, don’t give up. It just means you found a way that doesn’t work and need to adjust something to get you pointed in the right direction.

If you are going to spend roughly one-third of your life doing something, you might as well try to do it as good as possible.

This isn’t one of those “Sorry I haven’t updated in, like, forEVER” posts.

Well, it is except for the “sorry” part. My blog, my rules, etc.

Point being, I got a little tired of blogging. I’d started many posts over the last few months only to stare at the blank canvas of this text area. I never felt like I had anything to say about anything under the User Experience umbrella. Plus, I was a Twitterholic so most of my “communicate with the world” needs were taken care of there. :)

I redesigned my now old site this month with the thought that I would start writing again. Yet still I got stuck staring at the blank canvas. I think I just needed to start anew.

So here we are.

What will this place be? As the title indicates, I will be writing about improving experiences, human interactions, and processes. I believe that user-centered design (really a user-business balance) techniques can be applied to all of those things.

usabilityworks.org will still be up though I won’t update there anymore. I hope this will be an interesting place for you.