NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Daniel Russell: "Google Innovation - Culture and Practices" + a few comments
Daniel Russell: "Google Innovation - Culture and Practices" + a few comments http://j.mp/hiAliH (This posting on Google Buzz) - - - http://j.mp/gcNiVs (YouTube / ~1 hour) This is an excellent presentation by Google's Daniel Russell from a few days ago at UC Berkeley. Highly recommended. I can't resist making a few comments since several of his topics are very close to my heart. I can certainly confirm that a very large percentage of users don't know how to search Web pages with control-F, and that (from what I've observed, anyway) they may quickly abandon searches if they can't find the search terms of interest on a resulting page via linear reading. This is of course exacerbated by a painful yet simple truth: Not only will most users not "read the manual/instructions/documentation" (online or not) before using a system (assuming such docs exist), they will only rarely use "help" mechanisms even when they have problems. And they may quickly abandon their efforts of the moment or alter them in major ways if the systems they are attempting to use are not sufficiently intuitive. Having designed, written, and provided customer support for my own software over the years, including in commercial contexts, I can vouch for the fact that indeed if you say "press any key" you will get some persons complaining that no key on the keyboard is marked with an "ANY" legend. But these kinds of problems are rarely the fault of the user. The system designer must take ultimate responsibility in most cases. You may remember the old "Peter Principle": "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." An oversimplification that clearly does not apply to every organization, but interesting nonetheless. I have a saying of my own that is a bit similar: "Computer users will typically learn the absolute minimum they need to accomplish their tasks to a minimum perceived level of competency, which in reality tends to be significantly lower than the level of competency they actually need to accomplish their task efficiently or sometimes even satisfactorily." Of course this doesn't apply to all users, but it does apply much of the time. Again though, this usually is not the fault of the user, as suggested by yet another of my platitudes: "Don't assume that computer users are clairvoyant, because they aren't!" In other words, you can't expect users to necessarily even suspect the existence of options and procedures that they don't know about! If there are important functions that most users should be using, and they are unaware of them, the User Experience (UX) resulting from the system is suboptimal and the system needs to be improved. As Daniel points out, the methodologies and knowledge that users themselves bring to a system can effectively expand systems' capabilities, sometimes in serendipitous ways. But I believe it is always incumbent on system designers to do everything possible to provide a user environment that is as useful, effective, and intuitive as possible. I did find two points brought out in Daniel's talk to be rather disappointing. The first was that such a small percentage of the general population appears to be aware of Google Books. As I've written previously regarding my long ago days of random book reading in UCLA libraries, I consider Google Books -- legal controversies aside -- to be a true technological wonder. The fact that more people don't know about and use Google Books is a terrible shame. And finally, it was sad (but not surprising) that nobody in Daniel's audience seemed to have familiarity with the "Lisa" computer and its role in the evolution of personal computers as we know them today. It seems to be widely believed even among many techies that the Mac was invented pretty much out of thin air! Of course, I'm dating myself with talk of Lisa and such. But them's the breaks ... --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz Quora: http://www.quora.com/Lauren-Weinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com