The trouble with using bad software is, it can make you feel like an idiot.
For me, BAD software is something that
- a. ‘could’ ‘logically’ transform a task, but somehow manages to elude our using it to the fullest extent.
- b. takes longer to achieve the task than the way we’re doing it already
Whatever the software, the improvement has to be outstandingly obvious for people to adopt it.
Not knowing what is good for us then, is just a symptom of being human.
At this point, it would be easy to score some cheap points about ‘user unfriendly’ and frustrating software ruining a perfectly good product idea - sadly we’ve all used bad software, so that’s not the focus.
And, for the record, I don’t buy into the refrain that bad software workers are just blaming their tools. More often, they blame themselves.
On the flip side then, what makes good software good?
I contend that Good software makes you feel like a genius.
Without any training courses you just know how it works….and how good is THAT, being able to use software without any training.
It doesn’t take long for the feelings about how good the software is, to blend very neatly into feelings about how clever you are.
Of course, it’s only fair to share the good fortune and show other people how much of a genius they could be too. When this happens, the results can be impressive (ipod sales). Good design has a momentum all of its own.
Intuitive software is like that.
The WAY it gets to be intuitive is to think ahead, to know what the user wants to do, before they themselves know they want to do it, as well as just being tons better than the old way.
Intuition itself is based on past experiences, it’s why traffic light colours have spread into many other facets of life.
Intution then, is what you already know, applied to the new.
So, to Unified Communications.
Software has proven itself useful - a given I hope - and thus (communication) applications are being presented and are multiplying at an incredible rate.
Even websites are now interactive, and thus a brand new interface for every site and every service.
Unified Communications is completely, utterly, about the reduction of user interfaces. Nothing to do with a single box or supplier for every application.
This is in a world where the amount of software that users are being presented with is leading to their shoulders sagging under the load.
A good example of this user interface ‘reversal’ is with voicemail.
A user’s past experience of a machine that answers a phone, was an answering machine. And THAT is exactly how people used it, ignoring the 90% of functionality that was available past the first keypress, because their intuition didn’t tell them anything different.
People trust their intuition more than they do other people, and so training courses were of little value in improving the situation, a comparitively weak alternative to an intuitive interface (but better than nothing).
Enter Unified Messaging - NOW, voicemail looks like email. You get one, you click it and its just another email.
It’s simple but exceptionally powerful.
Ok, a difference is that you play voicemail - but the player looks just like a VCR…so we’re home!
Suddenly, without training, every user knows how to play, reply, forward..with or without an introduction, save, and even forward to a group of people and link it to whatever other systems they’re using. Address books are also leveraged, and users can be managed within the same environment.
This advance in software helps user’s ‘get it’ without trying, and when that happens, 90% of people suddenly gained a great deal of productivity without any instruction.
Moreover, when we get that, it’s easier for them to treat email like voicemail when calling in to their office voicemail system. When listening to an email is just like listening to a voicemail, the concept has been transmitted, wordlessly, unlike this post :-), by building on their previous experience of (unified) messaging.
And so it continues, when ‘messaging’ becomes that easy to use, the next step is to eliminate mobile voice messaging, because it’s so much less useful than it ever was.
Extend this same process of interface elimination to fax and text messaging and it goes to reverse the users feeling of being overwhelmed by yet more software to learn - in fact, the roll out could be headed….”we’re giving you less to learn”
In itself, hardly earthshattering - but, in context of a massively overly supplied PC screen, software without training and high adoption rates (that’s what we see) is more than a good thing, it is somewhat exceptional to the norm.
The next frontier
Where are we (users) with ‘real time’ communications software interfaces?
There is one area where this is already working very well, and this is by ‘communications enabling’ a user’s existing interface. Where you ‘telephone enable’ a customer database, for whatever reason, it is possible to extend the users experience, intuitively. Click to dial is a form of this, but quite limited, but another is rules based call routing based on who is calling and why.
However, for most people, personal real time communications includes,
Telephones, Instant Messaging, Audio, Web, and Video conferencing, mobiles and lots more.
And, ‘Nowhere fast’ about sums it up.
To my mind, each best of breed (realtime) company has a piece of the jigsaw, but instead of playing nicely together and just finishing the picture, they’re off constructing the other 80% of the jigsaw pieces themselves. I’m talking about IM, telephony and even public network companies. This isn’t what the users want or need, in my opinion of course.
There are some notable exceptions, but that’s for another time.
It will be interesting how it all pans out, but talk about being ripe for disruptive technology. I expect a lot of free interfaces will come to dominate, before they eventually get you by charging for the upgrades.
