Usability, utility and value

A friend asked around for a simple usability rating scale for use by seafarers. We recommended John Brooke's Simple Usability Scale based on fond memories and its reputation. Fail. Didn't measure utility (e.g. the radar is easy to use but it has awful performance). Oops, sorry. This failure spurred me to develop rating scales for effectiveness, efficiency, safety and satisfaction for Quality In Use (QIUSS pdf). I realised that this does not include any consideration of value for money, however.
[For reference:
Usability is the extent to which a system, product or service can be used by the target population to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context.
Quality In Use is defined as: The degree to which a product used by specific users meets their needs to achieve specific goals with effectiveness, efficiency, safety and satisfaction in specific contexts of use.]

I found a very interesting set of exchanges between Graham Hill and Irene Ng on twitter. They were discussing value in a way that seemed relevant to HCD, so I butted in to see what I could learn. This post is where I have got to, in the hope of feedback to help me along.

I treat economics with the same suspicion as a Nigerian heiress. Systems economics ('The Origin of Wealth' by Eric D. Beinhocker) links value to entropy, which is a bit too grand for me. I struggled to find a useful connection with value-in-use or exchange value. As so often, the Austrian School came to my rescue with some clarity.

"Man chooses to use scarce means for various alternative ends. The ends that he chooses are the ones he values most highly, less urgent wants remain unsatisfied. The ends can be ranked on a scale of values, or scale of preferences. These scales differ for each person, both in their content and in their orders of preference; and they differ for the same individual at different times."

However, there are marketing phrases such as low-value customer, where the value is that to the supplier rather than the customer, so I am sure I 'm not there yet.

To summarize, usability or Quality In Use relate to the achievement of a worthwhile goal by a user (or customer) with an emphasis on the achievement. Value places the emphasis on the worthwhile as observed (rather than reported) - how much is achieving this goal worth in terms of time, effort, goats and blankets, or risk to self. Much of value seems to be the same as a usability goal in ISO 9241-speak.

For UX, HCD people and marketing, investment people to play nicely together, usability, utility and value need to be understood by all. Preferably we should be able to translate between them so far as can be done.

Is this right?

Update: Wim Rampen has started a three-part series on the future of marketing, including Service Dominant Logic and its approach to value-in-use, which argues that "value is created when a customer consumes or uses a product or service. Value therefore is not something you add in the process of manufacturing, nor is value something that is released when a product or service is sold.

Update: Don Norman has talked about the link: “’No, no, no!’” He added, lightly mocking product designers and usability experts everywhere. “’We don’t do that evil advertising stuff. We’re not doing evil marketing. We’re simply finding what people really want, and we’re providing it for them.’ Every six months, though, we provide new wants. Come on, what’s the distinction between that and what marketing does and what advertisers do?”

A real regulator speaks

William K. Black

Opera portal needs work

I really like Opera as a web browser. Many really good features for my usage over Firefox.  I set up a whole pile of RSS feeds onto Opera Portal. Mistake. Don't do it. The sync between machines didn't work.  Opera have now lost my feeds. I have no idea how I was supposed to have made a backup. Life in the favela (Bruce Sterling).

"Working through Screens" available as a book

"Working through Screens" is a remarkable achievement.  Jacob Burghardt of Flashbulb Interaction has produced clear, elegant material that supports the difficult bits of designing user interaction.  I haven't seen anything that even tries to cover the same topic.  In addition to being available as a .pdf download, it is available as a Lulu book.  Do have a look and buy the book. Well worth the investment.

Customer management and safety

I like travelling KLM. The staff are really  great, and Schiphol is a very successful hub. 

My KLM flight last night got me to Glasgow an hour late, causing considerable inconvenience. That, however, is not the point of this post.

Schiphol was busy (Friday evening, no surprise) and freezing. There was a queue for the de-icing machine. 

The pilot told us that the delay for the de-icing was 22 minutes, and we had taken on extra fuel to go faster, and that ATC would allow us to take a shorter route.  From a customer experience point of view, misleading people and not keeping them informed is indeed a bad thing to do. It would have been so much better for him to have said "Very sorry. We will be an hour late. If you need to make a mobile phone call to tell people please do it now. I will tell you when to turn off your mobile phones". However, this post is about communications, and not the usual bleat about not being told what is going on and how inconvenient that is.

My anger at the inconvenience to my wife (and my consequent embarrassment) led me to consider this from a Crew Resource Management (CRM) point of view. 

The pilot:

• Did not challenge the information given by the ground crew (he must have  known it was wildly optimistic);
• Did not make realistic plans, and counted on 'something turning up';
• Did not keep people informed.

This is what you are trained to NOT do in CRM.  What makes him think he will be able to drop these bad habits when he is under stress? Why not practice the right approach all the time? Good for business, good for safety. Poor communications with passengers appears in far too many transport-related incident reports.  London Underground seem to have made a real commitment to improving passenger communications. The recent Eurotunnel breakdown problems are an example of poor communications.

If you want more background on why this matters, try googling KLM, crew resource management, Tenerife.

Are we always doomed to second-rate software?

Technical excellence and commercial success have always seemed to be negatively correlated in software, whether it was Algol/Fortran, Pascal/C, Interlisp/C++, and endless other examples. After a forced computer update, this still seems to be true.

Good news for Mozilla, I suspect. 

Opera is now miles ahead of Firefox in terms of Quality In Use, but miles behind in market share.  Thunderbird is claimed as the latest, biggest, best thing for email clients, but it is actually amateur hour compared to Outlook (which is hanging on with established corporates).

Apple seems to be the bright exception, and has also provided a sensible market for frustrated open source coders, but I cannot  bring myself to trust them with any of my IPR (generated or bought) because they are so predatory.

Google, China, Innovation and Western Corporations

James Fallows has some terrific posts on the Google-China issue.  One has a comment from a reader that gives a remarkable perspective on the history of innovation. I hope they don't mind me sharing it.

"Analogously, in the information revolution following the introduction of the printing press, censorship in Catholic countries (especially Spain) had a similar "non-effect" initially because there was an active black market in banned books. However, in less than 50 years, in the Protestant countries, where the press was not controlled, people of the crafts-producing class were able to become literate and change the way they produced goods. Over time this new way of producing goods became capitalism.

"In Spain, Italy, Portugal and to lesser extent France people of the crafts-producing class did not become literate. They continued producing goods in the same way as they had in the past. Soon they were out competed by Holland and then England where better goods were produced more cheaply. Over time this had a profound economic impact on the wealth and power of the various countries.

"Innovation by the "out group" based on access to the benefits of the new information technology that creates new sources of wealth and power. I would conclude, therefore, that China, having made Spain's decision to control information, is now out of the running for world leadership."

My question is this.  What do Western corporations think they are doing when they impose China-like restrictions on their employees? They are killing the use of information technology and innovation.  The corporate firewall is an effective form of deathwish. Will they learn from the Google  fight with China? What fight?