Tip: Save your users 15+ seconds of their day 8
Since understanding the context is so important when designing interfaces, I wanted to point out one of those things that caused me to shake my head at.
When logging into our Basecamp account this afternoon (via openid)... I was presented the following helpful notice.
What’s amusing in this scenario… is that I’m sure that Basecamp knows that I’m logged in via openid and it is, in fact, displaying the OpenBar across the top of the page. Yet, it’s making this helpful recommendation that I’m obviously already aware of.
What harm is there? Well, in this scenario, I caught it and thought, “wow, this isn’t helpful or informative.” Over time, it’s these short-lived experiences that affect our overall perceptions of the product.
When we’re designing and developing applications, we must be very consistent with how we communicate with our audience. We don’t need to provide them information that isn’t relevant to them.
I’m not picking on Basecamp here, I’m sure that they have great intentions with this, but as a developer, I know that it doesn’t take a whole lot of extra work to avoid small problems like this, which could lead your people to feel like you’re not being respectful of their time.
Saving customers 15-30 seconds is something that we can quantify.
- 100 customers = 25-50 minutes
- 1,000 customers = ~4-8 hours
- 10,000 customers = 40-80 hours
- etc…
Just a little reminder that it’s easy for us to overlook things like that can make a difference.
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Detecting which users were already running OpenBar would have required additional development and deployment instead of simply using the existing notice system. In other words, there’s no way we would have bothered if the costs had been more than they were.
So while we could have say some customers 10 seconds (I very much doubt it would take most people who knew about the message even that to ignore it), we would be balancing that with either not telling the majority of BC users who don’t use OpenBar about the system or wasting development resources for a special one-off condition.
I think this is one of does It Just Doesn’t Matter cases.
Couldn’t help noticing that there is a handy link at the top of this page, asking me to read your latest article, which I am already reading…
Oh man. I do like reading this blog, but wow, @tim that was a great response. Snap.
This seems a bit nit-picky to me. I think the development time it would have taken to refactor the notice system for in this one scenario wouldn’t have been an effective use of time, considering the very very small benefit to the users of Basecamp (wasting 10 seconds of their life).
This is more of an economic decision, rather than design decision. The opportunity cost didn’t outweigh the benefit.
Though, a more interesting thing to speak of here is only basecamp admins saw that message. I don’t see it on Planet Argon’s basecamp (as I’m not an admin), but I see it on my personal basecamp. Possibly a bug in their notice system, or user error, as I’m assuming everybody on 37signals basecamp is an admin, so they don’t see the difference.
Ugh, I need to proof-read my comments:
The opportunity cost did outweigh the benefit.
@DHH,
Thanks for the explanation and I can understand the rationale behind your decision to not bother. My intent is not to point fingers at Basecamp, but am attempting to open up the dialogue that these decisions do compile over time and result in perceptions of the product.
As an industry, we make a lot of decisions that are focused on saving development time, but I think it’s a bit premature for us to insist that it just doesn’t matter. Respecting the time of our users does matter and should be at the forefront of our rationale.
Bottom line. As a paying customer. I’m a busy person and while I don’t mind the occasional notification, email, etc.. just make it relevant to/for me.
I’d argue that it does matter, but maybe not as much as keeping development costs down. A blanket statement of, “It Just Doesn’t Matter”.. is an unfortunate dismissal of what I believe is a problem of our industry. I want to believe that we can do better and I think that Ruby on Rails is a platform that provides us with the extra time to think about these sorts of problems.
@chris griffin:
Again, my purpose was to highlight an example of where I came across a situation that I thought could have been avoided. Every person who is using the Open Bar already and sees this could begin to lose confidence that the notification system is communicating anything helpful and/or relevant.
@Tim:
Thanks for pointing this out. I’ll see what I can do to improve the theme to take this scenario into account. It’s easy to overlook and it often takes someone pointing it out to realize that.
I’m definitely not going to claim that my own blog or the applications that I have worked on to date are perfect. In fact, far from that. However, I do believe it is valuable that we as a community of developers… strive to improve our awareness of these little things that can adversely affect the perceptions that our end-users have of the applications that we build.
That is the message that I mean to communicate. :-)
Yes it reeks a bit of nitpicking but the ‘37 signals blog’ does this all the time with various websites and companies.
It’s good they get a taste of their own medicine once in a while.
The comment by Tim was priceless though.
To Robby and 37 signals: keep up the good work. You are all doing great.
I apologise if my comment seemed negative – I just appreciated the delicious Irony! I definitely agree with the point you are making in the post.