Be careful when evaluating for user experience

Over the weekend I read an interesting discussion online about one organization's software selection process, i.e., should we select solution 'A' or 'B'. In the end the company went with solution 'B', and the decision was largely based on the idea of 'user experience' or usability. The specific details don't matter here, (which is why I am not linking to the source), but it made me think that I should write about UX this week. And that made me think that I have written about UX a dew times before, and it might make sense to re-run a couple of those posts this week. So here goes - more from the archive on UX and usability....

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From November 2014 - There's more to User Experience than usability

Here is a quick take and a diagram on UX that I wanted to share on a cold, kind of snowy Wednesday in my part of Western NY, (and thankfully not too snowy, lake effect snow is a funny thing, one side of town can get buried in snow, while a mile away sees hardly anything at all).

I was plowing through my Feedly last night, (while watching my Knicks fail, admirably however in Milwaukee), and I came across this really interesing piece on API design from the Nordic APIs site. 

I know what you might be thinking: Really, you must have a terribly exciting life, reading about API design and watching basketball. And you would be right! It is terribly exciting. 

You don't have to read the entire piece about API design, (I admit, it gets a little ponderous near the end if you are not really, really into APIs), but I wanted to share what I thought was the most interesting and perhaps relevant part of the piece, a diagram called the UX Honeycomb, originally developed by Semantic Studios. The diagram is meant to portray the facets or elements of User Experience, and as you will see, there is much more than 'usability' at play here.

The point of the UX Honeycomb is to make sure that designers understand the various components that encompass UX, and to also emphasize the center element - 'Valuable'. So while for UX professionals, 'usability' remains important to overall UX, it is not by itself sufficient. And it is also a great reminder that the elements like 'useful', 'accessible', and perhaps most importantly for HR readers, 'credible' remain critical.

And the way that the elements of the UX Honeycomb seem to have really close applicability to lots of what HR in general and HR technology projects in particular is the primary reason I wanted to share the diagram. Whether it is a traditional HR-led initiative like training, or performance coaching, or rolling out a employee wellness program, or a straight up HR systems implementation, evaluating your approach against these UX elements I think makes a ton of sense.

Is what you are doing, or trying to get others to do, useful, usable, desirable, credible, valuable, etc.?

I think you have to be able to check 'Yes' on just about every one of the elements on the UX Honeycomb no matter what the project is, in order to have a chance to capture the attention and the time of your users, employees, and leaders. I am going to keep the Honeycomb in mind moving forward, and I think you might want to as well.

Anyway, that's it.

Stay warm out there today.

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I probably should have updated that last line to say 'Stay cool out there today' - have a great week!

The user interface is your voice

Earlier this week Trish McFarlane and I did an HR Happy Hour Show and podcast based on the always interesting and influential Internet Trends Report from KPCB. On that show, we talked about some of the trends and ideas identified in the report (demographics, generational changes, and more), but one of the report's major themes that we did not discuss was the increase in capability and use of voice as a primary technology interface. Think Siri, Amazon's Echo and the like.

The report spends a lot of time on this trend, (about 16 slides, almost 10% of the entire report), but I wanted to highlight just one of the slides, and then opine a bit about what this trend could imply for HR and workplace technologies going forward.

Here's the money slide from the KPCB deck on the growth and potential of voice interfaces, then some FREE comments from me:

Three quick takes on this chart and the voice interface trend overall...

1. As the chart above shows, accuracy of these systems in terms of their ability to correctly recognize and interpret speech commands and instructions has been growing rapidly. And as these tools get better and better, users will take advantage of them more and more. Why? Talking is easier (and much faster), than typing or clicking. And convenience - think about when you are in your car, or making dinner in your kitchen, or eating a salami sandwich, (ok, maybe that is just my use case). Either way, as capability improves so will usage rates.

2. While the primary use cases for voice interfaces and commands are largely personal, (these interfaces are primarily used for things like getting directions, making calls, sending texts, and the like), it is not a far stretch of the imagination to think that such a potentially widespread personal and consumer trend will work its way into workplace and organizational activities as well. Once your employees get used to using their voices to issue commands and requests for personal uses, it won't be long until they want to know why they can't navigate the online employee directory using voice, or ask the HRIS system to email them a PDF copy of their current benefits enrollments. Technology that takes hold of consumer consciousness almost always wants to enter the workplace as well. 

3. Like wearable technologies like Google Glass and similar the initial workplace applications for voice interface technology might not be in so-called 'knowledge workers', but rather with front line and customer-facing workers like service techs, retail workers, or even in manufacturing and distribution. These are most likely the people that would benefit from increased computing capability that does not require them stopping what they are doing to manipulate a PC, table, or even a smart phone with their hands. We like to think that most tech advances benefit tech workers, but this might be a case where the best ROI comes from enabling field workers with the latest advances in tech.

I think it is very interesting times in the voice interface space, and I wonder how long it will be until we see the first important breakthroughs in this area in the HR and workplace tech space.

What say you?

Why 'normals' are willing to adopt new technologies

Quick shot for a busy Friday from a source that seems just about as far from HR and HR tech as possible, but I think offers a great reminder for anyone trying to effect a tech-driven change, HR or otherwise, on a group of people.

If you follow the news at all then you will certainly be aware of the rapid technological advances and the seemingly profound changes on the horizon for the personal transportation industry, i.e., the car(s) that are likely at the end of your driveway, and your relationship with them.

In short, the combination of the rapid improvement of self-driving auto technology (Google, Tesla, several other auto makers), an increase in the range, efficiency, and affordability in electric powered vehicles, (Tesla, GM), and the sudden but seemingly blanket coverage (at least in major cities), of 'ride-sharing' technology and services, (Uber, Lyft), has the potential to fundamentally change the methods and ownership of the means of personal transportation for millions, are changing the 'car' more than any time since the car replaced the horse. No one is sure exactly how all of these technological and sociological trends will collide and crash, and what the outcome will be, but most experts think that personal transportation will be markedly different in the next 20 years or so. 

The reason I thought this was interesting today, and wanted to share on the blog, was a short observation about the user adoption of modern technology pulled from a recent essay on the changes in the personal transportation ecosystem and how these changes might play out on the stratechery blog titled Cars and the Future. Check the quote below, and think about what it suggests for ANY kind of change program that you or your team is trying to implement inside your organization. (emphasis mine)

This generational pattern of adoption will, in the history books, look sudden, even as it seems to unfold ever so slowly for those of us in the here and now — especially those of us working in technology. The pace of change in the technology industry - which is young, hugely driven by Moore’s Law, and which has largely catered to change-embracing geeks - s likely the true aberration. After all, the biggest mistake consistently made by technologists is forgetting that for most people technology is a means to an end, and for all the benefits we can list when it comes to over-the-top video or a network of on-demand self-driving vehicles, change and the abandonment of long-held ideals like the open road and a bit of TV after supper is an end most would prefer to avoid.

Only the most enthusiastic technophiles care at all about the technology itself and what that technology does.

Everyone else cares only about what that technology can enable them to accomplish. It needs to help them do amazing new things, help them do the boring old things easier, faster, or cheaper, or otherwise leave them better off than they were before the introduction of the technology.

Self-driving, on-demand, electric cars might be coming soon. But for people to adopt them en masse, they have to not just be a marvel of technology and engineering. They have to make people's lives better or they won't be adopted like the experts think.

That same statement can be made for that new HR system you are thinking of implementing as well.

Have a great weekend!

Revealing Complexity

Probably the most significant barrier to user adoption of new workplace technology is that users don't see the personal benefit of adopting these technologies. This is the classic 'What's in it for me?' conundrum. While that subject is important and worthy of exploration, I won't be hitting that specific problem today. Instead, let's talk about what is likely the second-most important barrier to employee adoption of workplace technology, namely, that most enterprise technologies have provided (relatively) poor user experience and/or are just too complex for them to use intuitively.

While enterprise technology companies have talked about, and some have actually delivered, better, more compelling, more consumer-like technology user experiences, even the most modern, best-designed applications eventually run into a common problem in that enterprise tools often require LOTS of data be input into them.

It could be a new sales prospect being recorded in a CRM, a new supplier that needs to be set up in Procurement, or even a relatively simple matter of entering a new hire in the HRIS, all of these use cases while impacting disparate systems and organizational departments, have much more in common than we usually think. Each of these transactions requires (usually), a whole bunch of data fields to be populated with a whole bunch of data. And even in 2015, for many organizations the bulk of these myriad data elements have to be manually typed into the respective system form fields the old fashioned way - manually.

And so since the makers of CRM and Supply Chain and HR technologies understand this reality, and like to be able to sell to customers the things they need to run their business operations, even the most modern, slick, mobile responsive, and really amazing looking enterprise solutions often and still have these kind of busy, kind of ugly, kind of tired looking data input forms in order to support these kinds of transactions. And while we might be tempted to look at these kinds of forms, (and the processes that make these 37 field data input forms necessary), as relics from an older, less awesome age, they still have a place in most organizations and in most modern technology solutions.

Not every interaction with an enterprise technology can (or should) be reduced to a graphic or chart on a tablet, or a glanceable notification on your new Apple Watch. Sometimes, the hard and necessary work of getting relevant data (and lots of it) about customers, vendors, and employees into the enterprise tools that organizations rely upon is, still, kind of boring, kind of repetitive, and even kind of monotonous.

But that is entirely ok, and should not be considered some kind of an indictment of the technology solution provider that has not figured out a way to make inputting 32 fields about a customer into some kind of a gorgeous 'swipe left' and 'swipe right' kind of user experience.  

User Experience and what is good User Experience is highly variable and highly personal. And what usually constitutes great User Experience for the sales exec who wants to look at the Q3 funnel on her tablet is much, much different than what makes up great UX for a payroll entry clerk. We can't confuse them with each other.

The best designed enterprise systems, of course, support both UX's and both kinds of users. The key is, I think, to have the system only reveal its fundamental complexity, and the form with 37 input fields, only to those people who really need them, and care about them, and help them see the 'What's in it for me?' as well as treating them and their role with respect.

There's more to User Experience than usability

Here is a quick take and a diagram on UX that I wanted to share on a cold, kind of snowy Wednesday in my part of Western NY, (and thankfully not too snowy, lake effect snow is a funny thing, one side of town can get buried in snow, while a mile away sees hardly anything at all).

I was plowing through my Feedly last night, (while watching my Knicks fail, admirably however in Milwaukee), and I came across this really interesing piece on API design from the Nordic APIs site. 

I know what you might be thinking: Really, you must have a terribly exciting life, reading about API design and watching basketball. And you would be right! It is terribly exciting. 

You don't have to read the entire piece about API design, (I admit, it gets a little ponderous near the end if you are not really, really into APIs), but I wanted to share what I thought was the most interesting and perhaps relevant part of the piece, a diagram called the UX Honeycomb, originally developed by Semantic Studios. The diagram is meant to portray the facets or elements of User Experience, and as you will see, there is much more than 'usability' at play here.

The point of the UX Honeycomb is to make sure that designers understand the various components that encompass UX, and to also emphasize the center element - 'Valuable'. So while for UX professionals, 'usability' remains important to overall UX, it is not by itself sufficient. And it is also a great reminder that the elements like 'useful', 'accessible', and perhaps most importantly for HR readers, 'credible' remain critical.

And the way that the elements of the UX Honeycomb seem to have really close applicability to lots of what HR in general and HR technology projects in particular is the primary reason I wanted to share the diagram. Whether it is a traditional HR-led initiative like training, or performance coaching, or rolling out a employee wellness program, or a straight up HR systems implementation, evaluating your approach against these UX elements I think makes a ton of sense.

Is what you are doing, or trying to get others to do, useful, usable, desirable, credible, valuable, etc.?

I think you have to be able to check 'Yes' on just about every one of the elements on the UX Honeycomb no matter what the project is, in order to have a chance to capture the attention and the time of your users, employees, and leaders. I am going to keep the Honeycomb in mind moving forward, and I think you might want to as well.

Anyway, that's it.

Stay warm out there today.