Three reflections on an email design assignment

Adapting and Appropriating eMail, ProcessRight WorkFlow


First,

I have always loved email since 1978 when I began using it over the University of Alaska’s UNIX main frame in Anchorage to email people in Fairbanks. Significantly at that time we were discussing music, Bob Marley and The Wailers (how I discovered them), another thing of strong social importance Microsoft managers failed to recognize as valuable.

Why Bill Gates and the factory did not see what a huge innovation email was, and how extensible, I never understood. Why, despite my input and the input of others at Microsoft, development for email failed to gain much footing. Until the last few years a very small amount of money was invested in developing email. This was due in part to the structure of the development managers directly reporting to Bill Gates -- within that hierarchical structure, at each level there is a decreasing amount of authority, however at the next level down one can not really question the voice of authority above. This is an old fashioned management style based on military structures developed for waging war.

From interviews I did last fall including one of a former Microsoft lead email development engineer, I found that all that required was one manager at one level to wipe out Bill Gate’s vision – if Gates said spend $10-$20 million, the next manager changed that to 3 million, or less, there was nothing the visionary email engineers below could do about it. Eventually they quit and formed other companies.

Everyone understood the value and power of email of communications – but no one, save the customer voting with their buying power, could get management to budge. Finally when Microsoft's eMail product became the leading selling product after Windows itself did Microsoft management take notice. They were forced to do so by the downward trend in stock value and sales. Now we clearly see all end users really need are two things – browser and email -- and some products can be both and more at the same time using the same basic interface.

I believe this is why we have this as an assignment – had Gates encouraged other non-traditional, cooperative, even tribal structures to form leadership in various ways the product we describe would already exist, not just be embedded as a possibility in applications such as Outlook which require a developer to pull into reality.

In this way, over so many years, I learned that new ideas can be killed due to stubborn traditional systems which may not be recognized for what they are. New ideas may long await fresh new management.

Second,

Having the third party review engage the cohort from our idea stage down to their formal presentation was a stroke of genius in envisioning and shaping up our resulting product.

I found much that I took for granted was still embedded in my thinking as an “of course” and not explicit. In communicating with people you have to make your ideas explicit.

So such usability issues as landing pages to track the results of a process are one of these “of course” structures, which will be included in my future product designs.

Performing recent usability studies I found the exact same problems with beginners learning software exist now as they did in 1989 – the year Windows 3.0 was released. In 1984 I recall having very little trouble learning the MacOS interface.

Third,
The VIEW

There is a small political commentary nod in our selection of the title for the company “ProcessRight” Actually it relates to the political LEFT because the public voided the Right. I recently searched on ‘processright’, and quickly realized it owes its name in part it to the format of method calls in C++ and C sharp, such as used in the Invaders game at Duke University:

http://www.duke.edu/~jbs3/cps108/ooga/oogadocs/invaders/Invaders.html

“ProcessRight
public void processRight() - Provides the rules for what to do when a left event is pressed
Overrides:
processRight in class Game”

We used Google Talk IM to communicate in the last hours of our project. One of my cohorts, an employee of our favorite 800lb gorrilla across Lake Washington, may not want a GMAIL account to communicate using Google Talk IM.

It is true that Patton said, “There's a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates." This should apply to Microsoft employees too.

But you got to get into the game so I invited my cohort to get an GMail account to learn what the other guy is doing - here is why - to paraphrase Patton (if even from the film) metaphorically --

'Google are Microsoft's enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. Lift their software and interface ideas.'

“For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.” -Patton

Last,

Very much enjoyed working with my team – it was a blast!

“We're jammin'
I wanna jam it wid you
We're jammin',
And I hope you like jammin', too
Ain't no rules, ain't no vow, we can do it anyhow
I'n'I will see you through;
Everyday we pay the price with a little sacrifice,
Jammin' till the jam is through. Ooh, yea.

We're jammin'
To think that jammin' was a thing of the past
We're jammin',
And I hope this jam is gonna last
No bullet can stop us now, we neither beg nor we won't bow
Neither can be bought nor sold
We all defend the right; Jah - Jah children must unite
Your life is worth much more than gold. Ooh, yea.[1]”

[1] Song lyrics from Robert “Bob” Nesta Marley, “Jammin’” Release Date: 1977 Genre: Reggae Label: Tuff Gong Downloaded Monday December 9, 2006 from http://www.hotlyrics.net/lyrics/B/Bob_Marley__amp__The_Wailers/Jammin_.html Lyrics originally published on the album.

Docusign.net heuristic evaluation

https://www.docusign.net is the subject of this heuristic evaluation.

This application uses the technical convention of an authenticated user on a website printing a document to a local service which has been previously installed on the local box to obtain a legal signature from a remote party or to send or respond to such a request. This “printed” document then appears in a registry in the Web interface on which the user will perform actions which the Web services provides. The document with its various suggestions for use, such as SIGN HERE, grants the ability to have legal digital signatures.

From the point of view of a user the convention is sending a letter, with the contents, envelope, and stamp of approval, proof of receipt and similar mail conventions.

While I found it stunningly easy to use, there arose what I refer to as “Omissions of the 3rd Kind” which means they are not intuitive and require more in depth experience with the system to understand, or some simple reason prevents the enduser from understanding the interface such as fear of use.

The first one was encountered after successfully following the steps to install the application locally, and printing the document I wanted to send it to someone to have it digitally signed. As I went through the crabwise steps appearing and clicking “Next”



Addressing the header in the Envelope.

After passing through all the steps, it became apparent that the application was going to allow me to send a document to be signed but not to open and digitally sign a document myself, and then forward it. I stepped through the entire process, taking screenshots of the process. I located the help files and played them and found that the interface did support signing and sending. But first the document needed to be prepared with the locations for signing embedded in the file.

So I stepped through the application again. I felt that instead of “New” in the interface it might have a option to Request Signature, and one for Send Signature as a scenario based design could offer. But as I used it the second time it seemed more intuitive.

I took it at face value, I trusted it. Signers IS Signers – it is anyone including me. So I addressed the “Envelope” to myself.



Adding myself as the addressee for sending and signing

Then I simply followed each step as it was encountered. Forwarded the document to myself through the application and voila, it was done.

The only real limitation I could immediately discover considering the purposes I wanted to use it, is if the new window is open, any documents you have not “printed” will not appear in the open window. This application detests the back button which is not a familiar scenario for some kinds of web uses.

Eureka! This application works from the heuristic point of view and it works well, with three simple caveats
1. View the basic instruction presentation
2. Trust the application to lead you, don’t overthink it
3. Read the interface.

For most users I believe they could get this to work the first time.

Empathy in Well-considered Human Centered Design

Reviewing three basic value propositions to well-considered human centered design by activating the humanistic standard ‘empathy’ in real ways presented by Leonard & Rayport, Dr. Friedman and Holtzblatt & Beyer (see details at bottom of post) I feel that as humans make products it only seems practical for design concinnity to include human-involved practices in the field, resulting in recursive feedback into existing and new systems.

Each author offers a slightly different view of what effective empathy means, but all see it as helping individual people in particular and the masses in general, by listening and asking questions through a variety of methods. All mentioned work-arounds which people employ unconsciously to combat commonplace non-functional technical environments.

Empathy is the ability to feel affection for other living beings, like in a mirror image, to understand other’s motivation, from the dictionary –
“Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.”
Or in less romantic terms from Holtzblatt and Beyer – “We want our feet to be sore where their shoes pinch ”

Leonard and Rayport see empathy as an exciting way to “delight the customer ” through a process of market research with observers capturing data, analyzing the brainstorming to create prototypes. They also consider it as culture shift to ensure sustainable successful companies. The AOL section seemed misplaced – who cares if a company is technical or not – nobody wants their private contact information sold without consent.

Friedman uses a business based phrase to capture the attention of managers with “Value Centered Design ”. Friedman championed people strongly, with her powerful view of empathy, she framed the wording and examples to convince businesspeople to attempt these solutions. Her crowning materials were the moral views on informed consent particularly where web based user tracking was outlined, illustrated with “how a user might benefit or be harmed by it’s use. ”

Holtzblatt and Beyer use empathy because people just want get their work done on computers, not focus on the tool itself. They elucidated the processes of contextual inquiry. They want users as “strong participants in the design process.”

There are nothing but advantages to the methods outlined with only a few disclaimers:
1. These adaptations consume cycles (resources) and increase the “time to market”; a clear short term disadvantage: as engineers say:
“What do you want for your product? Good quality? Inexpensive? Quick to get to the market? Good, cheap, quick: pick any two.”

2. Change to refocus on the real needs of consumers is impossible for some well established producers (dinosaurs). As Donald A. Norman states in “Want Human-Centered Development? Reorganize the Company”
“It is difficult for a company to make the transition to a consumer-driven marketplace.”

These megalithic monstrosities drive themselves out of business -- with top down management they will not allow employees to have input, much less customers.


3. From experience how could anyone think for a New York second that the practice of tracking end users through cookies does not affect their work? ‘Sniffers’ and ‘click trackers’ grind robust browsers down to a snail’s speed – to read these articles online SpyBot, defragger, and “anti-virus” software had to run to restore the browser’s speed to normal. Less knowledgeable users have to pay for support.

4. Democracy as a human value; living in a failing democracy one wonders if the highly prized human values stated in these article will linger long enough to overcome greed.

empathy. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved October 12, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/empathy

Holtzblatt, K., & Beyer, H. (1993). Making customer-centered design work for teams.Communications of the ACM, 36(10), 92-103. Retrieved 1 Dec 2004 from http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/163430.164050.

Leonard, D., & Rayport, J. F. (1997). Spark innovation through emphatic design. Harvard Business Review, 75(6), 102-113.

Friedman, B. (2004). Value Sensitive Design. Encyclopedia of human-computer interaction. (pp. 769-774). Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing Group.