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All That Glitters Is Not Gold
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All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Feb 19, 2017

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Steven Proctor
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Page 1: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

All That Glitters Is Not Gold

Page 2: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

a.k.a. Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Page 3: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Preface

• I love Graphic Designers

• This talk started out of frustration

• Thank you

Page 4: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Image from James Petts - https://www.flickr.com/photos/14730981@N08/11930527256

Page 5: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Iron Pyrite

• a.k.a. Fool’s Gold

• Looks pretty

• Initial Perceived Value

• Not much you can do with it in the real world

Page 6: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

A Good User Experience:

• Delivers value to the user

• Reduces effort to get the job done

• Is invisible

• Just works

• But what if it doesn’t?

Page 7: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

The Real World is Messy

• Things break

• Failures Happen

• Let’s Accept It. Not Fight It

Page 8: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Mistaeks We’re Made• Designing for the happy path

• Static Assets

• PowerPoint/Keynote

• Animations (if lucky)

• “Nobody thought about that”

• “That would never happen”

Page 9: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Kind of Failures• Net-Split

• Bandwidth

• Latency

• Site is “Unresponsive”

• Dependent Service Down?

• Others*

* http://rgoarchitects.com/Files/fallacies.pdf

Page 10: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Who You Gonna Call?

Page 11: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

No Really… Who You Gonna Call?

Page 12: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Your User Doesn’t Care

• It is on you, not a service provider

• How can you still deliver value when things go wrong?

• This is where the user’s experience really begins

Page 13: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

“Okay. Failures Happen…”

Page 14: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Start Getting Out Of The Hole

Or, we can’t fix the problem, so how do we make it less intrusive

Page 15: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Provide Some Levity• Be Helpful when the user messed up

• Github 404 pages

Page 16: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"
Page 17: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Provide Some Levity• Be Helpful when the user messed up

• Github 404 pages

• erlang.org’s not found page

Page 18: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"
Page 19: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Provide Some Levity• Acknowledge you messed up (and apologize)

• Twitter Fail Whale

• Reddit down time messages*

* https://github.com/reddit/error-pages/blob/876f3e689206551722fbe77374e7739f54b52847/504.reallydown.html#L152

Page 20: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Make It A Game???• Track how many times they have failed

• Give them “rewards” for failures

• Real, or emotional

• DOOM faces?

• Give them something to be grateful about

• People can’t be grateful and upset at the same time

Page 21: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

The “Harder” Wins

Page 22: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Can one failure take out your entire system?

Page 23: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Can one failure take out your entire system?

• How can we isolate that part of the system?

• Can we safely restart it from scratch?

• Is it critical to the entire system?

• No, really, is it critical to the entire system?

• Can we work without it until it gets better?

• Do we have different, and unrelated, way of getting that information?

• Can we provide “The Next Best Thing”?

Page 24: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Partial / Reduced Functionality

• Netflix

• Streaming

• vs Personal Recommendations

• vs Top Rated

• vs Queue/Watchlist Management

Page 25: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Partial / Reduced Functionality

• Amazon

• Orders

• vs “Customers Also Bought”

• vs Inventory

• vs Ratings

• vs Reviews

Page 26: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Predictive User Experience?

Page 27: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Automated Assistance?• Analyze Event Streams and Analytics

• Common user behavior

• Uncommon behavior for a specific user

• Can we helpfully take control on behalf of the user

• Assisted driving

• Don’t let the user mess up

Page 28: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

What if “Everything” is unavailable??

Page 29: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Network is “down”• Airplane mode

• International Travel

• Local ISP is having issues

• Bandwidth throttling

• Local network is down

Page 30: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Network is “down”• Natural disasters

• Backhoes

• Backhoes 💖 datacenters

• Cleaning Crews

• That one server under the desk

Page 31: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Full Offline Mode Support

• Evernote

• Your calendar

• Home thermostat

Page 32: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

More Than Just Web(site|app)s

Page 33: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Internet of Things

• Televisions / Home Electronics

• Lightbulbs / Door locks / Toilets

• RFID Inventory

• Oil Pipeline Sensors

Page 34: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Multiple Sensor Devices• What happens when one fails?

• Scary Time…

• Planes

• Cars

• Medical Devices

Page 35: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Distributed Systems

Page 36: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

–Leslie Lamport

“There has been considerable debate over the years about what constitutes a distributed system. It would appear that the following

definition has been adopted at SRC:

A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can

render your own computer unusable.”

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/distributed-system.txt

Page 37: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Self Healing / Regenerative

• How can I know that something is wrong?

• What is supervising/monitoring this?

• Can I safely “turn it off and on again”?

• Can this all be invisible to the user?

Page 38: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Usability Design ↓

Systems Thinking

Page 39: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

–Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

“Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing

interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static

“snapshots.””

Page 40: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

–Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility,

randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.”

Page 41: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Usability Design Involves Everyone

Page 42: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Call to ActionStart thinking about these things.

Ask how things can break.

You might not be doing anything “critical” at this point of your career.

But you never know what the future holds for you

(or one of your coworkers).

Page 43: All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Usability Design for "When Things Go Wrong"

Where to find me

• @stevenproctor

• https://www.proctor-it.com

• https://www.functionalgeekery.com

• https://www.github.com/stevenproctor

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-proctor