Jared Spool has an interesting article on top user experience challenges. They are:
- Scalability
- Visual Design
- Comprehension
- Interactivity
- Change Management
The other gap I see very often is Site Speed. In my experience, speed makes a tremendous difference to how much a site gets used. What is your sense on readiness of India’s skill pool to address the above – are we there or getting there to world class levels on these areas? I personally feel more confident of software issues such as change management, than areas like visual design and interactivity. Any thoughts?
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I agree with Prashant.
The problem is not as much in the availability of skill-pool as much it is in getting the priorities right. Who said making software engaging is somehow incompatible with making it reliable and secure? Why can’t a consumer banking app look as cool as a weather widget in Facebook?
Usability, I think should figure high up in the list of priorities. It should be at par with getting the functionality working and building in scalability elements.
Well, it need not help us get laid, but there’s nothing wrong in sexing it up 🙂
Alok,
change management as being referred here is not a software issue. Do not confuse it with agility of software architecture/platform or coding practices.
It is a product issue, more precisely an adoption issue which would require one to think about whether the change is too abrupt, whether it is communicated well, whether launch plan incorporates agility to tweak or rollback if change is rejected by users, whether it falls under the scope of current product positioning, whether support exists to help users with change, whether the advantages have been made evident and how would one seed the feature….etc
Facebook beacon was a disaster in that sense. They did a bad job communicating what it was and why it was more good then evil. Moreoever, they apparently did nothing to gauge user reaction by testing with a small set of users before launching it to their entire user base. The ‘user updates’ faced a similar backlash even though it ended up being their most popular feature later.
As far as my understanding of the Indian online industry goes, top management does not understand or even recognize/acknowledge most of these issues except visual design. Most of it is to do with the DNA of the teams. I believe there is talent but companies look at hiring more technology/sales people rather than product/UI guys. Even where they hire product guys, they’d rather hire an MBA with 5 year exp with some FMCG/print media who has totally clueless what internet is all about.
People are however learning and some good work is coming out there now. I like yatra.com (flight search engine) in particular for the way they have handled some stuff in terms of scalability and interactivity. flipkart.com also seems to be headed in the right direction.
If i were to arrange the listed challenges in increasing order of complexity, i would say: visual design, comprehension, interactivity, scalability and change management.
My opinion is opposite to what RYK said.
The level of desirable usability and UI ,IMO, differs from application to application. Social networks, content producers and other ad-driven online models need to have the best usability options for obvious reasons – you want users to spend considerable amount of time there. For ecommerce portals, usability is not the most important thing in general. Ofcourse there are exceptions. At least in India, people primarily buy stuff online because its convenient or cheap or there is good variety available. People buy Air Deccan tickets online not because its website has a great UI but because its cheap and available immediately. Same for online flowers or gifts. Its based on a real,immediate,tangible need. Users know what they want and they figure it out provided a minimum quality is adhered to.
IMO, a normal online user cannot evaluate usability aspect that well over the course of her attention span in say, an ecommerce site. The nature and motivation of relationship is transaction based and thats where it ends. For a content portal or SN portal, you want to engage the user so that she sticks on. Also, the need aspect is more subtle.
Usability is a major, major problem in domestically created interface work. Software engineers churned out here are simply not good usability thinkers. Unfortunately they have total control of product development process.
I saw once in a software product company (IIT pedegree) a product with a good architecture but a lousy UI. The biz dev guy was the lone fighter to improve the usability (since he knew customers would buy the product if it was “demystified’) but the techies-in-command simply would not pay any attention. That product (and several more such instances in India) have struggled to see customer buy-in.
The scenario is no different with websites. Check rediff.com, indiatimes.com, economictimes.com and then immediately visit and compare wsj.com or yahoo.com. The usability blunders are there for the whole world to see. I better not get started on portals of TV news channels in India.
As far as Indian usability talent goes, it is sufficient for the Indian market: of the people, by the people, for the people normally works and works well. Problems emerge when doing projects for international markets.