This can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship

An interesting thing about going to tech-oriented conferences that mix business managers and implementers is the tension between messages. There are often competing and conflicting voices promoting technology and customer (user) experience. The technology vendors publicize the latest new thing, the upgrade that brings it all together, and the surefire way to get more customers spending more money. The experience folks shout that whatever is to be done must be done based purely on customer need and desire; that user experience (UX) is all that matters.


Now, it's no secret which side I've been on in most of these public discourses. Though I've been on the tech side in some cases, mostly by far I've preached from the gospel of good experience. And in the situation that it's clear that moving toward a certain technology would harm customer experience, my position would be unwavering.

However, the primary argument and distinction is no longer valid and true to me. I now see these two as elements on a continuum. Even as elements to alternate during and maybe even between projects. They are interdependent, and maybe even codependent.

The way I see it, many of our advances in customer experience have relied on or been part of new technology or new use of existing technology. From the other side, technology relies on good customer experience for successful adoption. Look at Amazon during the emergence of the commercial web. And then there's everybody's favorite example, Apple's iPhone. Both involved a push forward in customer experience AND the use of technology. Neither would be as successful without the blend of both. And neither would be as interesting if one aspect won out over the other.

Where I'm going with this is to request a truce in the tech versus UX battle. Both are good and both are needed. Tech creators need to acknowledge that they need good UX design to win the hearts and hands of consumers. UX-ers need to acknowledge that good technology is needed to advance parts of our cause and that new (good) tech gives us a chance to shine.

Before the truce can be fully agreed to though, we have a little catching up to do in the basics. Too much technology, useful as it can be, has been put out there without the needed UX crafting to accompany it. Because of that, both the users (consumers) and the technology are getting short shrift. Users feel ignored and abused. The tech vendors are getting slammed for very correctable reasons. We need to stop the train for a bit and get the interaction with the technology to the point where users can easily and satisfyingly do what they want to. Get the basics to the right level, then continue with a balanced approach.

(Aside: Not all tech implementations are redeemable, I know. But I am setting those cases aside for now and assuming that much of it can be helped.)

To illustrate, think again about what happened in the iPhone. For all its glory, it introduced very little new technology. Its primary features existed in other released or demoed products. The "new" about the iPhone is the better way that Apple blended the technology and UX.

Alternatively, there is also evidence that drawing back the level of technology used while improving the user experience is also effective. Wired magazine shows the examples of the Flip video camera and Skype, among others, in a recent article. Now, I disagree with the assessment they make that these simpler and easier to use products are just "good enough" since the implication is that they are inferior to the more feature-rich products. By typical standards such as profitability and rate of adoption, the new breeds are superior to their overdone predecessors.

There are many other areas where one approach or the other is needed, and I'll point to voice interaction as my prime example. A great many applications out there use speech recognition technology that is only a few years old. But most of the applications were designed using old or no design principles by people with negligible design training, if any. Furthermore, the technology is often under or incorrectly used. And the consumer reaction has been predictable. Interactive Voice Response is one of the most maligned technologies in our current age. On top of that, it often fails to meet the business goals for which it was brought in. This was avoidable and can be made right. It requires simply taking a break from the bumbling techno-lust and focusing on getting the UX in line with the level of technology chosen. Or even reducing the use of technology while improving performance through a UX focus.

So, it's time for a reset. For catching up and scaling down. We could make a huge positive difference in both business success and customer satisfaction by improving the user experience to the level of being on par with the state of deployed technology. And then we could grow both together. Satisfyingly, profitably, successfully.

Care to join me?

Patterns and Experience

Enjoyed giving my two presentations last week at SpeechTEK in New York. Both seem well received, especially the patterns talk. It's gotten 150+ views on Slideshare since, which is very gratifying!

See them both for yourself:

IVR Design Patterns

View more presentations from Phillip Hunter.

People Get Ready

View more presentations from Phillip Hunter.

Sorry for the formatting issues in the second one. They appeared after the upload. Not sure what's going on.

Later this week, I'll offer thoughts on SpeechTEK, and some talking points I covered in the presentations.

Good to see lots of folks!

I don't think I said what you think I said - Interviews and "Natural Language"

"Hi, I've just got a few questions." Not everyone likes it, but I will admit I do. I like to get interviewed. I like to be asked questions. I like to feel like someone cares about my answers, relative truth aside. I like to think the thoughts and words will make their way into a tight, punchy piece that makes a reader or a thousand think a different thought or care more. But, I know enough from a media course and life to know better than to expect much of that.

Now, this week, I received several mentions in a Speech Technology magazine article and I'm glad. It's a bit ironic, given news I'll get to in another post, but I'm enjoying it. At the risk of not getting interviewed in the future, I do need, though, to straighten out a tiny thing or two.

So, if you're not a speech geek, or wanna-be speech geek, skip to the next post, otherwise, a couple of discussion points:

First, the article is a great intro to current thinking about the use of open-prompting (soliciting content constrained by context, not wording). I favor this approach when it makes sense and can be delivered properly. In general, my thoughts are represented well. But, to get to the point, I didn't actually assert "that callers shouldn’t be exposed to a hierarchy of more than five categories." I do think menus structured like that can be problematic and are frequently done poorly, but research (Hura & McKienzie) and deployments (McKienzie, Levine) have shown that the right combination of wording and delivery can allow menus to be fairly lengthy and still be effective. I agree with those findings.

Moving on, the article discusses the idea that a high-frequency example is very important, which is correct. However, open-prompts should almost never start with "How may I help you?" Not only is there a register problem, but putting the call to action before giving the caller space to respond is generally a recipe for disaster, despite enabling barge-in.

Next, "performance anxiety," my (unattributed) quote, is not a technical term. Funny? Yes. Not technical.

Then, the sentence reading "Users are given the option of accessing them by saying something like What are some choices?" really should read "Callers can be given the option to access them by suggesting they say something like "Give me some choices." The difference appears subtle, but trust me, it's important. Control and certainty are increased by this very much directive statement, whereas the other feels too much like browsing.

Lastly, I need to put a finer point on "it’s important to design the back-off menu open-ended like the first prompt." Actually, the true matter is to allow not a full range of open responses, but to look for responses in tuning data for the menu and adding to the grammar utterances that are clearly a response to the open prompt but not in-grammar for the menu. For example, a caller saying "my internet account" to a menu asking them to specify whether their call is about their bill, an order, tech support, or an appointment. And of course adding logic to handle such utterances. Doing this will be effective and caller-pleasing without the trouble of a parallel SLM grammar.

So, these are not slams, but rather just trying to make sure that the right information is out there. The article is, I think and hope, a good discussion starter. Including the last few paragraphs, which are sort of not-directly-on-topic, but are vitally important nonetheless.

Please add your take on the article here. If you want to know more about the concepts presented there or here, or you want to interview me ;), please let me know: phillip at phillipwhunter dot com.

-pnl

UPDATE: Eric Barkin responded very graciously to my post on his SpeechTech blog page. I appreciate his comments and especially agree with the points about the need for a larger design improvement discussion.

Data, Art, Design, and a big ID/IxD Success Story

Three events occurred, or were publicized, in the past few days that merit posting here and considering all together. First, an apparently widely-respected visual designer left Google using some strong language about his frustration regarding the design mentality there. I'll let you read his words to get your own impression rather than commenting directly.

You back? Ok.

To paraphrase somewhat, he tells a fresh tale of the decades-old battle of design based on data versus what some like to call "art". We in the Voice Interaction realm have had the same challenges and have often said in our little world that VUI Design is a "science and art". And while I have even held forth on that, I have been uncomfortable for the past few years with that way of characterizing it. One reason is that many of our language structure and wording decisions are actually based on researched and published linguistic and thought paradigms, similar to visual design choices about layout and color. Secondly, designing well is often an exercise in doing so within limitations and with compromises instead of letting one's expressionistic soul run free (That's a great thing for your painting or weekend band. Not usually so good for the business needs of your employer.).

Which leads me to the second event. OK/Cancel is a comic and blog by a couple of guys who took a hiatus from the end of 2007 to now and returned strongly with a great strip and good commentary on the ex-Googler and the data/art debate that fits nicely with my comments above and the article I wrote with Roberto Pieraccini linked to above. This is an area we in speech and all designers need to reflect on in order to truly begin the maturation of our practices, processes, and reputation.

Doing so will, I believe, lead to more of the third event. Thursday's NY Times ran this article in the Inside Technology section, A Tiny Camcorder Has a Big Payday. Pure Digital Technologies, the maker of the very popular Flip camcorder (audio warning) was purchased for $590 million by Cisco (About a 2.5-3x valuation as near as I can tell). To me, this is a triumph of good design. Cisco decided that a profitable company focused on simple, good products could add to Cisco's bottom line for years to come. While their decision was most certainly not all about good design, the philosophy of Pure Digital mostly is. This should serve as reinforcement and encouragement to all designers that combining customer focus, good design principles and practices with persistence and reading the market in-between the lines can and does work because success is success.

Good Design in 2009.

-pnl

Published - VUI - Art with Science

The column I referred to a few weeks ago is out now. Thanks TMA Associates! Read it!

Rules and instructions - People behave like water

In a nice Speech Technology mag article from Dr. Susan, she highlights that people, in this case callers to automated systems, frequently behave like water (my interpretation, not hers). That is, they try to find the easiest way to get what they want most of the time. Other times, they barrel over any seemingly arbitrary obstacles when they perceive that there is a way to accomplish what they want.

She rightly points out the fine details of how to deal with these issues in a couple of specific situations. The larger lessons are: a) if you make rules (right or wrong) for customers, make sure they know them and make sure they are consistent across the board; b) to maximize success all the way around, facilitate the fastest, easiest way (according to the customer!) to get where the person wants to go.

Too often, our designs provide interaction that is more like dams and channel locks and less like soothing mountain streams.

Numbers are hard to argue with

I like backing up design decisions, or in this case, customer strategy approaches, with numbers. Data can be hard to argue with. So, when I saw this, had to share: Apple's Customer Service Kick Dell's A$$, Empirical Evidence Shows