Internazionale
Il meglio dei giornali di tutto il mondo

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http://www.internazionale.it/home/primopiano.php?id=2480

Usability
Wasting time is a real drag

Jakob Nielsen, guru of usability, has been called "number 6 of the Web's 10 most influential people" (ZDNet), "new-media pioneer" (Newsweek), "not yet as famous as Elvis" (Contentious Magazine). Martina Recchiuti from Internazionale interviewed him in London, during the "Usability week 2002"

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Jakob, I would like to start this interview by getting some information about your background: what made you click that the usability was your field?
Back when I was in high school, this is actually a long time ago, this is the 70's , I actually had the opportunity to use the computer that was made available for a few high school students who were specially interested in it. Even though It was really a old computer, it was kind of a personal computer, except a personal computer that took up the entire room.

But nobody used it, just a few students and so it was a very hands-on experience. Then when I started the university I got my hands on another computer, a big computer, this big computer was a horrible mainframe which was very cumbersome and awkward to use. Now, because i'd used this simpler older computer before, i had this feeling that this was very unpleasant. This made a more personal experience with feeling that computers can be pleasant or unpleasant, and a big computer is unpleasant!

Then of course a few years later the personal computers started coming out and became more popular. So I had like a mainframe experience which kind a really slapped me down a little bit, you know, I thought it cant be that way - we've got do better than that. So basically when I was a student, I changed my interest into being more and more how computers are used, not so much how you make them work which is the normal thing to work on.

So basically from then on in since the early eighties - for the last twenty years i've basically been doing the same thing. So contrary to many other who kind a more got into it more because of the web, I've actually been looking and working on usability for the last 20 years and really got started on that because of the unpleasantness of the mainframes.

Do you think that people are now aware of the importance of usability?
Well, I think more than before, but not enough, I think we are half way there. And I think that one should be really positive about that. Because if we think about the twenty years I've been working on this, it has changed dramatically. Twenty years ago it was just a small number of specialists at the university department who cared about this problem. Then ten years ago it was almost big enough for people in Silicon valley and computer companies to care about the problem.

And now it is not all companies that have a web site - they should, but not all of them do - but many companies have actually some amount of interest in usability.

More in the Usa than Europe...
Yes, that's really true. Well it's still not quite worldwide enough, we still need to focus more in Asia in particular. And we get so much technology from Asia, it's a difficulty because of that.

If we are so late with adopting usability on the web, what will happen when usability issues extend to other media, and to the synergy between, say, domestic appliances, mobile phones, cars, etc... What new challenges do we face developing these new non-computer based interfaces?
Well, I believe in that, I believe we'll have more and more devices and we've been through maybe a little bit of temporary period where everything was one format which was the web browser and the PC screen. I think as far as the the PC screen, we'll have more diversity and web applications, and I also think that this will make more devices, mobile devices and personal home devises like the ability to read newspapers and magazines.

I think a lot of these things will completely happen. One of the greater challenges will be to create a unified used experience across all of those different devices. Where they are at right now is even as a standalone thing, they are still built to optimise it's own premisses not really built to connect between all of those devices. So we really want to be able to go to a web site on your pc, and maybe later in the day pull out your little handheld while your on the bus. So you can continue where you left off at home. Then when you go to the office you just go to your big screen (I actually think we'll have much bigger screens in the future - newspaper sized screens) and pull up a much richer representation and continue along the same lines.

The way it would be done right now is that they would be three different things and they wouldn't be integrated at all. A very simple thing like your address book the names of the people you contact, right now you have to remember to synchronize that and move this information manually between your mac and your telephone and all the other devises, systems and centralized networks of companies.

And the process is clunky and it's not a single, smooth succinchronized experience. So that I think is the big challenge, and I don't think we will have that in the beginning if the whole experience shows. At the beginning, I think it will be a mess and it won't actually work but it's something people will do for the challenge of it. Some people like to try new gadgets and they will, but for it truly become a integrated part society we really need to go to technology and don't have to yourself move everything around and make it happen it has to be very very integrated.

So computers are not truly well integrated with business, with your home, where you go they demand that used under their own terms . They dictate how they should be used they sit there on their own special little alter in your house and you go there to pay your respects to Bill Gates...

...not me!
Ah that's Steve Jobs, that's different! Although it's the same principle anyway. I think it just needs to be really integrated and that's my point.

As technological advances grow in complexity, do you think usability is a means to democratise technology, that is, to make technology understandable to a majority of people?
I think it's a necessity for democracy actually. In the long run, we're never going to have a truly free society if half the population can't be part of the way that real things are getting done. Technologies right now are too complicated for half the population, and some people might barely be able to get onto a few things. A third who can't use it at all there's also a big group of people who barely use it, but not really it's an incredibly hard usibility challenge though to design for the low literacy or no literacy skills.

All the things we have done right now obviously are more for the literate half of the population and almost nothing has been done for the other half. Actually we've built things to the stage right now where it's quite difficult for us to make separate solutions ease of use for the most literate half of the population. For the least literate half, it's a complete disaster. And yet, there's a lot a talk about e-gov, e-learning just even the ways that we do business like even if you want to take a reasonable job these days youŒre gonna have to use a computer.

You know we were talking about the intranet - that just is the employee tools it's the way you do things. If someone wants to know about their pension band, it's gonna be on the computer and if they can't figure that out, they're not going to be really served very well. So i think it's a necessity, it has to be done, but I don't think it's viewed that way today.

So let's take a long term perspective - that's actually the crucial thing in life right - are we gonna ignore\cut off half the population in the future or are we gonna include them? If we want to include them, technology has to become drastically better not just a little bit but drastically.

Are there any boundaries with the world wibe web, or it will keep on growing exponentially?
Completely! The web will continue to grow until it truly becomes worldwide, I don't think it's gonna happen for a lot of Africa, for example, for the next 20 years. The hardest one to crack will be those really poor countries. Previously I was talking about the most literate and less literate half of the population, but when you have those places where 99% aren't literate at all, then that becomes really difficult to deal with: I mean you can still do it given time but it won't be easy.

This may be a silly question, but, given that the web is growing exponencially, do you think there will be a moment in wich we will generate internet pollution? Everyone has a website now, everyone has a blog...
Oh yes completely, I agree, I think we have this already there's an ENORMOUS amount of internet pollution. I think spam is the worst! On websites too, leaving aside spam, but websites are filled with information that nobody wants. It's just junk that clutters it up and makes it hard for me, who wants it?

I very much think there is internet pollution and information pollution in everyday life. I'll just give you an example: in the airport in silicon valley, when you get on the bus that take you out of the terminal out to the parking lot, they spend a lot of that time saying "Welcome to San Jose International Airport, we hope blah blah blah" I mean, I know I'm in San Jose airport, I've just flown into it! And then it goes "this bus goes to the red parking lot" and i think WHY didn't they say that first?

The solution? I guess it's to have more respect for peoples time, because that's the ultimate precious resource, and when you use the metaphor of pollution, what is the renewable resource and what is limited resource, peoples time is the ultimate limited resource. We only have 24 hours a day, we don't get any more and we only have so many years and we've got to make the most of that and wasting that is a real drag.

So, respecting people's time and we have to get more of an acceptance of that principle.

You have considered new aspect of usability: on the web, on the intranet, using Flash. What is yor next area of interest?
Probably a lot more on aspects of interactive multimedia. You know, some of the different places you can go for a more integrated experience. I think that's gonna be the area i next look at.

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Useful link

• Use.it
• Nielsen Norman Group
• Usability Week