This piece includes excerpts from an entry in Kathy Sierra’s “Creating Passionate Users” blog. Kathy’s writing is inspired by her interest in leveraging “how the brain works … to exploit it for better learning and memory.” Kathy’s blog explores what it takes to create passionate users.
As it turns out, “what it takes” inevitably boils down to “helping users kick-ass”. (Kathy refers to the clients of a business as users. Since the business I’m focusing on is a university, I’ll be calling them students.) Students attend top-notch universities for two reasons: to (learn to) kick-ass, and to meet other people that also kick-ass.
Interestingly, people that routinely kick-ass (in industry and academia) seem to all come from MIT.
Below, I’ve summarized (and commented on) parts of the most recent post, “Attenuation and the suck threshold”
Attenuation and the suck threshold
How long do your users spend in the “I suck” (or “this product sucks”) zone?
Once they’ve crossed the suck threshold, how long does it take before they start to feel like they kick ass? Both of those thresholds are key milestones on a users path to passion, and it’s often the case that he-who-gets-his-users-there-first wins. Our O’Reilly editor Mike Loukides says our goal — whether it’s for product design or writing a tech book — should be to focus on answering this question:
What is the minimum threshold at which the user can be creative?
Followed by:
Do whatever it takes to help them get there quickly.
STOP. Ask yourself this question about courses here at MIT. What is the minimum threshold at which students can be creative? In math or chemistry? In their major? (Which is why they came here in the first place.) 1 semester? 2 semesters? Write it down. In WEEKS. Students live their lives week-to-week. So that’s how we’ll measure their pain. Just write it down and keep going. Think about it later.
And by “creative”, he doesn’t mean “be artistic”. He means, “be able to apply the tool or knowledge or skill to do something useful or fun that they find meaningful or interesting.” A long learning curve before true mastery is achieved is not the problem. The real problem is when there’s a long learning curve just to get past the “I suck” (or, “this product sucks”) zone, and a long curve before crossing the “Hey, I’m actually starting to kick ass at this!” threshold.
Think about what that zone feels like. We’ve all had it as some point. You can tell when students are there, because they start smiling at their book or paper. Or their professor. That’s the moment that so many students and researchers live for. The knowledge that time just time spent was an investment that’s already making returns.
For most of us, our user wants to use our tools (software, books, sermons, screwdrivers, saddle, music) to do something else (collaborate electronically, learn, find inspiration, build a deck, ride a horse, dance). So we try to think about the thing they want to do, and how quickly we can get them through those two thresholds:
1) The suck threshold
The point at which they stop hating you (your company), the activity itself, or their complete inability to do anything useful.
2) The passion threshold
The point at which they start feeling like they kick ass. While passion is not a guarantee at this point, the chances of someone becoming passionate before this are slim.
It’s interesting to think about the popular acronym IHTFP here. What’s interesting is that the two most popular definitions of it correspond exactly to these two thresholds — Hate and Paradise.
And it’s not always about the product–sometimes it’s all about framing, documentation, and learning. It’s about [straps self into buzzword appreciation chair] attenuation. Turning down the gain. Narrowing. Focusing.
Or as O’Reilly’s Rael Dornfest puts it:
“…bandwidth continues to broaden, cycles are going spare, storage grows ever larger and cheaper, and content keeps pouring from the fire hose. No longer constrained by any virtual limits, we’re feeling the effects of this flood of digital assets.”
It’s no longer about generating digital data–we have more than enough already. The challenge is now: How do we visualize the data, filter it, remix it, and access it in ways meaningful to us?
In many subtle and not-so-subtle ways we’re seeing user experience and design returning to software.
What developments in UI and HCI design promise to empower users rather than confuse and overwhelm them?”
There are so many opportunities. Raise your hand if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed withthe pressure to keep up. Nod knowingly if you’ve ever said or thought anything like:
“Don’t you DARE throw out that stack of journals, magazine articles, web printouts, partly-read books, and blogs. I really am going to get to them.”
“Why oh why didn’t I become a plumber? Not scalable, sure, but also not outsourceable. And the domain knowledge is fairly stable… unlike my CS degree… [begins to laugh hysterically and inappropriately]”.
Yes, there are so many opportunities. Anyone who can help attentuate the firehose in some way is a hero to those who are drowning.
And we can do it in so many different ways.
We can do it with filters. Or maybe lenses.
What would this mean for our curriculum?
We want students to become better thinkers. Right now, MIT does that. No one really knows exactly how though. It’s like throwing a pickle jar in your car trunk and driving over speed bumps at 80 miles an hour. Sure, you get the pickles out of the jar, but that doesn’t mean your solution is elegant. Or that you’d want to be the pickle.
Remember, this is not about how long it takes to truly become an expert. In fact, where there is real passion there is always continuous learning and challenges in whatever it is the person is passionate about whether it’s conversational Kingon or digital video editing or snowboarding or meditation or being a wine snob/expert. This is not about dumbing down to give users a nice (albeit false) sense of self-esteem. This is about getting them to where they can actually do something.
Here are a few possibilities, but of course it depends greatly on the context of the tool (including expertise and expectations of the user):
1) Consider making different user profiles within the product itself, and allowing the user to choose a configuration for the interface that matches the user’s goal and current level of skill and knowledge. Yes, that could mean having things like “advanced modes”, and while that’s a somewhat controversial usability practice, it definitely has a place, and can be done brilliantly for many (not all) products. But yes, it’s about attenuating what a particular user is exposed to in the interface — not hiding capabilities from them without their knowledge.
For students, that would mean different tracks within a class. What does a student want to get out of the class?
An A? Finish this 2″ packet of work by semester end.
An understanding? Do all the proofs the teacher did. Backwards.
An ability? Apply this to a different domain, in a project that matters to you. Extra points if you use the same project for two classes. That’s how the real world works.
2) If you can’t change the product, change the documentation. I’ve been working on and off on an intro to movie-making book to teach Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro to mortals. The Final Cut interface is beyond overwhelming:
We could spend the first three chapters describing what each component of the interface is for. But that just keeps them in the suck zone longer, produces cognitive overload, and completely violates the “give them the minimum needed to start being creative.” In other words, trying to explain the Final Cut interface only delays their ability to start doing the cool thing–editing video!
But we can attenuate the interface by postponing the “here’s what every single one of the 230 things in the interface does…” (and that’s just the part of the interface you can see…) and instead focus their attention just on the six or less things they need to get in there and start editing video.
This is like handing out a table of transforms. Don’t do that. Instead, if you must, hand out small business-card size reference sheets, with just a few lines on them. Give students one of those binder rings to keep it on. When students need a new tool, give it to them. Make it personal. Remember, you care that this information is available to them.
3) Use a spiral user experience model:
4) Create context-dependent FAQs and/or context-dependent “FDTs” (Frequently Done Things). At any given point in the use of a tool, what the user is most likely to do next is rarely random. By having some kind of reference or learning or embedded help that focuses on those can be a big help. Too many reference or training materials are organized by topic, when the user often has no idea what the topic IS. They want to do something, but they have no idea which part of the interface they’re supposed to be looking up in the help file, because they don’t know what comes next…
How many courses have this? Almost none. People relish in sharing, and learning personal discoveries about the best ways of solving particular problems. Students should be writing these, not professors. Professors don’t do the problem sets, or the drudge work in the lab. They don’t have time for that. Bring students in from the previous semester to talk about their own personal methods. This reinforces the material in the minds of the veterans, and rewards them for their hard work. Current students can network with their contemporary mavens, and develop much stronger connections to the material.
Select students in the current semester to log their efforts on problem sets. How did they come upon a revelation for a difficult problem? What did they draw on that scratch sheet of paper? Make it a rewarding, but anonymous activity. Don’t make it required.
5) In training materials for the product, focus on getting the user doing something cool as early as possible! Don’t bog them down with tons of theory before letting them apply what they’ve learned in some meaningful, interesting, and/or useful way. I’ve seen Java instructors make their students wait—forever before they students can actually write code, because the instructor believed they shouldn’t be constructing code until they have a complete understanding.
That’s not how humans work, and no, this is not a matter of “learning preferences” either. There may be some people who believe they are more comfortable learning the theory first, but that doesn’t make it better learning — even for those who believe they prefer it.
God knows that if we had to understand physics before we could ever start to walk… most of us would still not be walking.
This is directed at the professors that do a proof long before they explain what the intrinsic value of the method they’re proving is.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever said, “I don’t bother going to lecture, because I have no idea what the professor is talking about. I’ll just figure it out from the book.” However, learning workable proofs is of immense value. Not only does it reinforce the material, but it puts students inside the heads of the pioneers that came up with it. Don’t you want to know how Laplace would approach your pset?
6) Make sure there’s a way for the user to know when they’ve crossed the thresholds.
Sometimes the user is capable of doing more than they realize. Find a way to prove to them that they really can kick ass (or at least that they no longer suck). This must not be faked! This must be real, and again–not some attempt to dumb it down to make the user feel good. It may be that the user is doing something meaningful, that applies directly to what they really want to do, but the materials/instructor/app haven’t made it clear enough how this seemingly simple thing relates or bridges to something that matters.
Most students here know that going to lecture is one of the many keys to success. How do students define success? “Being able to do the problem set” is not an acceptable answer. Neither is “getting an A in the class.”
Universities don’t exist to give grades. That’s why the highest level of education a person can achieve — a PhD — does not depend on anything we as undergraduates would recognize as an exam.
When a university grants a PhD, the university is certifying that this individual has made a leading contribution to their field. In other words, they’ve done something to help others in their field kick-ass.
So remember…
The “time to stop sucking” and “time to first kick-ass” quotients are among the biggest advantages we have in a world where the competition is both fierce and plentiful. (And that’s both market competition as well as competition for our scarce and precious brain/cognitive/attention bandwidth.) More importantly, it’s a way in which we can make a positive impact on the lives of users.
Now, what if MIT were full of the passionate students we’re working to create here? Imagine the classes. The conversations. The community.
Imagine the imprint MIT would make on these students.
Imagine the imprint these students would make on the world.