Bias is an outcome of human thought and often based on rules of thumb. Cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behavior. Some are presumably adaptive, for example, because they lead to more effective actions in given contexts or enable faster decisions when faster decisions are of greater value. Others presumably result from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms, or from the misapplication of a mechanism that is adaptive under different circumstances.

Though cognitive bias falls under the realm of Psychology, cognitive bias plays a vital role in user research. Understanding the various forms of cognitive biases will help a usability analyst when performing contextual inquiries and user interviews.

Wikipedia lists all the cognitive biases that makes for an interesting read. The list of biases allows a researcher understand the context behind user’s approach to tasks. For example, understanding the Hawthorne Effect – which is about the tendency to perform or perceive differently when one knows they are being observed – will help during a contextual inquiry. An understanding of the Planning Fallacy effect is useful in calculating the task completion times.

Bullshit. Every one seems to have forgotten the basic tenet of usability: “Know the user, and YOU are not the user.”

If a car designer tries to create a similar steering wheel for a production vehicle, I can understand the uproar. But for a customized piece of machinery like a formula 1 car, the discussion is moot.

Most people don’t understand what a motor racing car is. Comparing it with an ordinary road vehicle is idiocy. A casual driver never deals with issues like configuring the fuel mixture, adjusting down-forces and wings. He never drives at speeds of over 300 kmph. He never experiences g-forces of over 4. A Formula 1 car is a complex piece of machinery… Trying to apply ‘iPod style’ usability principles will not work…

The definition of usability is ‘The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.’ And I see no reason why the F10 steering wheel doesn’t adhere to this definition. It is designed for

• a ‘specified users’ – a Formula 1 racing driver
• ‘achieve specified goals’ – win the race
• ‘effectiveness’ and ‘efficiency’- the various functions available to the racing driver to win the race
• ‘satisfaction’ – a F1 car is built around a single person, customized to his needs.
• ‘a specified context of use’ – the car and its components are built for one thing only – speed and maneuverability.

As a formula 1 aficionado and a UX practitioner, I belive the F10 steering wheel does what is supposed to do — help the driver race his vehicle.

Absolutely. Without Doubt.

One major interaction that a user has with a system is the documentation accompanying the product, either as printed manuals or their electronic cousins. In fact, any text that a user sees on the screen in the form of labels and copy is a form of technical communication – another source of interaction with the user.

I’ve had many people ask me about transitioning from technical communication to usability/user experience. All I can say to them is that you might already be doing it; only that you aren’t aware of it yet.

Another question I get to field often is how to ‘get into’ it. The answer that I give mostly is Volunteer. Volunteer to check screens/copy text for clarity/disambiguity. Volunteer to check every interaction a user would have with the system. Provide clear and meaningful copy for error messages.

Technical Communicators often forget a very important fact – they are often the first users of a system. Most of the time, they are just concerned about just documenting the system, rather than looking at it from a user perspective. I’ve seen this happen a lot of times and have been guilty of the same on several occasions.

In a blog post at Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz writes, I believe that user experience is not best thought of as an activity or function, but as a mindset. To varying degrees, every customer-facing person in an organization has an impact on, and, thus, responsibility for the user experience.

That’s something everyone aspiring to be a usability practitioner ought to be taking to heart.

All I had was an Excel file with around 20 messages that had the current error message and a description when/how the error message occurs. Feeling it would be a good exercise to spend the afternoon, I made my way towards the product development team. As we started the exercise, I realised that the team had no idea about error messages. They just got in touch with me because I was the technical writer. They had obviously thought that I was there just to correct the grammar and punctuation. I sat down and went through each scenario where the error message occurs and did what was required.

One typical user activity is to create a configuration file into the database by creating one or by importing an existing configuration. The dev team wanted me to look into the errors that occur during the import process. During that process, I identified issues with the sequence of error messages appearing because the inputs were not validated atomically. Rather, they were validated as a batch and you got a bucketful of error messages that should have been caught earlier. Being modal in nature, the user had no choice but to click the Ok or Cancel button to move on, which was too late. And these error messages really weren’t serving any purpose other than the developer’s need to say that the user made a error.

I explained that a good error message consists of three parts: what went wrong (a reason), why it was wrong (the problem), and what to do next (a call for action). Messages that follow this approach help the user move on with their flow with minimal interruptions. I also explained it was better to anticipate possible error scenarios and prevent them from happening rather than display an error message afterwards. As Alan Cooper mentions as a design principle in About Face 3, ‘Error message boxes stop the proceedings with idiocy and should be avoided.’ I suggested some solutions to avoid the error happening in the first place by performing validations then and there, rather than display them as a bunch of dialog boxes that force the user to click a button to get the error message out of the way.

Next up was the language used in the error message, which was the original reason why I was working with them in the first place. A question arose if the word ‘please’ had to be included in the error message like “Please enter an IP address” or should it just read “Enter an IP address”. I felt it was better to go without the word ‘please’ because it felt too patronizing and it did not add any value to the sentence. Finally I had reworded it to read as “The IP address cannot be blank. Enter a valid IP address. The IP address must be of the form of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx”.

What really irked me was that the developers had no clue to user interface guidelines. They were using a Windows application, but they were not following the Windows User Experience Guidelines, but again even Microsoft doesn’t follow it at times.

Image via Flickr user:twindx

Chip in with your thoughts on error messages and designing for contingencies…

“The number one success factor for user experience professionals is education… Coupled with education is experience… Building on the education and experience is exposure.”

As someone who is building a career path in User Experience and someone who has been asked this question a few times, this post is a good primer.

Personally, I think I need to build up on the Experience part a wee bit and Exposure part a lot. Building your exposure is something I’ve never focussed on, which I shall rectify.