The UX of Social Media

The monetization of suffering

The ship of fools is an allegory satirizing the human comedy as a voyage of frivolous or oblivious people without a leader or pilot, each one seemingly of the belief they are the savior. The concept is framed in the 1484 novel Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant, and later by other writers including novelist Katherine Anne Porter (1962).

In Porter’s novel, each character is an archetype representing human vanities. She makes use of the Jungian archetypes such as the Hero, Scapegoat, Outcast, Devil, Earthmother, Platonic Ideal, Temptress, Unfaithful Wife, Star-Crossed Lovers, etc., and situations including the Quest, Fall, Task, Initiation, Journey, and so on. The way so-called Reality TV serves up these heavily-edited and therefore unrealistic segments varies only slightly between shows. There is always the one I like to call Grim Executioner. This is ostensibly the show’s moderator (speaking dialog spoon-fed from behind the curtain) whose job it is to deliver the bad news with a hatchet face.

The Grim Executioner is in love with Schadenfreude, or ‘enjoying the suffering of others.’ This the Grim Executioner’s daily diet, and the producers make sure there is enough drama and suffering to go around.

The suffering of others is also the staple of millions of viewers who tune in from squalid rooms and palaces alike to watch someone besides themselves become the latest humiliated outcast.

Larry Wilmore, who created Reality Junkie for Fox, said, “It’s like watching a car wreck… the drama of it… because there’s so much cruelty and tearing people apart. I feel like I need to take a shower when I watch that.”

As the producers of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? quickly discovered, reality TV is incredibly cheap to produce, and collects better market share than scripted dramas, soaps or sitcoms. That is putting pressure on scripted shows to reduce budget, which is not going to add literary value to our life and times.

Because the brain is malleable to the way it is used, and because sensory tolerances develop, it is inevitable that audiences will become jaded on current fare, and require more extreme and exotic reality entertainment. Just consider that about 1/4 of Web servers worldwide are devoted to porn, and you’ll get a sense of where the ship of reality TV fools can really take us.

One possible destination was illuminated at least as far back as 1958, in the short story Mr. and Mrs. Saturday Night by Robert F. Young (1915 – 1986). The story depicts a lottery in which a lucky couple is chosen to be on television from their own home, for the entertainment of millions. Crews come in and wire the whole place for video and sound. The couple’s elation turns to dread when they realize they are supposed to spend the entire evening in their bedroom. But the year 1958 provided a very moral setting: they were, after all, married to each other.

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Recently I was asked to prepare a written estimate to upgrade the usability of a software product. I had spoken to several of the company principals, who assured me that usability was the central problem they must overcome to be competitive and secure key customers.

So I spent half a day looking at their software, and wrote up my estimate.

Being a user experience designer, I naturally gravitated to such activities as talking to users and integrating their evaluations of the product before, during, and after the rebuild. The tasks included heuristic evaluation, initial usability testing, revised flow models, key flow prototypes, visual design, usability testing of builds, final usability and acceptance testing, and normalized scoring of the finished package to provide a baseline for future projects.

The response I got was classic:  “How much would that cost without the usability testing?”

This goes back to one of my earlier rants, the conflict of features and usability. Features always win, because you can see them. Usability is assumed, like breathing, and is just as hard to explain. But if anyone still wonders how Apple, for example, managed to secure such customer loyalty in the early years, it comes down to that single idea:  they thought about their users and created tools that were easily understood and easily used.

Investing in good usability makes sense only when the time horizon is far beyond the next quarterly report or the next board meeting. Usability is not a quick hit that will produce instant gains. Usability is part of corporate good will, the customer loyalty, and these are not things that an ad campaign can bring in six months. Usability thinking will be in the DNA of the next wave of companies that reach the heights of Amazon, Ebay, Google, Yahoo, and Netflix. Those companies made a science of customer relationships and did not let up when they were successful. Customer experience growing from positive user experience is one solid reason those companies are at the top today. Please see ibmdesign’s post on the ROI of usability.

And yes usability work does cost, and it does take time. But if you don’t have time now to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

I would guess about zero.

Which brings me to the point of user experience design for the real world… the walking around, space-contention and collision real world.

Malls, city street corners, tree-lined boulevards. City planners put in vegetation, which is attractive, decorative, and oxygen-producing, but overlook the limited line of vision this sometimes creates.

Here are a few things that go wrong, with implied suggestions:

Malls:-

1. Bushes are right at the end of a parking row or at a stop sign. Drivers of smaller cars cannot see over those. Many of those bushes are taller than some children, or a person on a tricycle, skateboard, or small bike. These drivers must inch out (driving by Braille) until they can see.

2. Decorative trees lining sidewalks often have foliage lower than the visual plane of an adult. Some pedestrians cannot see down the street and must step over the curb or into the street to clear this. Jaywalking is illegal yes but this adds to the risk for everyone.

3. Combine 1 and 2 above.

4. Big trucks or dumpsters parked at street corners. Businesses with corner locations have to be aware of this.  Some drivers forced to stop will lower their car windows and their music and listen… next to large objects such as trucks and dumpsters this trick will not provide much warning.

5. Visual challenges. Planners and traffic/pedestrian designers sometimes put too many things to look at. The situation changes every second and people arriving at a location have to scan repeatedly until they pass through. With more than three directions to check for, or odd signage, directions, configurations, etc. this becomes unrecognizable and dangerous.

Having worked extensively in the UI/UX design arena since 1995, and pursued user inquiries for tech doc and marketing programs before that, I can’t say I’ve witnessed UX considerations win out over feature choices for the next breathless release. Ever.

Is it because the stakeholders never spend a second in the product support department, or listen to the teeth-gnashing of the tech writers and marketing copy writers as they return from a dev meeting trying to explain something in mere words that was built around an esoteric mental model? Or because the feature’s reason to be is based not on user research but on ‘coding coolness’.

I asked one developer to tell me who was supposed to understand a feature they were building. Answer: “Me and Tim.” Attempts to introduce a more accessible mental model failed because there was ‘not enough time’. Or maybe there weren’t enough Tims.

Is it because the same copy writers fail in their ability to explain the qualities of the user experience, or what the UX actually is to begin with? That is admittedly a tough problem. How does one explain breathing, anyway?

It is hard to explain user experience as a feature.

It’s because we all overlook the difference between quick judgements (e.g., usability evaluations) and long-term use (e.g., a beta trial). Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink spent a good 45 pages with the issue of market research, and came up with the notion that we often ask questions that are exactly wrong for the important issues. The key comment the UX professional hears is there is not enough time. Not enough time for what? To do the job right?

UX designers chime in – what is your take? Same? Better? Worse?