soft performance - laws
TRANSCRIPT
Soft Performancelaws and principles
#ISTACon2016 @dsimov
who’s talking? Dimiter Simov (Jimmy)
usability practitioner, UX mentor and trainer
founder of the 1st BG usability consultancy
likes to raise usability awareness
believes that IT can be usableproduct experience for SAP HANA Cloud Platform @ SAP
goalchallenge your common sense
performance
a task or operation seen in terms of how successfully it is performed
pay increases are now being linked more closely to performance
the capabilities of a machine, product, or vehiclethe hardware is put through tests which assess the performance of the processor
Source: Google define
recall ISTA 2013: performance has a soft side
text and formatting
Fitts’ lawlayout and structure
user success & engagement
presentation of progressaesthetics
1 : 1.618 = the golden ratio
recall ISTA 2014: about messages
avoid messages, especially modal ones
if you have to give a message, make sure it is obvious:
be practical
DON’T WRITE MESSAGES, DESIGN INTERACTIONS
1. who shows it2. what happened3. why4. what users can do about it
recall ISTA 2015: metrics
effectiveness
efficiency
satisfaction
success rate
time on task & effortorientation & error rate
task-level: easy or hardoverall: System Usability Scale
ISTA 2016: laws and principles
Occam’s razor
Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
About14th century
William of Ockham
English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher and theologian
also: lex parsimoniae = law of parsimony
Occam’s razor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
Occam’s razor
image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1katl4icsmafzw8/Org%20To%20Customer%20Centric%20EuroIA%202016%20Gerry%20McGovern.pdf
spring 2014success 94%
summer 2015 success 53%
Spring 2016success 100%
how to boost soft performance?
go for solutions that: require less efforts from usersoffer fewer and simpler interactions
Occam’s razor
Conway's law
Organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
about1967-8
Melvin Edward Conway
computer scientist, programmer, and hacker
organizational self-centeredness
Conway's law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
Conway’s Lawhow does this company organize its clients
image: https://online.bulbank.bg/page/default.aspx?xml_id=/bg-BG/.loginAll
how to boost soft performance?
study how your users think about the subject; match their mental models
multidisciplinary teams; external eyes
Conway’s law
Jakob's law
Users spend most of their time on other sites.
about2000
Jakob Nielsen
Jakob's law of the Internet user experience
users prefer things they are already familiar with - intuitive
Jakob's law
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/end-of-web-design/
can you use the web without clickingJakob's law
Image: http://www.dontclick.it/
Jakob's lawhow do you request green light?
Jakob's lawsave as
how to boost soft performance?
make your product work the same way as the other products out there
stick to conventions
Jakob's law
Moore's law
The number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
about1965
Gordon Moore | founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel
bigger hard drives, faster connections, cheaper IT equipment, more pixels in digital cameras, bigger bandwidth, …
Moore’s law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
Moore’s lawthe speed of Google search
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO_iRBEgnLc
Wirth's law
Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.
about1995
Niklaus Wirth | Swiss computer scientist, designer of Pascal, 1984 winner of the Turing Award
successive generations of computer software increase in size and complexity, thereby offsetting the performance gains predicted by Moore's law
software bloat
Wirth’s law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
Wirth's lawthe speed of Microsoft Office
Office 2007 performed slower on a typical year-2007 computer as compared to Office 2000 on a year-2000 computer
https://goo.gl/B9Sooa
how to boost soft performance?
do not jump hastily on the “latest and greatest” technological miracle
stick to user goals and needs
measure efficiency and effectiveness
Moore’s and Wirth's laws
pick the one that you like most
parrot cat
iguana
rabbit
swimwalk
climb
run
jumpdance
row
ride
Hick's law
The time it takes to make a decision increases logarithmically with the number of possible choices.
about1950s
William Edmund Hick | British experimental psychologist and ergonomist
Ray Hyman | American psychologist, critic of parapsychology, founder of the modern skeptical movement
Hick–Hyman law
Hick’s law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick%27s_law
buy or subscribeHick's law
Image: http://www.axure.com/buy
cancer registry of Norway before and afterHick's law
image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1katl4icsmafzw8/Org%20To%20Customer%20Centric%20EuroIA%202016%20Gerry%20McGovern.pdf
The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is LessHick's law
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice#/media/File:Paradox_of_Choice_cover.jpg
how to boost soft performance?
know user goals and needs – perform tasks analysis
be careful with the number of options
reduce and hide
step-by-step guidance
Hick's law
Miller’s law
The number of objects an average person can hold in working memory is about seven.
about1956
George Miller | a founder of cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics and cognitive science
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
human memory has limited capacity: a couple of bits
Miller’s law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two
read this
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dimitersimeonovsimovjimmyDimiter Simeonov Simov Jimmy
Miller's law
how to boost soft performance?
do not make users remember or recall things you can easily show them
chunks & delimiters
no, it is not necessary to limit menu choices, items on the home page, categories, radio buttons, and so on to 7+/- 2
Miller's law
Zipf’s law
In a corpus of natural language, the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. The most frequent word occurs twice as often as the second most frequent one, three times as often as the third most frequent word…
about1935
George Kingsley Zipf | American linguist and philologist with interests in statistics
zipfian distribution applies to other areas: salaries, population of cities, website popularity, pages visited, user tasks
long tail / long neck
Zipf’s law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law
page visits on SAP HCP documentationZipf’s law
how to boost soft performance?
know your users’ tasks
Zipf's law
Don’t make me think
a good software program or web site should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible
about2000
Steve Krug | an information architect and user experience professional
invisible tool
Don’t make me think
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think
how to boost soft performance?
make your software such that users think about how to accomplish the task at hand not about how to use the tool
Don’t make me think
Norman’s law
A project is behind schedule and over its budget the day it is started.
about2010
Donald Norman | designer, psychologist, engineer
no need to start with design research – do then think
pre-existing knowledge, inhibited creativity
Norman’s law
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/act_first_do_the_re.html
how to boost soft performance?
sketch and try first
then analyze
then iterate
work with domain experts
Norman’s law
recall ISTA 2016: laws and principlesOccam’s razorConway's law
Jakob's lawMoore's lawWirth's lawHick's law
Miller’s lawZipf’s law
Don’t make me thinkNorman's law
go for the simplestorganizational self-centerednesspeople spend more time with other designshardware capacity doubles every year or sosoftware bloats faster than hardware growsmany choices, hard and slow decisionsour memory has limited capacityfrequency is inversely proportional to rankinvisible productsa project is late and over budget on day 1
that’s
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