It’s in the 16th century building…
Posted October 1st, 2009 by David Hamill“It’s in the 16th century building on The High Street” she said. This was my mum trying to explain where the local copy and print shop was.
I couldn’t tell a 16th century building from an 18th century one. The High Street in my home town is full of old buildings, so I couldn’t even guess.
After I’d recovered from laughing, she grudgingly explained that it was across the road from the Post Office. This was a little more helpful.
My mum often explains things in a way that only she sees them. She’s a historian, so this can include giving directions that you need an interest in period architecture to understand.
So what’s this got to do with websites?
Lots of organisations are like her. They are so engrossed in what they do, that they speak in a way that is confusing to others. Unfortunately this tends to include their customers.
Such organisations usually reflect this on their website. They tend to:
- use vocabulary that customers don’t understand
- organise information the way they see it and not how the customer does
- swamp their site with content that few people want or need
- fail to provide the content that people do need
These failings drastically affect how useful and easy-to-use the website will be.
An example – National Grid UK
Let’s use a scenario to explore this further.
Brendan is a local café owner who is losing business because of road works outside his premises being carried out by National Grid. This is a scenario a café owner told me about when I was buying lunch. I’ve changed the café owner’s name as well as the actual website involved.
Brendan wants to find out how long the works are going to take and whether he’s entitled to any compensation for loss of business. His options from the National Grid homepage are shown below.
The structure of this website is relatively organisation-centric rather than customer-centric. There isn’t a section for road works at the top level. Instead Brendan must first understand which department is carrying out the works. Brendan doesn’t care how the National Grid organises itself, he doesn’t care why they are digging up the road. He just wants to know when the work will be finished and whether he’ll be compensated for loss of business.
Road works for gas pipes are the same as road works for electricity as far as he is concerned. They both involve a big hole in the road and fewer people entering his café.
Let’s skip past a lot of Brendan’s pain and assume he eventually opts for the Gas section of the website. Here are his next options.
Again National Grid organises its content in an organisation-centric manner. This time the road works information is hidden under ‘Pipeline Projects’. National Grid sees its hole in the road as a pipeline project, the public (including Brendan) see it as road works.
This is like my mum saying “in the 16th century building” when I need her to say “across from the Post Office”. National Grid is talking from its own perspective rather than Brendan’s. As a result, Brendan can’t find what he’s looking for.
If Brendan eventually selects the links he needs, the next choice gets a little easier. Streetworks is a decent link title, but when he clicks it, he sees the page below.
This page is full of information that consumers don’t care about. National Grid care about how they scored in the recent Transport Research Laboratory report, but Brendan doesn’t. He just wants people to come and buy their lunch in his café. This page should be a pathway page to the useful content that exists deeper within the section.
Imagine you pulled up in your car to ask a man for directions. Instead of just telling you where you need to go, the man starts a lengthy explanation of the history and culture of the town you’re in. Do you care? No, you just want him to shut up and tell you where you need to go. The page shown above is that man.
The site doesn’t actually have any information about the timescales of its projects, so Brendan is out of luck. National Grid are too busy harping on about the stuff they’re proud of to give Brendan the information he needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
However, information about compensation does exist. It’s relegated to the bottom of the Frequently Asked Questions page. Here is the relevant question from the FAQ page.
Once again National Grid bores Brendan with all the background information before telling him what he needs to know. This is information that National Grid wants to say, but Brendan just wants to know if he’s eligible and how he claims compensation. Much of the rest of this text is wasteful and rather self-indulgent.
Empathy is the key to a better user experience
Unless you’re like my mum, when you’re giving someone directions you tend to stick to the information that person can deal with. You don’t introduce local nuances and you don’t try to show off about your knowledge of the local architecture. In other words you empathise with the person you’re trying to help.
Websites are the same. Your users will enjoy a better experience if your site empathises with their circumstances, knowledge and vocabulary.
What do you think?
Do you agree with me, or am I wrong? Whatever your opinion, post a comment and let’s discuss it.
28 Responses to “It’s in the 16th century building…”
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 am
I think this is a great lesson. I especially love the example about your mother
.
Good post!
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:49 am
2 great examples!
The problem is, we as website builder, build sites for the customer. It’s often a hard struggle to convince them of these truths. You don’t want to scare them away either. Certainly because there are lots of smaller competitors who would build whatever at any price.
Johan.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:43 am
Nicely constructed post. Good storytelling leads to an important point well made.
Like a lot of the stuff we do, it’s simple but apparently not easy.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:44 am
Hi Dave,
I wonder if this raises a broader question of companies trying to serve too many audiences with one website?
For example, I used to work for a global firm that was involved in, as one part of its business, digging up roads too.
Say the global brand was ABC, for example. The majority of its subsidiaries were ABC Water or ABC Gas or ABC Engineering (you get my drift).
At the top level was a corporate site for investors, etc, which was the site that popped up when you put ABC into Google.
Now, the subsidiary that was digging up the roads had its own site, which had a pretty good customer service site. But the customer would need to search for ABC Gas to find it.
Now, considering the branding ABC was everywhere, if I were the customer, I’d have searched for ABC and then not been able to find anything helpful because I got the corporate site (and we would often spend a lot of time fielding calls).
But if there had been some clear, helpful signposting on the corporate homepage that took me to the right site, that would have helped so much.
It’s not a perfect solution but perhaps that kind of thing would help many people find the help they need?
Sorry for the long answer!
Helen
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:55 am
Hi Helen, this is a good point and it’s where persona development based on real data about your users will come in handy.
When you use personas you tend to prioritise one as the primary persona. This is the person who takes priority when there is a conflict between the needs of your personas. When you find that the needs of your personas are wildly different and competing, you can consider providing separate interfaces for them. This can mean separate website for different audience groups.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:57 am
It is a great article and lesson David. The example is very good and comes handy as I am currently working on a business website about products and services. Will keep in mind the good advice.
You can really meet these examples many times especially with big organisations. Used to search for forms on the Home Office website… finally I ended up on a forum where people posted links for these forms.
Usability is ‘caring’ so if a company cares more about their organisation structure on the front-end than your concern, this is not a good sign.
Szabi
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:03 am
Great article. I like your comparisons with examples from real life
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:06 am
Hi David
Lovely example of the curse of knowledge, thanks.
I have been thinking about my own university’s website (on which I can seldom find what I need); taxonomies are really difficult things to render universally, but for some reason, big companies seem to be particularly bad at it. I like your message about empathy!
Chris
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:21 am
This reminds me of a visit I made to the supermarket and asked where the flour was.
“Next to the eggs” said the shop assistant.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:23 am
Hi Simon, that’s brilliant thanks for sharing it.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 am
[...] These failings drastically affect how useful and easy-to-use the website will be. (David Hamill, Good Usability) [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Another great post Luke!;)
It still puzzles me how sooo many organisations still just dont get it!! Sure there are some big boys who have the commitment to make their websites listen and learn, but how can we articulate this to planet SME?
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
[...] Continued here: Good Usability » It's in the 16th century building… [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Loved your post as always! “…in other words you empathise with the person you’re trying to help.” Thats how it should be.
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I think the problem in your example is the website is very much an ‘About Us’ website – a reference point for infomation about the company, as opposed to a forum for the distressed public.
The structure of the site like that is definitely purposeful. But getting companies to pay for somewhere more useful for consumers like in that situation?
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Hi Ed, thanks for commenting. The whole point of my blog is about designing websites that meet users’ needs. This does not involve deciding that your going to build an ‘About us’ website and then going off and making one. It involves finding out what people need from your website and then designing and testing iterative designs until you arrive at something that is both useful and easy-to-use.
Nowhere in this process does an organisation get to decide they’re just going to build an ‘About us’ website and then just go off and do it. I know that many people take this approach, but it’s an approach that will very rarely produce a website that users are happy with.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:04 am
[...] consultant David Hamill has written a really good article about, er, usability. He uses some easy to follow, practical examples to explain what usability is [...]
October 4th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
I completely agree with your points, although, to be honest, I don’t think one should need to have a special interest in history to know the difference between two buildings built 200 years apart from one another!
October 5th, 2009 at 8:06 am
Awesome post and something I can relate to well. I spent many years at university studying this very subject; i.e How to communicate more effectively with your target audience. And that was 10 years ago and still we see too many websites still confusing users.
It’s amazing how few organisations/companies understand that the customer experience is the most important aspect of the site.
Great to see someone else championing the end user.
Cool post.
Rob..
October 9th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
This pattern is echoed in marketing and business management as well as user experience. Navel-gazing is endemic. Organizations often forget that they exist to be useful.
What to do, then? Understand the problem. Draw a picture of the ecosystem: The organization, its customers, users, stakeholders, employees, allies, competitors, providers and non-customers. From that, derive personae (like Brendan), scenarios and smoke out specific interactions and nuggets of salient information.
As a photographer friend of mine once said (about photography, but I think it applies): “It’s easy as long as your eyes are attached to your brain.”
October 9th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Great post. I think this is a healthy reminder not just for organizations, but anyone involved in user experience related work … relax the jargon and focus on what’s truly ‘user-centric’.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Lovin’ your mum – at least she is willing to find another way of explaining so you can understand. I can think of many examples where people have kept their content to what they understand because this is what they do with little regard for the poor person at the end trying to use the thing…
October 16th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
[...] to Your Audience Community ResourceSpeaking to Your Audience http://www.goodusability.co.uk/2009/10/its-in-the-16th-century-building/#skipLots of organisations [...]
October 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
I am not amused.
Your mother.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Oops, hi Mum. I should also point out that my mum is often a very clear communicator. Especially when you’re in the bad books.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Hi David,
compliments on your very well written article. I fully agree with the point you make: too often companies think inside out.
PS good luck with your mom
PPS are you aware that the ‘website’ field of the comment form specifically requires ‘http://’ to start the link with?
October 20th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Thanks Ivo, don’t worry about my mum. It’s just her dry humour, she’s fine with what I wrote. Thanks for the tip on the comments form. It’s a pretty standard Wordpress form so I can’t really change it. I have however added a little hint on the label now.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:58 am
Hey David,
Nice use of metaphor for a common problem in our business. The problem I sometimes experience is convincing customers that they really should focus on the ‘outside in’ perspective instead of ‘inside out’ when providing information. Perhaps I will use your metaphor as an example
With regards,
Marijn de Jong
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