27 Jul The Manual Is Not A Safety Net
If you’re trying to squeeze a lot of functionality into a small device, you have two challenges:
1. Include all the functionality the user needs and wants
2. Allow the user to easily access all the functionality that you’ve included
There are many types of users and each has his or her own expectations of what the device should do. Seth Godin recently wrote about having trouble using the dashboard on his Garmin 305 watch. The Garmin 305 is a performance sports device with GPS mapping and heart-rate monitoring that allows athletes to analyze their workout in real-time and also later via downloaded data. It’s pretty high-tech. Given all of the functionality, Mr. Godin just wanted to be able to monitor his speed and his heart-rate while riding his bicycle – a pretty simple request of such a capable device. Unfortunately for both Mr. Godin and Garmin, there was a disconnect between the expectations of the product designers and those of the user. He expected to be able to access this data, and Garmin expected users to read the 80-page manual to be able to best utilize the functions.
From Garmin’s perspective, they’ve built one heck of a watch. It has some significant features packed into a device just a shade bigger than a normal wrist-watch. It’s light and easily worn by performance athletes. It includes multiple data fields to monitor various metrics and even allows the user to change those metrics on the go for triathletes that jump from swimming to running to biking without stopping. But, to squeeze all of these features into a small package, the designers had to sacrifice the prompts and on-board instructions that help a user navigate the user interface without external reference. In the process, they may have forgotten that we’ve already been programmed based on all the previous devices we’ve used over the years, and if they can conform to those expectations, they can get away with a lot less.
From Mr. Godin’s perspective, reading an 80-page manual is boring and unnecessary. However, while all of his questions were addressed in the manual, he’s probably the typical recreational user: data feedback helps him get more out of his workout and motivates him to improve, but he doesn’t have the patience to study the manual to understand all of the most complex functions. A simple 1-2 page Quick Start Guide should be sufficient to help him configure the device with a few references to the manual for more details.
Meeting Your User’s Expectations
At Key Tech, we strive to create an intuitive user interface while including the complex functionality required for some medical devices. It’s often reasonable to assume that all users have read the manual or even been specifically trained to use a device. However, we’ll often try to make the device more intuitive anyway. It’s not that we think any Candy-Striper should be able to assist in brain surgery, but with all of the things a doctor or surgical technician has to concentrate on during a procedure, remembering how to navigate the screens on a device we designed shouldn’t be one of them.
Whether it’s a medical device for brain surgery or a watch to track your workout, if you have to reference the manual every time you want to use it, you probably won’t, and that’s bad for everyone.
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