Knowledge of UCD, and thus ISO 13407, is a prerequisite to appreciate the work that is reported in the thesis, and the conveyance of such baseline knowledge is the purpose of the short story contained in this chapter. The story can be read as just a story, without bothering about the notes, or conversely, by consulting them at will.
Mr. Tompkins and the Common Sense1 of Usability
Prelude
Even though it was still early in the morning, the sun was already shining warmly, high in the clear, blue Bordurian2 sky. On his way to the office shortly after dawn, Mr. Tompkins had heard the weather forecast, and it sounded like it was going to be yet another beautiful day in Fidelz, the suburban district on the outskirts of the Capital, where the software development branch of the Company was located.
In his ample office on the 5th floor of the building, Mr. Tompkins did a quick survey of his desk, and decided that there was nothing there that could destroy the promises of a good day. Of course, there were tons of things he needed to attend to, especially the pile decorated with the (virtual) blinking sign of ‘really-soon-now’, but even that did not contain any real dynamite. Emails received on his GrapeFruit3 hand-held device gave the same impression: The day was going to be busy, certainly, but no immediate crises loomed on the horizon.
In particular, Mr. Tompkins felt sure that the progress meeting with the software development team-leaders at 10:00 would confirm his gut-feeling: The ongoing development of their main application, Zyklone Gold v.3, went according to plan, more or less. At least, the performance and progress was better than par for the course, and it seemed entirely feasible that they would finish on time, according to overall development schedule.
But then, Mr. Tompkins argued with himself, how could it go really wrong? They were evolving an earlier product version, and the development was following the time-honoured Waterfall model, which
provided predictability and reduced the risk often experienced in software development4. He had a good, experienced development team, where many of the key members had ‘been there’ before, having participated in the development of many of the earlier versions. There were even still people in the organization who had participated when they went from the traditional analogue Quibber5 to the first fully digital systems, and the Company was, arguably, the world leading supplier of Quibberling applications. With the introduction of the Zyklone series, where they managed to switch from cumbersome, dedicated hardware to the PC platform, they had rather surprised the competition, and had managed to secure their position in the forefront of the Quibber business. Mr. Tompkins could not help smiling a little satisfied smile: With Zyklone Gold v.3, they just might sandbag the competition once again. Targeted at the professional market, Zyklone Gold v.3 supported the latest version of the operating system
GoogHole, and it would fully implement all the advanced, windowing and touch-sensitive functions available there. That, in combination with the 56 new functions his development team had developed in the deepest secret, would once again move the standards for Quibber6.
Leaning back in his desk chair, balancing his coffee-mug on the top of his rather full figure, Mr. Tompkins lost himself into the satisfied vision of seeing the faces of his counterparts, when they finally realized what was going on. Especially Mr. Schmuck from…
It turned out that Mr. Tompkins was wrong on a number of counts: First of all, in spite of the nice weather and the deceivingly calm outlook, outdoors and indoors, his day could in fact be ruined. The full support of GoogHole might not be the final answer to the future. The 56 new functions invented in secret might not be the end to all
Quibberling development. And balancing his coffee-mug on the top of his belly could indeed have disastrous consequences. Especially surprising was perhaps the point that all of these sandcastles could be swept away by the same, single wave, in a flash.
It started with the coffee-mug, which tumbled from the top of his belly, soaking his nice white shirt, and his chair, when Delectia, Mr.
Tompkins very pretty, French-speaking assistant, almost kicked his door open with an unheard-of bang. Needless to say, Mr. Tompkins was flabbergasted, but so was Delectia obviously. She was quite pale under her careful make-up, and the corners of her mouth had a nervous tic to them that he had never seen before. Most telling, however, Delectia was for once almost speechless, and only managed to stutter
“Le Professeur…he…here…pour vous…”
Disentangling himself from his chair, his coffee and trying to recover a bit of his usual composure simultaneously, Mr. Tompkins realized that Delectia was holding a piece of paper in her hand. It looked like an old-fashioned telegram. Mr. Tompkins mood went south at alarming speed, especially when he managed to comprehend
Delectia’s mumbling. He knew of only one person in the universe who still used telegrams: TEACHER, The Elevated, All-knowing
Commander of Heading, Effort and Resources, the mysterious, seldomly-seen owner and CEO of the Company – and since the Company provided jobs and security to half of the population of Borduria, TEACHER was many times more influential than the Bordurian King, the Prime Minister and the entire Bordurian cabinet, combined. TEACHERs word was law, no more, no less. This was bound to be very, very bad news: One lived best when one lived quietly, not calling TEACHERs attention onto oneself.
Finally getting upright, Mr. Tompkins held out his hand, now slightly shaking, towards Delectia, who passed him the telegram.
‘IMPLEMENT USER CENTERED DESIGN IN ZYKLONE STOP. DEVELOPMENT DEADLINE UNCHANGED STOP. TEACHER ENDS.’
“User-centered what...?” Mr. Tompkins managed to whisper...
Gathering part of his wits with great difficulty, Mr. Tompkins decided he did not understand a thing. First and foremost, he needed information, to make meaning of this strange telegram. Even though they had never discussed it, Mr. Tompkins had for a long time suspected that Delectia had connections closer to TEACHER than the average citizen in Borduria, a lifeline he now decided to make use of.
“Delectia, is there any way you might find out what this is all about? And cancel the 10 o’clock Progress Meeting. In fact, cancel all my appointments today. I have to get a grip on this.”
Evidently calmed somewhat by Mr. Tompkins taking command of the situation, Delectia retired to the front office with a weak smile, a more normal color to her face and a ‘Oui, Monseiur, naturellement’, and closed the door behind her, this time in her usual quiet fashion.
Mr. Tompkins made a quick survey of the situation. His shirt was ruined, but that could not be helped. The carpet was stained, but thanks to the Bordurian Ministry of Supply, and their default choice of color, the stains would eventually fade to become unnoticeable. The message from TEACHER was however incomprehensible,
unintelligible, completely unexpected, and downright very bad news.
Mopping up the remaining drops of coffee from his chair, Mr.
Tompkins sat down, turned on his PC, and went straight to Google.
Typing ‘user centered design’ gave him the Wikipedia entry at the top of the list:
“In broad terms, user-centered design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.
User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behavior in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of an interface to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like. The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the system or function” (Wikipedia, 2008).
Reading onwards, Mr. Tompkins quickly came to another hint:
“All these approaches follow the ISO standard Human-centered design processes for interactive systems (ISO 13407 Model, 1999)” (Wikipedia, 2008).
Usually decisive and quick-witted, Mr. Tompkins did not know what to do with this. It seemed like nonsense. Zyklone had more than a million users worldwide. How on Earth should he get to ask a million people about their needs, wants and limitations? Furthermore, his experts in Quibberling for sure had the ultimate knowledge? After all, they had practically invented digital Quibberling, and had had huge success in the market7. What could possibly be improved on Zyklone – apart from the full support of GoogHole they already had in the pipeline, and the brilliant new functions, cleverly invented by his staff?
If his team did not know what was wanted in Quibberling, who did?8 Mr. Tompkins thoughts were interrupted by Delectia, who knocked on the door, and entered.
“Monsieur, I have talked to my cousin Ravisiha, who is working as a secretary for TEACHERs personal assistant. Yesterday,
TEACHER had guests from abroad. She did not really catch the names, but thinks it was a Professor Northman, along with a Dr.
Nilsson. There was a third person there as well, a Dr. David O. Good9. All three gentlemen visited TEACHER for about an hour, and then left. Professor Northman and Dr. Nilsson went straight to the airport, and boarded a private jet bound for Syldavia10. Dr. Good, however, was driven to the Hotel Negresky11, across from the town hall. My cousin thinks he is still there.”
Delectia hesitated a bit, before she continued.
“After these people left, there as a loud argument in
TEACHERS office, between TEACHER himself and the Minister of Development. Ravisiha says that the Minster stormed out of the office at the end, yelling ‘Preposterous! Banal! Nothing but common sense.
Waste of time!’ I told Ravisiha about the telegram you got, and she believes there is a connection.”
“Bad”, thought Mr. Tompkins, “Very bad. Worse than what I thought. These people have filled TEACHERs head with this nonsense about what users do and what users need, and now I have to find a way of wriggling out of this mess, without jeopardizing the development schedule.”
“Delectia, check if this Dr. Good is still in the Negresky. If he is, persuade him to visit us immediately. Get him here, no matter what. I need to talk to him urgently. It will take the entire day, and I don’t want to be disturbed. Just get him here, get us a bucketful of coffee and cookies, and then leave us alone.”
Change
Fifty minutes later, Delectia knocked on Mr. Tompkins door.
“Monsieur Tomkin’”, Delectia said in her charming French accent, having trouble with the ‘s’ at the end of Mr. Tompkins’ name,
“Monsieur Le Docteur D.O. Good is here to see you.”
A man of medium height entered Mr. Tompkins office. He was beaded but otherwise rather bald, pot-bellied, and had a permanent bend in his back from too much desk-work and too much studying. He was informally dressed in a short sleeved sports shirt, cotton slacks and black moccasins, and appeared not to notice Mr. Tompkins heavily coffee-stained shirt. He however had honest and interested blue eyes
peering over the rim of his reading glasses, which he appeared to wear also when walking round.
The introductions rapidly over, Dr. Good asked
“I understand you wanted to see me urgently? This has to do with user centered design? Is there a connection with the meeting my associates and myself had yesterday with TEACHER?”
“Very much so, I’m afraid” said Mr. Tompkins, looking decidedly unhappy.
“Did anyone inform you about the purpose of the meeting yesterday”, asked Dr. Good, attempting to feel his way ahead in what appeared to be barely navigable waters.
“Not at all”
“Hm. Well, you see, it appears that TEACHER recently stumbled over a rather new book about Human-System integration from the National Research Council12. Among other things, this book is arguing five critical principles to successful system development.”
Dr. Good counted using his fingers in the air.
“First, ‘Stakeholder satisficing’, he said. Next, you have
‘Incremental growth of system definition and stakeholder commitment’
and ‘Iterative system definition and development’. As principle number 4 they have ’Concurrent system definition and development’ and finally, there is ‘Risk management – risk-driven activity levels and anchor point milestones.’”13
“Having read most of the book, TEACHER then called my director, Professor Northman, for a further discussion, and this lead to the meeting yesterday. There, the talk quickly turned to User Centered Design, since that approach is a framework capable of fulfilling the principles I just mentioned”, Dr. Good elaborated. He continued
“Did you know, that according to a report McConnell quotes in his book on how to tame wild software schedules14, the single most important success factor is user involvement?”
This was clearly not the right approach. To Dr. Good, Mr.
Tompkins now looked even more unhappy than before. There had also been a strange light in his eyes while Dr. Good recounted the five principles from the book on Human-Systems integration. Far from unexpected, given the raising storm signs, Mr. Tompkins responded with noticeable coolness.
“This may be so, but that is of little immediate consequence. I have a software system to develop and deliver according to a very rigid schedule. Everything is well specified, and progress is going according to plan: this system will be available for launch on the date promised, and
with all the specified features in place, tested and finalized. There will be no budget overruns, either. My only problem right now is that I have to find a practical way of taking account of this user whim, without destroying all the real work going on in the development department.”15
Dr. Good looked silently at him for a little while, and then asked
“Do you Quibber?”
This question took Mr. Tompkins by complete surprise. What did that have to do with it?
“No, of course I don’t. I am an Engineer, and I’m running a large and widespread development organization. It is one thing that we make the best Quibber application in the world, but you have to understand that Quibberling is not my line of work at all.”
“But I understand that you are now going to support GoogHole fully, including all the advanced features, with the new version of Zyklone? And that you have developed 56 new functions, actually in secret? And, because of this, you have had to squeeze the size of the controls quite a bit on the user interface?”
“True”, said Mr. Tompkins, and then added with certainty. “But this is no problem16”.
“How do you know that?” asked Dr. Good after another drawn-out pause, where he attempted to measure the conversational climate.
“After all, you are now also claiming that people can Quibber while on the move, in planes and trains?”
“Correct” replied Mr. Tompkins, who could not yet see where all of this was leading.
“Would you say that trains are usually rattling along the tracks, causing passengers to move with the carriages – perhaps especially here in Borduria, considering the state of the tracks?” Before Mr. Tompkins could reply, Dr. Good continued “Try to start the prototype of Zyklone Gold v.3 here on you PC, and select ‘New Quibber’ on the menu.”
Mr. Tompkins did as asked, still more than little bit bewildered, but slowly starting to see where this was leading. When the main Zyklone user interface appeared on the display, he was however very surprised when Dr. Good grabbed his right wrist, pressed it to the table, and started to shake it in a disjointed way.
“Go on” said Dr. Good, still rattling Mr. Tompkins wrist, which caused the mouse to move, and with it, the cursor to jump erratically on the display. “Go on, select ‘New Quibber’”.
Mr. Tompkins did his best, but the ‘New Quibber’ button on the Zyklone user interface was so small, and Dr. Good was shaking his wrist
so much that he could not get the cursor to rest on the button for long enough to click it. Finally, Mr. Tompkins had to admit defeat. Looking rather displeased, he uttered
“I can’t click it while you are shaking my wrist.”
“But that is exactly the point” Dr. Good exclaimed. “Zyklone Gold v.3 might not work well on trains.”
“Of course it will. My staff has designed it for that…” Mr.
Tompkins slowly lost momentum. What was this? Clearly, it was the idea that users should be able to Quibber on train rides, one of the basic requirements, and one of the basic reasons to upgrade from v.2. And yet?
“Did you ever test this – I mean, did you ever put anybody on a train with the Zyklone prototype, to see what it was like to Quibber with the new user interface under those conditions? Or even better, did you ever put anybody on the train, early in the design phase, to see what it would be like to Quibber on a train at all?”, Dr. Good asked.
Sensing the welcome advantage, Dr. Good pressed on, and this kind of conversation continued for an hour or so. Dr. Good repeatedly asked what appeared to be the same kind of quite simple and down-to-earth questions, and the experience gradually caused Mr. Tompkins to suspect that there could be an element of truth in what Dr. Good was suggesting: The deceptively innocent questions were in fact not that easy to answer17,18. Finally, admitting to himself that that he should at least learn about the Devil of Usability before denouncing Him, Mr.
Tompkins said
“OK, OK, then. Tell me the full story about this user stuff.”
Explanation
“Well” said Dr. Good, “I will not lecture19. I don’t think the deep academic background of Usability will change much for you, so I’ll skip all the fundamental things about Human Factors epistemology20 and so on, and I will try to keep things practical21. However, kindly ask if you need any elaboration on any of the points”.
Keeping his expression neutral, Mr. Tompkins nodded, silently
Keeping his expression neutral, Mr. Tompkins nodded, silently