We all understand that there has been an exponential technological advancements. It’s been observed and and even labeled as a law, “Moore’s Law”, because it is so widely accepted as a trend. In that steep and cold curve of transistor development graph, there are bound to be real people struggling with that steep learning curve.
They have knowledge gaps. Everyone has their own heuristic experiences and know-hows that they bring to use as a compass for life. Designing for people who had such diverse experiences are difficult to say the least.
As a AirBnb user, for example, you can find kindly hand-written notes everywhere in the rented property and homes to let the new comers know where everything is located, and how it works and the quirks you might experience.
When I had to get a house sitter, Ms.K, in her late 60s, she didn’t want for much other than a space to knit and know where to feed the cat and a dog. But there was one thing. She wanted to be able to listen to her Christian music on a cassette player. I, had not seen a cassette player since 1999.
Solution had to involve our big home theater system with dozens of remotes and she easily gave up on the ability to listen to her spiritual fulfillment for the next 2 weeks. The user experience of technologies we had available were too good and bad at the same time but whatever it was, was failing Ms.K.
So I went into what is essentially a 30 minute sprint through design process:
- Target was clearly Ms.K being able to access Christian music which was only possible via Apple TV via home theater set up.
- I quickly broke down the steps in the perspective of Ms.K, who owns a folder phone and has no digital life experience.
- Among possible ways to do so, using the Universal Remote turned out to be the least confusing or least amount of steps.
- I built a first 4 page instruction that was too long and too small of a text.
- Just before I had to leave on my trip, I came up with this 2-page step-by-step manual.
It was very unsatisfying but given the time restraint, I had to create this prototype and test it with Ms.K as she won’t remember any of this in-person instructions and will have to only rely on these two pages of prototype I leave with her.
I felt conflicted that in this process to achieve a very humane goal, a spiritual fulfillment, I had to dehumanize her to the point of almost and programming her to simple steps rather let her intuitively get to the goal.
How can we be all good user experience designers so we can serve people in the present for present technologies, not just design for the future and future generations? Companies and fundings revolve around the new and the best. But what we actually experience is remains of 2000s, 90s and even older.
I am all about designing for the future and imagining what the future is like. But I also would like to use that empathy for the now. Because the people who will also reside in the future are already experiencing disconnection.
In the end, she was able to listen to her hymns, while she house-sat with our pets, I felt like there could be more done to attenuate the brunt of impact of someone like Ms.K facing new technology. Because user experience should a continuing one throughout the whole product life cycle along with human life cycle.
Dongjae “Krystofer” Kim
Kryated.com
