A Story
I live in the South Loop of Chicago - easy walking distance to the central city ("the Loop). I do not drive or park a car on the streets in the city of Chicago. I walk or take public transportation.
One morning I had to run a couple of errands and as I was walking up the street from my home, I saw a man who had parked his car and was staring at the new Chicago Parking Meter machine with dismay. I'll tell you why a little later.
Depending on how closely you follow the news about Chicago, you may or may not know that Chicago recently sold its street parking revenue rights to a private company. The company (that as you might imagine has political connections) has recently started to remove the traditional parking meters (that is, one space, one meter) with new meters. Separate painted parking spaces and their meters have been removed. People park their vehicles in any space on the street where their vehicle fits, go to a centralized meter on the block where they parked and purchase a ticket (or receipt) that is placed on the dashboard of the vehicle. On the ticket is printed the end time wherein the vehicle is legally parked. After the time passes, the vehicle can receive a citation for parking illegally. Many cities have moved to this system. However, this system has something missing that I have seen on other systems.
Here's a photograph of the meter's interface ...
Chicago Street-Parking Meter
Getting back to the man who was staring at the parking meter ... he saw something that was very wrong ... there was no place to enter paper money into to the meter.
I was surprised. This was the first time I had ever taken the time to really look at one of these meters.
As street parking goes, this is expensive. One hour will cost you $2.50. The maximum time that you can park is 3 hours - translated, that's 30 quarters if you had the change. You can use a credit card. However, there are a lot of people in the City of Chicago who don't have credit cards. And this man was one of them, nor did he have 30 quarters.
I have seen machines used other cities and towns, and they have a place for paper money. Oak Park, the suburb immediately west of Chicago, has similar meters and they have a place to use paper money to pay for parking. What gives with this meter?
I take the City of Chicago off the hook for the design of this parking meter. I don't believe they had anything to do with the design of the meter. I have parked in city garages over the years (when I was living in the suburbs), and the city garages have some pretty effective means to enable one to pay for parking - either using cash (paper money) or credit card. But I think they should have been more aware of what the parking meter company was deploying. I think they failed the public in that regard.
I can take the cynical view and suggest that this is a tactic by the private company to extract more revenue for itself and the city through issuing parking citations. However, I think is the more likely that some one designed the system without any regard to the population that was expected to use it and the city fell-down on its responsibility to oversee what the parking company was doing.
Failure to Include a Necessary Feature
For the purposes of examining the value of usability research - that is, the research to understand your users and their environment, what does this incident teach? It teaches that failure to perform the research to understand your user population could result in the failure to include a necessary capability - such as a means to pay for your parking with paper money.
What I find interesting (and plausible) is that this parking meter design could have been usability tested and passed the test. The subjects involved in the usability test could have been provided quarters and credit cards, and under those conditions the subjects would have performed admirably. However, the parking meter fails the deployment test because the assumptions regarding populace, conditions and environment fail to align with reality of the needs of the population it should have been designed to serve.
Another Failure: Including the Unnecessary or Unwanted Features
As I was walking to my destination, I started composing this article. While thinking about what to include in this article, I remembered what a friend of mine said about a system wherein he was in charge of its development. (I have to be careful about how I write this. He's a friend of mine for whom I have great respect. And, defining the set of features that are included in this system is not his responsibility.)
He said that "... we build a system with capabilities that customers neither need nor want." The process for selecting capabilities to include in a product release at this company is an insular process. More echo-chamber than outreach to include customers or users. As a result this company has failed to understand their customers, users, their work environment, etc.
Some might suggest that the requirements gathering process should reduce the likelihood of either failure occurring - failure to include or include unnecessary or unwanted features. Again, I know that in case of my friend's company, requirements-gathering takes its direction largely from competitors instead of customers and/or users. So what often results is the release of a system that fails to include capabilities that customers want and includes capabilities that customers do not want or need.
I don't know about you, but I see the process my friend's company engages in as a colossal waste of money and time. Why would any company use or continue to use such a process?
Ignorance, Stupidity or Arrogance - Or a combination?
I return to the title of this article "Design First and Ask Questions Later?" and the question I pose above. I have seen company after company see design as an end in itself and failing to understand that creating a successful design requires an effective process that includes research and testing. Failure to recognize this costs money and time, and possibly customers. It is not always a good idea to be first in the market with a device or system that includes a trashy user interface.
So why to companies continue to hang on to failing processes? Is it ignorance, stupidity or arrogance? Is it a combination? My personal experience suggests a combination all three factors with the addition of two others: delusion and denial. These are two factors that we saw in operation that lead to the financial crisis of 2008. I think the people will continue to believe that what they're doing is correct up to the point until the whole thing comes crashing down.
The Chicago Parking Meters has a user interface with poor and inconsiderate design ... inconsiderate of those who would use it. (If I get comments from city officials, it will probably be for that last sentence.) However, I don't believe that the parking meter company will face any major consequences such as being forced to redesign and redeploy new meters. They will have gotten away with creating a poor design. And they're not alone. There are lots of poorly designed systems, some of the poor designs can be and have been life threatening. Yet, there are no major consequences. For medical devices and systems, I believe this needs to change and I hope the FDA exerts it's oversight authority to insure that it happens.
Medical Device Design: Reader Suggested Books
One of my readers provided me the following list of books related to usable medical product designs. I pass this list of three books on to you. I do not yet have them in my library but these would be suitable additions.
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