respect your user

Walt Mossberg wrote a great piece about the out-of-box user experience of buying a new laptop: Using Even New PC Is Ruined by a Tangle of Trial Programs, Ads. I’ve gotta say: preach it, brother. He had a bad experience with his new computer. It wasn't the set-up of the computer itself. One of his major problems was with the immense amount of other stuff that the computer manufacturer installed on his shiny new machine.

I can't say this any better than he did, so here's a quote:

The problem is a lack of respect for the consumer. The manufacturers don't act as if the computer belongs to you. They act as if it is a billboard for restricted trial versions of software and ads for Web sites and services that they can sell to third-party companies who want you to buy these products.

This is a huge problem for users. Companies are forgetting that we're users, and that we're not just consumers. The user has to work harder just to get started. Make it hard for them to start up, overwhelm them with information and applications and trials and everything else, and you're making it hard for a user to be passionate about what they're using. Respect your user, and they'll reward you with more than just being your user.

Respecting your user has many facets. Here are some of them:

• Respect their time. Don't assume that your application is the centre of their world. Don't assume that they're going to read every single word in your help files. Get out of their way and let them get on with whatever it is that they're doing. The best user experience is the one that the user doesn't actually notice because everything is going smoothly for them.
• Respect their intelligence. They're not idiots, so don't treat them that way. They also don't know the software as intimately as you do, so don't assume that they know what you call your favourite feature (and again: they're not idiots for not knowing this).
• Respect their work. Don't interrupt their task if you can avoid it. If you must interrupt them, carefully consider why you are interrupting them and what impact it will have on what they are doing.
• Respect their preferences. If the user has expressed a preference somehow, pay attention. Don't ask them for something if you can get the information elsewhere. I'm looking at you, Firefox: I hate that I switch my location in the System Preferences between my office and my home, but I still have to go into Firefox and change the prefs in there too.
• Respect their privacy. If you want information from them, ask their permission, and specify what you're doing with it.

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 12, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2007
  Of course, if I bought a new mac today, guess what trial software would be installed? (hint its MS Office) :) Joshua

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2007
  I wonder whether it's actually knocking something off of the price of the laptop, or if the hardware vendor is simply pocketing the difference.  It's not as if the hardware manufacturers are offering up two identical laptops, except that one comes stuffed with ads and the other doesn't, and thus the consumer can put a price on the inconvenience and annoyance of the hardware manufacturer's lack of respect for them. A few local petrol stations have installed television monitors into their petrol pumps, and they broadcast ads at you while you're pumping your gas.  But petrol or a bottle of Coke there is no less expensive than at any of the other stations (including stations from the same chain that don't have these new pumps).  If they're going to show ads to me, which presumably they're getting paid for (I doubt that they're allowing a major television network free access to their in-pump broadcast), shouldn't some of this savings be passed along to me?  But it's not, which means that I have switched from my usual petrol station to another one.  They'll probably never notice, given that I buy petrol no more than every two weeks, but it makes me feel vaguely better about it.

• Anonymous
  April 15, 2007
  Okay, I'll ask the next Economics major who passes along about this. :D

• Anonymous
  April 19, 2007
  Don't write garbage like this... http://blogs.msdn.com/nadyne/archive/2006/07/24/677087.aspx ...and expect users to buy it. I start my day with this little piece of disrespect. It wastes my time, insults my intelligence, disrespects my work and preferences, and does NOTHING to protect my privacy.

• Anonymous
  April 19, 2007
  Mark - Spam and phishing are tough issues.  In Entourage, we implemented a pretty common method for dealing with it.  The workaround (adding the sender to your address book) is trivial.  If your intelligence is still insulted, I'm not quite sure what more you want.