Call to mind the qualities you associate with Leonardo da Vinci: inventiveness, beauty, originality, insight. Call that the "Leonardo experience," if you will. Now contrast that with the experience of using the Internet and wrestling with your personal computer today: a wealth of potential wrapped in layers of crashes, viruses, confused navigation, and frustrating designs.
This contrast is taken up as the motif of Ben Shneiderman's recent book Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies.
Shneiderman is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Founding Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Leonardo's Laptop takes the messages of the usability movement to the general public, using da Vinci as a humanist icon to promote higher cultural aspirations. The author wants to challenge not only technologists, but business people, to build better products based on audience needs. More than that, he calls for the public to raise an outcry about frustrating and unreliable technology, while dreaming big about the possibilities of using the web to build "the society that we all want."
He sat down with us to talk about how his message of universal usability goes straight to the heart of AARP's interest in promoting a better experience for older users on the Web.
AARP: How do you create something that is universally usable to an audience defined as "all adults over 50 years of age"? How do the special needs of older people become integrated with and influence the design process of web pages and computer applications?
Shneiderman: A usability engineer or designer of web sites thinks strongly about the user experience. Those who talk about usability with a small "u", and focus on the size of the buttons and the colors of the labels, have a narrow conception [of the field]. But Usability with a capital "U" focuses on the total user experience, from reliability and system response time, to the content and the benefit to the user. For us, the design process should begin and end with a focus on the user.
In recent years, designing for a wide range of users has become the focus of attention under the topic of "universal usability." This is a hot topic, and older people are one of several special cases that deserve attention because of their special needs. Sometimes their vision may be failing and their motor skills may be declining. Many people over 50 are often fine with these capabilities, but some of the older elders begin to have troubles. Some people fear that accommodating elders will complicate design processes, and also, the products of design.
But the good news is that when you consider the needs of older folks, of children, of disabled users of many kinds, of poor readers, of visitors from foreign cultures and those who read English with low literacy levels, you find that the design you come up with is really better for everybody.
Creating Participation
AARP: In your book, you write inspirationally about "building a high-tech world that attends more closely to the needs of humanity." But how does that translate directly into gains for a specific group of people, like older users of computers and the web?
Shneiderman: Let's go back to the high concept, which is that designing for people over 50 has become a significant topic in the growing world of usability engineering. The needs of older users are being addressed by many designers who are creating guidelines and standards that will influence others. The good work of AARP and other organizations in making this a focus of attention will contribute to accelerating these processes.
For usability designers, the making of high quality user experiences is really the goal, and the best of the web sites show this in a strong way. While of course there's room for improvement, we find that web sites such as Google, and Amazon, and Yahoo, have developed strategies which give users access to an enormous range of features that can improve their lives.
But I think the highest goal of web design for older people should be not only to serve the elders, but to benefit from them. It's the contributions that they can make to our society by their participation --that is the real pay off.
We're going to benefit their lives by the social communication, by the challenges we give them, by the educational experiences, by the information for their own lives, by their capacity to do banking, or make travel arrangements, and send photos, and receive photos from grandchildren, and so we'll benefit seniors.
But we'll also benefit everyone else who will gain from their experience and their wisdom. Increasing the participation of older users in society is the opportunity that attracts me.
On "Leonardo's Laptop" and Consumer Revolt
AARP: Usually, techies talk about usability as if all of the responsibility for creating better technology falls on those who create the technology. What is the public's role in helping to develop universally usable technology? Can they really make a difference?
Shneiderman: The increased attention to user interface design in the professional community is apparent. In writing Leonardo's Laptop, my goal is to make these ideas available to the general public. And get people excited about the novel potentials of technology. The theme of the book is that "the Old Computing is about what computers can do. The New Computing is about what people can do."
That shift in thinking has been happening in the professional community, and I wanted to take this idea to the public, so that the public could be more effective in promoting its own needs.
In our recent study of user frustrations (one hundred and eleven users for about two and half hours each), we found that 46% of the time was wasted in dealing with problems, in email and other crashes, in dialog boxes that they didn't understand, in error messages that were incomprehensible, in chaotic menus!
So my message is that the public should become angry when they get frustrated with the poor designs that exist! And they should pressure companies, as well as government agencies, to promote better quality in design. User experiences can be better!
Creating Social Change
AARP: In your book, you write a lot about getting beyond a stage where people use the web primarily to gather information, into the "two way street" where users really see the Internet as a medium for communication and creativity. In fact you shift away from the idea of people as "end-users" into one where the users are constantly starting something. In what areas to you expect the greatest change in the lives of older users?
Shneiderman: I identify four key areas: e-healthcare, e-government, e-business, e-learning, and e-business-- where I thought there was a dramatic opportunity for improving the users' experience, and enabling older users to do more for themselves and more for their community.
Through better use of the web, we create opportunities for older people to participate in their families, and for them to be active in national politics, and in their local communities. That kind of engagement is sorely needed in an age in which we talk about declining social capital that Robert Putnam identified in Bowling Alone.
The goal is not merely to make appealing web pages that load quickly -- that's merely the facilitator for creating social changes and building the society that we all want.
This greater good, this broader participation from a wider segment of the population, especially the large and growing number of people over 50 in this country, is the true social benefit of more human-centered design.