1. Krug 11 Usability as Courtesy
Jeff Offutt
SWE 205
Software Usability and Design

2. Krug’s Airline Strike Story
It is plain, simple, common courtesy to tell people what they want to know
User interfaces must be polite !
Mensch : A person having admirable characteristics, such as fortitude and firmness of purpose (answers.com)
My book will be titled “All I really need to know about usability, I learned in Kindergarten”
14-Nov-18
© Jeff Offutt

3. Covey’s Emotional Bank Account
7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey
We maintain a personal “emotional” bank account with everyone we have a relationship with
Friends, spouses, parents, children, teachers, students
The account starts neutral
Deposits : Doing something good (building trust)
Withdraws : Doing something wrong
If the account goes negative, it is very hard to recover trust
14-Nov-18
© Jeff Offutt

4. Depositing Into the Bank Account
Understand the other person
Keep commitments
Clarify expectations
Attend to the little things
Show integrity
Apologize sincerely for withdrawals
If a GUI goes negative, the user will not come back
14-Nov-18
© Jeff Offutt

5. Usability Withdrawals
Hiding information that users want
Phone numbers, shipping rates, prices
Phone calls are expensive, but hiding phone numbers costs more than it saves
Punishing users for not doing things your way
Formatting numbers (to dash or not to dash?)
Asking users for unnecessary information
Do you really need my home address?
My social?
Trying to fool me (“shuck and jive”)
“Your call is important to us” … I know it’s not!
14-Nov-18
© Jeff Offutt

6. More Usability Withdrawals
Putting cool junk (“sizzle”) in the users’ way
Flash intro, marketing photos
Amateurish looking website
Sloppy, disorganized, unprofessional
Sometimes violating these principles will save money … but calculate the cost versus the benefit as a business decision
Don’t do it out of ignorance
14-Nov-18
© Jeff Offutt

7. Usability Deposits Know what users want and make them easy and obvious
Always keep your eyes on the goal
Tell users what they want to know
Costs, extra fees … UIs get more points for honesty than they lose from being expensive
Save users steps when possible
Put links in
Combine login and registration into one screen
Put some effort into making info available
Think hard about what users know and don’t know
14-Nov-18
© Jeff Offutt

8. More Usability Deposits
Know users’ questions and answer them
Frequently Asked Questions are very valuable
Must keep these up to date !
Make users comfortable with easy-to-print pages
No navigation, no ads
Make error recovery easy
When in doubt, apologize
Everybody makes mistakes, the mark of character is whether you apologize, fix it, and learn
14-Nov-18
© Jeff Offutt

9. Summary
Everything I need to know about usability, I learned in kindergarten
Don’t push
If you hurt somebody, say you’re sorry
Help your friends
Listen to the teacher
Don’t make messes—if you do, clean them up
Be nice
If you got an A in kindergarten, you can design good user interfaces
14-Nov-18
© Jeff Offutt