Perfect Usability Requires Perfect Users

No matter how much time you put into your program, no matter how much testing goes into your app, there will always be "that one guy" that uses it completely wrong.

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I run a Q&A website where a lot of college students ask homework questions. To do so, they click a link that says, "Ask a Question." Users can also answer other people's questions. To do so, they choose a question and click a link that says, "Add Your Answer." Nothing too tricky going on here, but some people get it about as backwards as possible. I'll run you through an example:

1. A user wants to ask a question.
2. Instead of clicking "Ask a Question" they click on a question that somebody else asked.
3. They click "Add Your Answer".
4. Now there are two input boxes: Name and Answer. They put their question into the "Name" box, leave the "Answer" box empty and click a giant button that says, "Answer Question".

There's nothing you can do for that person. I honestly have no idea how they even got on the internet. I can't tell you where the user went wrong, because it happened before they came to the website.

I wrote a web application for people who had experienced various types of legal trouble. The court would order these people to go through certain evaluations, which we administered through our website. We hoped for the best, because automating this process would save time for everyone involved. When users first started with the application, we ran into a few consistent issues. They were simple things that we resolved within an hour. But then we started seeing some odd user behavior. People would sign up four or five times in an hour because they "forgot their password." There was a "forgot password" link, but no one was using it. It became clear to me that the users reporting these problems were the ones who had a history of substance abuse. It was sad, but it serves as a good reminder. Say no to drugs, kids.

At first, the client company was concerned. They thought I had made the app too complex. After I had them go through the whole process themselves and see it firsthand, they realized it was not the app's fault. It was what I call a "user-ability" problem.

It's easy to get caught up in trying to figure out how the user went wrong, but often the most perplexing problems will only pop up rarely. We can hold off on worrying about it until we see consistent reports about the same issue.

We also have to remember that we can't expect everyone to understand something the same way. We all have different backgrounds that affect our understanding of the world.

I had the opportunity to work at a rice field for part of a day. I was accompanied by a farmer kid who was one of the nicest, yet toughest people I've ever met. He was like a Filipino Chuck Norris. Although I was physically able to help out, I was completely clueless. I had done plenty of labor before, but because this setting was so new to me I wasn't terribly helpful. Later that day I was in a car with my farmer friend. It was maybe the second or third time he had ever been in a car and he asked about all the little car features that we take for granted. Our different backgrounds changed the way we experienced each part of that day. And, it's important to note that my friend uses the internet.

So, while we won't be able to meet every need, we can make our products easy for the majority of our specific users. Try not to worry too much about "that one guy."