Principle 3 is EASY. We all want easy, but what does it mean? I'm not sure I have an answer to that, but I can point to things that imply an answer.
No training required to get started
"No training at all" is a tall order, and probably not practical. But, for competent users, why is training needed for the basics? If a staff member can't look up a person's name and address in the CMS, without having to go to several day's training first, then the product isn't easy! A number of years back, as we were researching CMS products, we learned something significant from one of the prerequisites. We were not allowed to buy the product until we scheduled an implementation date, and the implementation date couldn't be scheduled without first scheduling several days of training. Do you think that product was easy to use?
Simple things are simple
Almost every product has something challenging to it, but the simple things (like looking up a name and address) should be brain-dead easy. A good product looks at those every-day things that every staff member needs to do, and makes sure they don't take much extra effort. Consider a product like Microsoft Word. Now it's easy to have disagreements about some things that Microsoft does, but one thing they're pretty good at is putting the really basic stuff in an easy to get to place. Years back, I had the opportunity to interview Chris Peters, who at the time was the product manager for Word. He explained how Microsoft produces "instrumented" versions of their beta products where they track every mouse movement, click, keystroke, and even mistakes, and look at how users do their work, then go back and simplify the basics. The final test at the time (not really very practical any more) was to find someone off the street, not familiar with word processing, but still a typewriter user, and give them the test: "your boss needs this letter sent right now -- type and print it." Those users did terrible things -- spaces instead of tabs, no use of fonts, didn't use any of the features of Word, but they got a letter produced. The simple things were simple enough.
Discoverable
Discoverability is closely related to the "no training required" concept. In a well designed product, a competent user can figure out how to do things. If a user intuitively knows that something can be done, then the user can look around and find out how to do that thing.
Work-flow oriented
An easy to use product conforms to the work flow of the user, not of the underlying data (it adapts to a form, not vice versa). Good keyboard shortcuts, good data entry workflow. Several current and popular CMS products make it very easy to see what the underlying data looks like! Perhaps that's convenient for the database designer, but it's sure not good for the poor user!
Easy to do the right thing
The final though on "Easy" means making it easier to do the right thing than to do the wrong thing. An easy product, especially for a CMS, makes the user want to use the CMS, to put data there, instead of considering any alternative. This reinforces the first two principles -- the data ends up where it needs to be and everyone trusts it to be there. That eliminates the use of all those alternatives. What a concept! With an easy product, "It's easier to do the right thing than to even consider any other alternative."
Funny how the concept of "help" didn't show up here. Does good software need a help system? Does good software need good user support? When did you last call Microsoft for help with Word? (and you don't even have to believe that Word is good software!)
<< Principles 1 & 2, Trusted and Used >>Principle 4, Consistent
Making software easy is becoming even more important as we involve not just the church staff but also the church members. Our software will be available to millions of people every day so it better be easy or our clients, the church, will be getting calls they shouldn't. I know we've taken a whole different approach with different looks and interfaces as we've rolled out web based applications over the past 4-5 years. You do have to make it as simple as possible even though the amount of information you are delivering is ever increasing. This is a real challenge.
We use a CMS product to manage our own company and I can tell you it's anything but simple. In many ways the functionality is much simplier than what our software does for a church but the attention to the user is lacking
Posted by: Hal Campbell | December 02, 2005 at 05:30 PM