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March 2nd, 2009 | Posted in Screencasts 16 Comments »
The other day I came home to find Jane rather frustrated at the computer. She’d just ordered $40 worth of books from Half.com, but realized — two weeks after completing the order — that they were sent to an old email address with an unknown shipping address. The half.com address was apparently a Windows Live ID, but she couldn’t remember any login information about it, nor could she retrieve the password, so she was having a terrible time.
Frustration
I had a video camera handy and recorded the experience because I believe that as help authors, we too frequently forget the state of mind of computer users when they need help.
Her typing becomes more rapid and hurried. Little things around her (for example, her children, cookies) become more annoying and increase her stress level. She types away in disbelief and seems to keep trying the same thing over and over. Nothing on the help screen indicates that there’s an answer to her problem. She shakes her head every now and then. She’s tense. She repeatedly jerks her head. She looks up and squeezes her hands. She’s running out of options. She throws things. The littlest disturbances set her off. Her stress level continues to escalate.
In moments like these, what might she do for help? Search for it? Click a relevant-looking help button? Call tech support? Call me? Yell at someone?
If there’s one undeniable characteristic of the frustrated computer user, it’s that her patience is gone. She will not be slowly flipping through the user manual. Notice her jerky movements. If she turns to the help (which she doesn’t here), she’ll search for keywords, skim rapidly, click quickly from topic to topic. She’ll look for topics with clear flags for help – “Troubleshooting Passwords,” “Can’t Remember Your Login?”, “Stuck? Click Here,” etc.
She won’t give any help page but 2-3 seconds of a glance to see if it has the information. She’s in a hurry and she’s desperate for the information, as if there’s a ticking time bomb in the house about to go off.
As we write for users in this state of mind, we have to remember the hurry. Avoid long chunks of text. Avoid long topics. Make your topics findable in searches. Make your start page show the top ten list problems users encounter. Provide contact information for live help, if possible. Get right to the point in your text, without making the reader sort through fluff and meaningless introductory material. Provide answers to problems, not long descriptions of menu bars.
After Jane’s emotions settled down, I asked her why she didn’t turn to the documentation for help. She did, sort of. But, she explained, “If there’s not a real person who can cry while I’m mean to them, where is the incentive to fix it?”
Tags: emotional states, findability, frustration, Screencasts, usability
Hi Tom,
This is an excellent example to show the importance of documentation and what it can do for you. An interesting way of portraying it though.
Cheers,
Eddie Gear
I think we can all relate to what Jane went through! As I read this, I was reminded of the message that displays next to Skype’s logo – “Take a deep breath.” I believe this also displays in the title bars of their error messages.
Kind regards,
Cheryl Murphy
You should take Jane out to dinner for allowing you to film her!
This is a classic.
Well done!
What Holly said. I’ll make reservations.
You know, if you read half of what Jane writes about me on her blog, you might not be so quick to say I need to take her out to dinner. But yeah, she was a great sport with this. It made her frustration fun. If she had lost a long document or blog post of some kind, the camera would have been slammed onto the ground and broken.
Wow. This was beautiful. Suzy would kill me if I taped her in that situation, but all’s fair in blogging and usability testing, right?
Oh, I am in such sympathy with Jane!!! I face this situation EVERY day, at least once. Yes, if you go to search.twitter.com and search for techno #fail, you’ll see that every day, I have one or more situations like this. How many times can a person search documentation that describes “idiot-level situations” when the only time you’re going to really need them is when it ISN’T IN THE DOCS to begin with??
Thank you, thank you for documenting this. I wish you could have taped yesterday’s episode to try to get NeatReceipts working – but an 8-hour film probably would get boring after the first hour or so.
Thanks for the comment, Rahel. I’m thinking that perhaps I should tape the picture of frustrated Jane next to my computer monitor when I write help documentation.
I was just watching the first video, and my 2yo daughter. She wanted “more”. Your videos of Spot elbow dancing helped satisify her quest for more.
I think this is much the same reason I have three TripAdvisor accounts – all linked to the one email, but the interface told me with each of them that the ID I’d created was not available. Turns out it was!
Kirsty, that elbow dance is pretty catchy. She won’t do it on command anymore, though.
nice post, you can really follow the line of frustration building. i don’t think you’re alone. there are a ton of confusing things when dealing with computer issues.
Great example of how important user-centered design and documentation is.
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