So, while some messages are best shouted, others are best whispered; some tasks require a hammer, others a caress: and some things are best seen by looking directly, while others by looking away. What hits us in the face is not always as important as what is present in the background. The most effective change is one which is embedded "in the woodwork", not one which calls attention to itself loudly. In the same way, an enterprise's good interface design will not shout at the user but rather show itself by creating a truly interactive brand.
Examples
Examples of this occur everywhere. Take Information Technology (IT) itself. In the 1970's and 1980's company after company was discovering the power of information technology. Routine tasks were being committed to computers and wholesale change occurred in clerical operations. "Glass Houses" were built. IT was self-consciously put on annual report covers and discussed in weekly news magazines. The perception was that technology was becoming pervasive. The reality, however, was different. IT was only a small percentage of total capital spending. While the cost of computation and communication was certainly declining, it was still significant in many applications and an inhibitor to its use. In successive years, radical cost reduction occurred behind the scene and the pace of computerization increased dramatically, but with relatively less attention paid to it. In the process, IT grew to ever-larger percentages of corporate capital and operating budgets. It went from the foreground to the background, but increased in importance nonetheless.
Or look at the impact of growing communication bandwidth. The predecessor to the Internet began when telephone lines of 56 kilobytes became available and it was feasible to control one computer from another one in another state or country. This was viewed as revolutionary at the time. However, three decades later, available bandwidth is millions of times as high. In the early days, there was a perception of interconnection, but the reality was the links were bare bones. Only later, when the revolution had played out for a while, was the real impact felt. The reality of cheap bandwidth has enabled the migration from analog to digital, the "substitution of bits for atoms", and the distribution and sale of digital media beyond anything imagined only a decade ago. It was talked about when it was not really very important. Now that it is becoming more real and more important every day, it is not talked about. (In fact, the companies providing the bandwidth are having great financial difficulties, despite providing ever greater bandwidth.)
Computer security is still another example. In the early days of the World Wide Web, corporate management was antagonistic to electronic commerce because it was "unsafe." By unsafe they meant their company would suffer loss if it were exposed to the hackers who inhabited the Web. But they were responding to perceived, not real risks. The reality was that technology had been developed to make their Internet-based business safer than their in-person business. By reacting to perceived risks, corporate managers were shifting their focus from the real risk, which was that the electronic commerce revolution would occur without them.
Interface Design
In the early days of the Web Revolution, focus was on the design of attention grabbing, flashy consumer sites. It is not by accident the hugely popular Macromedia design package is called Flash. Browsers needed frames, designers had to be cute, screens had to scream to attract "viewers." Visual style overwhelmed content, and usability was left behind. (A few sane practitioners resisted, but it was a hard sell.) The perceived problem was to catch attention, but that came to an end with the dot.com implosion. The real problem was how to provide value in an interactive, always on, digitally intermediated environment.
The need for good design for Web sites did not die with the dot.coms. Old-line companies - banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies, airlines, etc. - slowly adapted to the new paradigms and began to learn how to use the Internet and the Web. They followed their customers to the Internet, they moved their products to the Internet, they saved money and improved service using Web sites, and they built new businesses with new Internet and Web-based tools like XML. The need for user interfaces that balance content, visual style, and usability is more and more important as real work moves to the Internet.
Moreover, the effort will have to be part of every stage of design and implementation. It will have to be designed in as part of the process, not appended at the end when the HTML is written. The important choices will be made as branding and positioning are determined, as operational systems are designed, as information flows and digital content are expanded. Business models have to be built from the beginning with constant movement from the in-person to the on-line world in mind. It is in the interface between the two that the difficulty lays. It is a design problem, a technical problem, and a customer problem.
The degree to which a business becomes an Internet business will be determined by how much of its business model is informed by Internet concerns. In turn, the degree will determine how much Interface Design will dictate its success. There will be life cycle issues as well, with different interface issues at different points in the company's and the system's life cycle. As technology matures (computers and communications increase in power and decline in cost), the functions will be allocated differently, but the interface between the human user and the machine will be the most important variable. The design of that interface will be the real problem that has to be solved.
Brand Attributes
Some early observers noted that despite the ease of market access on the Internet, there would be an evolution toward fewer and fewer suppliers, not more and more. There would be one market for each commodity, only a few payment engines and bill payment sites, and in the end there would be only a few big banks and brokerage houses with major Web presence. This has happened, with interface design consistently distinguishing between successful and unsuccessful Web sites. However, the attributes defining "good" have evolved over time. More of what it means to be good as an Internet company is reflected in the mission statement and business model, in the support systems, in the choice of what to put on-line and what to leave out. Customer acquisition and customer service are difficult to differentiate on the Internet and they must be designed as one activity.
At the same time, the traditional electronic commerce model of Shop-Pay-Use is changing. With electronic goods such as music, data, content of all kinds, the new electronic commerce model is Shop-Use-Pay (Charles Mauro was the first to put it that way for me). This change came about because customer acquisition is decentralized on the Web. It is based in part on sampling and on peer-to-peer interactions and recommendation.
An example is the way the music industry and the movie content industry have struggled with delivery of their product on the Internet. The technical issues have been solved. Napster and its successors proved there were ways to decentralize distribution, but they did not provide examples of good business models. There is any number of Digital Rights Management systems available. What is holding up full adoption of electronic content distribution is the absence of an adequate business model and supporting systems, not technology. It is an absence of will, not functionality. Again, the perceived problems are standing in the way of solving the real problems.
Conclusion
The true importance of interface design will be demonstrated when it is "in the woodwork," when it is effective but unseen, when it is part of every step of the process and so important that it is not added on but rather part of the process. At that point, it will not be cut out of any budget because it cannot be separated from what is otherwise being done. It will be implicit rather than explicit, it will have gone from "self-conscious" to expected. When something has "strategic value," it too often cannot be justified economically, but when it is part of the woodwork it is done because it must be done.
If good interface design is part of every step of the process, it will not be considered high because it will not be separable from what we do every day. The perceived cost will be low, because it is distributed. When good user design is a separate part of the process, it can be excised because it is too expensive. When it is part of every step, it cannot be "cut to save the cost." The apparent cost goes down because it is part of each step. (I have often likened it to the way electricity went from being something which was dealt with explicitly to something which we take for granted because it is available "in the wall.")
So, the challenge for professional Interface Designers is to have their discipline broadly accepted as a real part of every step in the business and system design process, implicitly rather than explicitly. That way, the apparent cost of what they do is low because it is broadly distributed. Its real value is high, but it too is broadly distributed.
Henry
Lichstein
Biography
October 4, 2001
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