User Experience
Bring Technology Back to Humanize People
Human race was blessed with ability to invent things to help their life easier. Our ancestors invented fire to keep them warm in the night, wheels to make it lighter to travel things around, and other technology invented up to this day. What was impossible begins to look ordinary with the help of technology. Nowadays, we can communicate with people separated miles away, we can travel across different time zones, we can get updates of news from another part of the world, all done in faster and easier way by phone, plane and television. As knowledge and science develop, so does technology. Things are getting more and more advanced in one hand, while they also get more and more complicated in the other hand. This complexity often means the need for users to learn how to use the technology. For instance, to be able to drive a car or motorcycle, we need to learn and get license to drive. Even for another simpler task, we have to read manuals to adjust presets of television set.
When the world enters the era of information technology, computers come and begin to invade almost every aspect of our lives. As it happens with other technology, computers also come with some degree of complexity that requires users to learn a lot to use them. In addition, since the nature of computer is abstraction of what available in real life, the difficulty of using computer-based technology is unconnected to physical forces. The difficulty encountered while interacting with computer-based technology is what Alan Cooper labeled as ‘cognitive friction’ . Cognitive friction is a resistance encountered by a human intellect when it engages with a complex system of rules that change as the problem change. Computer-based technology interaction is very high in cognitive friction, unlike interaction with physical or mechanical devices which no matter how complex, tends to be low in cognitive friction because these devices tend to stay in a narrow range of states comparable to their inputs.
To give more comparable example, car is mechanical device while a cell phone is computer-based technology. To drive a car, we have to learn several inputs that can change the behavior of the car, for example: the pedals, the steer, and the gear. These inputs are quite trivial in their function: to be able to move the gear we have to push the coupling pedal, to make the car runs we need to set the proper gear and push the gas pedal, and to stop the car we need to push the break pedal. While driving is indeed a complex activity, it is low in cognitive friction. When you turn the wheel right way, it is just trivial that your car will also move right way. Mean while, a simple cell phone is equipped with at least twelve keys and several control buttons. To unlock my cell phone, I have to press ‘*’ key and the most right control button in quite short space of time. If I press ‘*’ and wait more than several seconds to press the control button, my cell phone won’t be unlocked. Even this simple interaction with a cell phone is high in cognitive friction.
This phenomenon occurs because of the history of computer invention. The very first generation of computer machines was built for limited scope of people: researchers having advanced knowledge of computer programs. It was no wonder that in that time it took perform basic tasks in computer. Back then when the only interface is command line interface, every computer users should memorize and type the correct commands and their arguments to perform daily tasks with computers.
Established in the late of 1990s, user experience is a relatively new field in information technology. What formerly known as user centered design was reestablished by several its founders and renamed to be known as user experience. User experience is a field that concerns about how to design and build information technology artifacts that are easy to learn and understand: low in cognitive friction. In practice, user experience design means designing software or software-based products that intuitive for the users to learn them. For instance, an architect should intuitively able to master architecture software based on his expertise. This does not mean that he does not need the learn how to use the software, but user experience designers should make the software natural to the cognitive nature of an architect. A well designed user experience product should be able to assist the users to achieve their goal, just like the very nature of technology inventions is to make human life easier.
In more comprehensive explanation, Jesse James Garrett describe that a full stack of user experience consists of several aspects. It involves strategy planning when concerning about software objectives and user needs. It involves scope definition when concerning about content requirements and functional specifications. It involves structure design when concerning about interaction design and information architecture. And it involves what people can see in the surface when concerning about information design and visual design.
In the end, user experience is just a tool to tweak information technology so that IT can be brought back to the way technology is always meant to be: making life easier for human, to humanize people.