Usability Stockholm Syndrome

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Rosyna — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:08:32 GMT

Is this why anyone thought that the disappearing menu items in Office were a good idea? You know the ones.. the menus only show the "used" menu items and then there is a double arrow at the bottom to show all menu items. Ugh.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:22:39 GMT

"But it turns out that this impulse is generally wrong. In fact, people tend to be much less critical of the software designs they're testing than they probably should be."

Surely you know by now that the way you can get people to be more critical is to have them post anonymously on an internet forum? The only problem is that in addition to them being critical, you'll have them being rude and arrogant, so maybe it's not a perfect solution.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Adrian — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:57:53 GMT

One company I worked at would sometimes do usability comparisons with our product versus the competition. You always knew when these were happening, because all the signs on the buildings and around the campus were covered with slipcovers to avoid biasing participants. They were only told after the test which company had invited them. We also did testing in different parts of the country, to get a more realistic cross section of users.

Few usability conclusions were based on test subjects' opinions. Most were based on behavior. Did they find the option? Did they complete the taks? The easy way or the hard way? Yes, people will blame themselves instead of the software, but their actions will show you where the real problem lies.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Marjut — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:58:10 GMT

Maybe you should consider using an outside company for testing? In that case people would tell more about how they truly feel and not be afraid of hurting anyone's feelings in the process.

What do I think?

clap clap — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:58:46 GMT

Slashdot trolls arrived early today, must be spring...

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Max Howell — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:59:34 GMT

The comments to this blog have gone seriously downhill since the ignorant hoards of the Net found it.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Mwahaha — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:11:26 GMT

Stockholm syndrome, as in the town name in Finland.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Confuzzled — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:15:07 GMT

You must be confusing that for Helsinki in Holland

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Nidonocu — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 20:43:15 GMT

I think this blog needs moderated comments turned back on again. :/

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

kish829 — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:18:39 GMT

Some comments need to be cleaned.

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re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Nick Murray — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:34:43 GMT

"this tendency to not criticize the software"...

Jensen, this is hard to believe. I've had enough bad experiences with software (both Microsoft and non-Microsoft) to know that it is *usually* the fault of the software designer, not me. The users you describe here appear to be novices, whereas many of the comments posted in response to this, and other, Office GUI blog posts, show users with a high level of skill, and equally high expectations.

The ribbon and associated UI improvements will make a vast amount of difference for novice users who don't know where to find things. I just hope that people who know what they are doing won't be left wanting.

In many cases, the current Office UI actively blocks users from doing things. For example, when you build a rule in Outlook, you have a 3-deep stack of modal dialogs on the screen. This makes it impossible to scroll up and down in your Inbox or any other folder looking for email addresses to add to a rule. Many of my contacts are NOT in the "Global address book".

Modal dialogs are just evil.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

jensenh — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:54:25 GMT

I deleted out the offending and lewd comments.

Sorry they persisted for as long as they did.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

MaxPalmer — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:07:42 GMT

Jensen,

Is there much usability testing done outside of the US?

Always interested to learn how you do usability testing. Thanks for the continuing feed of information and sorry to hear about all the problems with the comments system.

Max

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Al — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:15:00 GMT

Interesting way of putting it - Stockholm Syndrome.

I see a similar reaction in some projects. Initial acceptance testers love feature A, but months down the track the same users start to hate it.

Maybe people just love any new thing, but after a while, they get over it. Then they really start to evaluate something properly, without the self induced hype.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

jensenh — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:15:18 GMT

Max,

There are some countries in which we do more than others. For example, we do a lot of usability research in Japan.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

TIm S. — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 14:59:55 GMT

Jensen, I have to say that I completely agree with your "Stockholm Syndrome". We've seen identical reactions in the usability testing that we do; we've just never thought of giving it a name.

One thing that we started doing which has helped us immensely towards getting back more honest feedback is telling the participants that we (the testers) had nothing to do with the design of whatever it is that they might see (that may or may not be true). They're not going to hurt our feelings in any which way.

This has had a remarkable impact in getting more "blunt" comments from our users. A few of them will mention off hand to us "well, since you didn't have anything to do with this, lemme tell you something..."

Incidentally, we don't call our participants "subjects" - we call them "test participants" or "users". "Subjects" makes them sound like white lab mice that we're experimenting on. And as you state, we're not testing them, why call them something that's tested on?

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

jensenh — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:08:23 GMT

Tim,

That's very interesting!

Incidentally, we don't really call our participants "subjects" either. We call them "participants."

For some reason, I thought calling them "subjects" in the article made it more clear to people what I was talking about. :)

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Dave Wollrich — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:42:59 GMT

A means of avoiding this syndrome (by whatever name is being used) is to do the testing in a neutral atmosphere, that is, an office site that is not specifically at a Microsoft facility. There is no point (and it would show a lack of integrity) in hiding who is doing the testing, but I suspect you would get less of the "sympathy" factor involved if it was not at a Microsoft office.

Another approach (which has other dividends as well) would be to have the user test both the Microsoft and a competing product (they do exist, don't they????).

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Josh — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:46:54 GMT

<blockquote>"One thing that we started doing which has helped us immensely towards getting back more honest feedback is telling the participants that we (the testers) had nothing to do with the design of whatever it is that they might see (that may or may not be true)"</blockquote>

Maybe I should be a lawyer, but what I always say is, "I didn't make all this stuff you are going to be looking at, so don't worry about hurting my feelings..." They assume that means I didn't make ANY of it, but I am just saying I didn't make ALL of it :) Anyway, I feel better about it because I am not lying to the participant, which I tell them up front I am not going to do.

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Patrick Schmid — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 23:53:30 GMT

Have you tried to do this in a less controlled environment? For example, set up a Terminal Server and let users access it for a week or so. For that time, give them a few practice tasks to accomplish with the new piece of software. A task should maybe take them a maximum of an hour to do, and you'd collect direct feedback from them afterwards via a questionnaire. After they had the chance to practice using the new piece of software, invite them to your location and do a conventional usability test. I think your results would be a lot better though, because the user wouldn't be discovering things for the first time, but rather would try to actually be somewhat efficient in doing the task.
Personally, when I got Beta 1, I was very thrilled and loved the UI without questioning it for the first few weeks. After I had started really using it though, I started questioning how certain things worked.

I got your feedback right here...

hwaite — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 02:10:36 GMT

Slightly off-topic. Hopefully not warranting of deletion. I understand the value of honest criticism and imagine that it is well worth all the hassle and expense of recruiting users, poring over videotape, etc. Vocal users are far more helpful than polite ones. This being the case, I can't understand why Microsoft has made it so difficult to report issues (at least for those of us that are not part of an official usability study).

I'm a software developer and consider it a professional courtesy to report bugs or even usability issues when one stumbles across them. I recently encountered a minor bug in Internet Explorer and figured I'd submit it via the Microsoft bug tracking site. Couldn't find one. Hunted around on the web for a bit and learned that there's a 'Feedback' button in the 'Help' menu. The trail leads to a support phone number. Next thing I know they want to charge me for tech support! Or "maybe you can send a physical letter," I'm told. Am I missing something here? Seems like you're throttling one of the most efficient conduits of product feedback. Is it because there is just too much chaff?

re: Usability Stockholm Syndrome

Will Pearson — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 18:16:23 GMT

I'm just wondering whether this is related to Orm's theory on Demand Characteristics. Participants who have volunteered want to be "good participants". Maybe they feel that being critical of a product, rather than just saying good things about it, is not what the people running the tests want them to do. It would be interesting to do some pre/post testing interviews to try and figure out exactly what participants viewed the purpose of usability testing as.

I do think you've got a point about testing though. Regardless of how much people are told the test isn't about them they always seem to think it is.

Will

links for 2006-03-27

双生 | iSdq.com — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 03:06:35 GMT

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : Usability Stockholm Syndrome The term Stockholm Syndrome describes the situation where a hostage becomes sympathetic to his captors. When Jensen Harris had to conduct his first usability test at Microsoft,

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Meta | iSdq.com — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 08:06:05 GMT

links for 2006-03-27

Meta | iSdq.com — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 08:54:20 GMT

MicroISV Notebook » Blog Archive » Beware of the usability Stockholm syndrome

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