In addition to reading up on Self Determination Theory recently, I’m really grateful to Kim Hiltz for sending me her recent Alf Ulberg Prize winning paper. Picking up where my last post left off by questioning how products, interfaces and systems could be better designed to encourage user competency. Kim’s paper (currently in press) highlights how interfaces or for that matter products and services could be adjusted to decrease the chance of users failing to properly interact with them. The study highlights how telling user’s to ‘test’ a machine decreased the chance of them making common ‘slip errors’. 

A slip error is something like forgetting to position the cursor in the text entry field before beginning to type or a failure by a user to set a product in the correct mode before using it. The common perception is that initialisation errors such as these are not that serious except when they occur in safety critical circumstances, such as forgetting to administer anaesthetic before an operation, or forgetting to engage the landing gear before touching the runway.

They are of interest to my research however, as such minor errors have a big impact on our perceived competence or ‘self-efficacy’. That is our ability to carry out tasks as we had planned them. This in turn has implications for our overall motivation towards a particular task. Particularly in individuals who are not skilled or experienced operators.

Say for example, I really want to be an acclaimed photographer, I went out and bought a top of the range camera and started snapping. In my haste to become the next Wolfgang Tillmans however, I forget to put the camera in the correct mode for the lighting conditions – the results might put paid to my ambitions right there and then. However, the camera manufacturers have afforded me a couple of features to keep my dream alive (auto-focus and these days a screen on which to preview the shots).

This is but one example of where technology and particularly automation can assist individuals in realising ambitions that would previously have taken many years of hard labour and considerably greater expense.

Hiltz’s paper however, also shows that adjusting the role or expectations of the user (without making any changes to the underlying technology or interface) by asking them to ‘test’ the interface, is effectively asking the user to less readily trust the equipment or underlying technology within a system. Put more technically this is asking the user to assume a more analytic or supervisory role – thus empowering them with a greater degree of responsibility within the socio-technical system. In this case by belittling the technology.

This is further demonstrated within a questionnaire conducted with participants in Hiltz’s experiment where those who had been asked to ‘test’ the interface talked of “activating power to the system”. By contrast those in the study who were simply asked to ‘operate’ rather than ‘test’ the system talked about “pressing the power button”. This implies that those in the latter group felt less empowered in relation to the technology. It was this latter group that also made the most errors in operating the system.

I think this is of particular significance within the design of services or products that individuals interact with irregularly. As a designer you want those few higher value transactions to be as smooth as possible, but at the same time the user is less likely to successfully achieve these because of lack of persistent experience with the system. Thus a potential solution is to afford cues within the environment or at the consumer touchpoints that help the user assert themselves over the environmental/technological factors with which they are interacting. This boost to user self-confidence might well encourage them to engage in repeated or more regular interactions or refer other people to service.

The camera is an interesting example of a system which due to its high initial investment costs is more likely to encourage individuals to spend time and get appropriate training to master it appropriately. What other tools/cues or design techniques can and are being incorporated in the design process to help users feel more confident and assertive about successful interaction with products or services?