We all know that the use of jargon and technical terminology can cause confusion on the user’s mind, but this is one of those rare cases where the problem comes from the branding decisions the company made.

To be honest with you, at first I though it was a prank call, but then over the course of the call you can hear traffic noise on the background (the user seems to have been calling from a public phone), and even some side-speech towards the end, so I think this was indeed a real caller with real concerns and confusion.

Just a little bit of background first. The name of the company is Telcel, and they are one of the largest cell phone service providers in Mexico, and as most service providers in the US, they also provide pre-paid plan alternatives. Just like AT&T has branded such plans as ” GoPhone“, in this case they opted for the name “Amigo”, which when translated literally means “Friend”, and that’s where the confusion started…

Disclaimer: If you speak Spanish, I suggest listening to the whole call first. Otherwise, simply scroll down and read the a translated transcription of some interaction snippets that are a good testament of what can go wrong when you have confusing product names.

Priceless conversation points:

[User] “When I want to make a call, it tells me that my Amigo’s balance has been used-up. But I want to know about my balance, not my friend’s balance”
[Agent] (you can almost hear her laughing her head off)
[User] “I’m not interested in knowing if my friend has a balance, I want to know mine”

At that point, the agent kindly explains to the user that if she’s consulting the balance from her phone, then that means the balance she is hearing belongs to her, and that “Amigo” is simply the name of the service.

Nevertheless, the user continues:

“It also tells me that I can add $30 of airtime with an Amigo. So, do I have to give $30 to my friend to do so?”

Amazing, isn’t it? Well, aside from the funny aspects of it, the other part that I noticed is that even though the agent understood the situation and could probably tell that this user is struggling with the concepts, she doesn’t adapt her conversation to the current situation and sticks to scripted messages, full of more branded terms and jargon such as “to make a deposit you’ll require an electronic record or re-charge card”, “you will need to visit a location to buy an Amigo card to enter it into your phone, scratching the access code and dialing *333″

In my last post I talked about the elements that all recovery strategies should have, but in this case, even though the agent explained the situation and provided a solution, I think she left the empathy out of the question, probably leaving our “Amiga” even more confused.

In regards to the content of the error messages themselves, we’ve all heard that they should not simply be repetitions of what the user has already heard, but rather slightly different variations based on the context and possible cause of the problem in the first place, so as to try to help them recover: is it due to a noisy environment? is the user providing me more information than I’m requesting? are they struggling to find it? do they need more time? are they getting confused by what I’m asking?, etc.

Of course, errors are nothing new and are particularly prevalent in the software and web world, where the value of the message and its ability to help users recover is very often dubious (or flat out ridiculous), resulting in bad user experiences. Some examples:

“Unknown Error -1″

“Keyboard error (press F1 to resume)”

“Wrong parameter”

“An unexpected error occurred, because an error of type – 110 occurred.”

“It is not necessary to dial 0 after the country code for this country.” (If they know that, why not simply recognize it, remove/ignore the 0 and move on?)

Some others here and here.

With that in mind, I have to say I found it very refreshing when my Firefox browser recently crashed and I was presented with the following message:

I found a few interesting things about it that made me think about my own error prompts:

1. It’s unexpected - talk about user expectations. You know having an error (or crashing in this case) is not fun. Yet the unexpected style distracts you and in my case made me feel a little better about the situation (ok, ok, I’ll admit it, it made me smile)
2. Even though it had a funny side, it was still useful. It clearly states what the problem was in terms I understand (my windows and tabs), plus it gives me a possible reason for the problem which might help me avoid the problem in the future (a recent web page)
3. It provides solutions on how to fix it

Reduce the negative impact of an error + clear description of error + clear explanation of the possible cause + alternatives to solve it. When was the last time your error messages achieved all these goals?

My latest discovery was the film “Objectified” by Gary Hustwit. Even though the documentary is centered around the topic of Industrial Design and the process by which well known products are designed, created and injected into the marketplace, there are some great quotes by various designers that I couldn’t help but feel compelled to share with you and analyze in an attempt to find a way to apply them to our field. With so many quotes, I though this might be better off divided in parts so people can add comments and share their own insights and experiences. Let’s get started:

“What we really need to do to design is look at the extremes – the weakest, with arthritis, the athlete, the strongest, the fastest – because if we understand what the extremes are, the middle will take care of itself.” — Dan Formosa, Design and Research, Smart Design

Wow, what a way to start this topic! After readings this one, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about perpetuating the common design approach of the 80-20 rule. We try to capture what 20% of the population which will use 80% of the features might do, add support for a few other common “corner cases”, and ignore the really obscure and unlikely scenarios altogether. This point definitively made me wonder what if… what if we were to do it backwards, design by looking at those extremes - the distracted caller, the multitasking mom, the user that requires extra time to process the information or respond - and letting the middle take care of itself.

Case in point, the creation of the Oxo kitchenware, a peeler originally designed for people with arthritis that turned out to be more comfortable and easier to use for everyone!

“What we’re really always looking for whenever we design are ways we can improve the way people do things or improve their daily life… without them really even knowing, ever thinking about it.” — Davin Stowell, CEO & Founder, Smart Design

Another quote from Smart Design, but this time addressing the reasons behind our designs. How often are we really looking for ways in which we can improve how people do things or improve their lives? How often can we articulate this need and help evaluate it in the context of other seemingly more important needs such as completion rates, retention and automation? Can we really tell we designed something that not only solved someone’s issue or allowed them to complete their task but that in fact had a positive impact on them without them even knowing? Quite a challenge (and intrinsic motivator for me)!

“Good design should be innovative. Good design should make a product useful. Good design is aesthetic design. Good design will make a product understandable. Good design is honest. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is long-lived. Good design is consistent in every detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. Good design is as little design as possible.” — Dieter Rams, Former Design Director, Braun

I think Mr. Rams said it perfectly. Seeing what goes on inside the minds of product creators behind brands like Braun and their philosophy definitively makes me appreciate the responsibility of a designer.

That’s it for part 1. Stay tuned for more quotes and nuggets of wisdom. And if you get a chance, watch the movie, you won’t regret it (and your users will appreciate it)!

Also, you can now look at the final version of the program. In particular, I would like to invite you to the following sessions:

1. Introduction to Voice User Interface Design (STKU-2)

   Sunday August 23rd, from 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM. This workshop is designed to quickly get those new to VUI design up-to-speed so they can make the most of the Principles of VUI Design track at the conference

2. Efficient Design (B102)

   Monday August 24rd, from 11:15 AM to 12:00 PM. Here we’ll talk about “Truths and Myths About Reusable Designs”. How can you design for reuse? Can user requirements be captured the standard way?

3. Bilingual Spanish/English Design (B301)

   Wednesday August 26th, from 10:45 AM to 11:30 AM. Here we’ll talk about “How to Present Names of
   Geographical Locations in Spanish Systems”. Yes, listening for and capturing names of places seems like a trivial task, but what factors should be considered when making translation/pronunciation decision? What do those decisions say about you and your company?

Safe travels, and see you there.

The concepts and ideas mentioned by Bill — particularly the notion of ROE or Return On Experience — resonated so much with me, that I think his vision should help anyone in the Design profession feel awesome about what they do (even though most people still don’t really understand what is it we do) and feel energized about the potential and future of any User Experience profession.

One of the points I completely agree with is the notion of learning from the past (both successes and failures) and figuring out how to exploit that past, not in the sense of simply copying what has been done before, but to figure out how relevant the core concepts might be, and figure out how to bring them over to our time, age and circumstance. As he points out, that’s the real definition of Creativity, Design, and of course, ROE.
The second point I loved, had to do with Experiences. He makes the point of how in the past everyone focused on the products and the services, but now we need to refocus and be aware that the real differentiation now comes from what a product, image, or sound might trigger in us! And figuring out the origin of the feeling we’re trying to provoke in our users is the real art of what we do.

“How can we tailor what we’re making to generate those feelings?”

The third point I want to mention is his assessment of how nowadays the Interface is just as important as the Object, yet it is really hard to sketch/prototype interfaces as fast as we do products in rapid iterations. He also added that it is not about a device/product/service, it is about the whole ecosystem (think iPod + iTunes). And along this idea of prototyping, he points out that going through multiple iterations is the essence of Design, in fact, that is the only way to explore a more broad design space compared to the typical process of choosing a single direction and spending time and effort refining it.

I think he summarized his concepts in a beautiful way:

“Our job is not to answer questions. It’s to ask the right questions to get us to the right question that would get us to the right answer.”

What do you think? How many different variants have you done lately for each of your designs?

You can watch the full presentation here, or download it from here (Windows Media Audio/Video file, 748 MB).

The overall premise was for readers to call the article′s writer phone number and leave a creative voicemail to gauge the effectiveness of Google′s voicemail transcription system.

Even though at first glance this seems to be another “why speech recognition isn’t ready for prime time” type of article (yes, I know the author claimed they wanted to test the boundaries of the technologies, but as many readers pointed out, individual items such as the president′s name aren′t that far fetched and should′ve worked), I think it also brings up some interesting issues often faced when testing speech recognition systems:

1) What are we testing? - This one very often depends on who you′re talking to, particularly on the business side of things. Some team members look care about containment rates (how many individuals stay in a system without having to talk to an agent), some others care about transfer rates (the increase or decrease in the volume of calls going into the call center), while some others care about customer experience (how long does it take for someone to solve accomplish their goal), and even a few (sorry to say upper management included) call systems to see how well they work when given odd statements or commands, or even worse, how close the system matches their particular expectations (without taking into consideration how the system was designed in the first place). So for me, this is one of the most important aspects of any system, which should be captured as part of the requirements phase – knowing what project owners want to test allows you to stir your design in the right direction (and push back when necessary as early as possible). For example, in the case of these Google Voice tests, there were some very interesting comments from readers because some felt they were testing the accuracy of the transcriptions, while others thought the test should only involve how well is the overall intent being captured, while some others (sadly) though they were testing how does speech recognition work nowadays.

2) How are we testing it? - This one depends a lot on what the answer to #1 might be. For example, in the case of Google Voice, I felt the test would′ve been much more valid if readers were asked to forward samples of their own voicemails into the writer′s voicemail (meaning real world examples) instead of having them come up with messages that seemed to have turned into a challenge to see who came up with the one that broke the system the most. Going back to some of the things business owners normally want to test, some of the methods in which we might need to test those items might vary significantly: for example, to test containment or transfer rates, one should not only look at raw numbers but at reasons behind those numbers – it′s very different if the numbers are driven by users exceeding a failure threshold than if they are due to users pressing 0 or if they are truly due to business requirements whose proper behavior is to retain/transfer the user.

3) What do these results mean? Particularly when dealing with numbers and percentages, the interpretation of results if very often tricky. For example, would you modify a menu if 50% of your users end up making the wrong selection? (I′m sure your gut reaction is “yes”, “of course”)… but what if that number is based on 2 out of 4 users that someone listened to during a morning′s test? Similarly, we sometimes run into situations where decisions are based solely on someone′s like or dislike (often C-level individuals) about how the system is performing (subjective analysis) without any consideration for the reasons behind the choice, the data of a much larger sample, or the fact that the system might still be on a pre-pilot phase that will eventually get tuned. I felt this was probably one of the main things lacking from the article.

The examples are definitively interesting (and funny sometimes), but I think it would′ve been worth doing some sort of analysis about the possible reasons behind some of those misrecognitions (line quality, odd pausing, user′s accents, etc.) as well as a more detailed explanation of what the transcription process really is. Some readers might think the results reflect the accuracy of an advanced speech recognition engine when in reality most transcription processes out there in the market involve a hybrid environment where the recognition engine might perform the first pass, and then human beings perform a second pass, reviewing what the machine recognized and/or interpreting those segments the machine might not have been able to recognize in the first place.

Have you tried it yet?

Therefore, I’ve never been a big fan of these types of services, except for those situations where I know we’re adding value to the conversation. Those situations where we’re providing a benefit to consumers, particularly in win-win scenarios where both parties benefit from the interaction.

One product/service I recently found out about that does exactly that is GlowCaps Connect. GlowCaps are electronic pill caps that use some very clever means to ensure patients take their medicine at the times and frequency that they should.

So picture this. If you know someone that needs to manage a chronic disease like diabetes or depression, daily medications are essential for their well being. What this device does is that every day, at the prescribed time, the GlowCap uses a myriad of modalities to remind users and attract their attention. For example, it may flash a visual reminder which is followed by sound if the bottle is not opened within the first hour. If the patient still doesn’t open the bottle, then the cap triggers a phone call to remind them and can even send weekly updates to friends and family as well as send reports to the patient’s doctor with a monthly summary of the bottle’s activity.

So, to summarize, better prescription handling which can be rewarded with coupons and incentives, better healthcare management with the doctor, and an opportunity for pharmacies to handle automatic refills. Those are the types of calls I wouldn’t mind at dinner time.

1. The Menu Button – This feature provides context-relevant options based on the current task.  David compares it to the functionality of a mouse right-button that offers commands like Hold, Mute and Speaker when you’re on a call.  It also offers next-step related commands such as Archive and Delete once you’ve read an email.  This is a great strategy I always like to implement, particularly on Voice User Interfaces where callers can only be presented with a limited set of choices, and there’s a clear set of task-related options that callers would be looking for without having to ‘go back’ to a so-called Main Menu.  In my mind, this should be renamed as the “Common-Sense Button”
2. Two different programs for e-mail – Ouch, this one really hurts.  Granted Gmail has a different mental model and framework than other e-mail programs, I think this one shows a lack of understanding of what users look for: simplicity and efficiency We know complexity exists everywhere, but that complexity should be hidden, whenever possible, from the UI and the user interaction.  And to add insult to injury, it seems that replying to an email in the non-Gmail program puts your cursor in the To box…  I’m just glad they have an open architecture that allows anyone to improve these interfaces
3. (Useless?) Tilt sensor – This has to be the weirdest one of them all.  If the phone contains a sensor similar to the one powering the iPhone, why did they not hook it to the screen?  The fact that someone is turning the phone 90 degrees should be enough indication of intent, so why put users through the extra step of making a menu selection or pressing a key?  This one feels like those menu prompts that first ask you to press 1 for “Arrivals or Departures Information” – which gives intent information, albeit not in an ideal way – followed up by an absurd follow-up menu asking you to “press 1 for Arrivals or 2 for Departures”.