developerWorks: Well, greetings to all. My name is Bob Torres, one of the editors of the developerWorks Usability and Design space. We're starting our People in Customer Experience podcast series with an interview with John F. Kelley, known to his friends and colleagues as Jeff.
Jeff, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed
Kelley: Bob, it's great to be here.
developerWorks: I've called you Jay and I've called you Ray, and I've called you Jack. How did you get the nickname "Jeff" out of "John?"
Kelley: I think it was the powerful drugs they used in delivery rooms in the '50s.
developerWorks: That sounds really interesting. Tell me more!
Kelley: Well, my mother was resting in the maternity recovery ward trying to figure out a nickname for me. She never liked Jack. Anyway, she's mumbling my first two initials "J.F." over and over again. "J.F. ... J.F. ... J.F. ... J.F. ... J.F. ... JEFF. Hey, we'll call him Jeff!" Anyway, like I said, it must've been the drugs.
developerWorks: Alrighty then. I'm glad we have that straightened out. Now, you work as a consultant for IBM?
Kelley: Yes. I'm an outbound consultant in the Usability Engineering Practice, which has almost 40 practitioners and is growing strong.
developerWorks: What do you mean by "Usability Engineering Practice?" That almost sounds like the practice of medicine.
Kelley: We represent the user experience on application development projects. This covers a range of activities when new products are designed and built. The most visible aspect of what we do is the visual design of screens and controls that are usable and accessible. But, behind the scenes, we are active participants from the beginnings of a project: 1. helping to establish requirements that match the business model to the end user's functional needs, 2. defining the information and user-interface architecture, 3. using iterative user-centered design technologies to establish a solid conceptual navigational model, 4. writing style guides, 5. informing decisions about platform and delivery, and many more. There are dozens of different work products we contribute to various projects. Usability Engineering is a subset of human factors and ergonomics.
developerWorks: What attracted you to the field of human factors and ergonomics?
Kelley: I did my undergraduate work at UC Santa Barbara, where I managed to squeeze four years of undergraduate work into seven ...
developerWorks: You squeezed four years into seven ...
Kelley: Well, I guess it's fair to say that I had a lot of difficulty finding a major. I tried pre-med and liked the physiology and the anatomy labs, but I didn't really want to be a surgeon or physician. I tried engineering and was fascinated by the physical design of things (and, I have to say, that slide rule was a fascinating little gadget), but I didn't want to design bridges or electronic circuits for a living. I declared psychology and loved the experimental methodology and theories of cognition and skill acquisition, but I couldn't see myself in a clinical practice. I even tried fine arts and music majors. And I loved the design and drafting and I also spent many hours -- long hours -- noodling the keyboard in the rehearsal rooms, but it was quite evident to me and my various professors that I wasn't cut out to be an artist or a musician.
developerWorks: How did you get focused?
Kelley: My student adviser was a former marine master sergeant and a truly remarkable person. One day, she and I were going over my checkered academic career -- some classes I did very well in, but others ... well, not so much. In fact, we were just beginning to wonder if I was cut out to be a college student at all when her secretary walks by her office and says "Janet, they've just announced this new major called human factors" and she drops a flier into Janet's in-box, and -- I swear this is true -- a waft of a breeze caught it and it, literally, dropped into my lap. I looked at it and said "Janet, look at this! These course requirements are all the same types of classes that I've loved and done well in!"
This field of human factors and ergonomics was all about designing technology so that it matches the capabilities, comfort, and interests of the humans who use the technology. Needless to say, I'd finally found my major, and the net result was that I blossomed from a future college dropout to a dean's list graduate with a scholarship to Johns Hopkins. And, that's where I earned my Ph.D. from the man I have come to describe as the "godfather of human factors," the late, great Alphonse Chapanis.
developerWorks: I was in one of his very impressive lectures. How did professor Chapanis influence you?
Kelley: Al was a genteel man with a passionate dedication to his students and to the main work of the human factors field, which I'd describe as improving the quality of life on our planet by reducing the frustrations we all encounter working with technology and things designed by people. In the course of his illustrious career, professor Chapanis had opportunities to make a dramatic impact and save lives. An example of his early work during World War II -- work that pretty much kicked off the whole field of human factors.
If you'll picture it, was in 1943, and then-Lt. Alphonse Chapanis was a psychologist at Wright Field. He was asked to investigate the high incidence of "pilot error" in aviation training and combat accident reports. To be specific, pilots of P-47s, B-17s, and B-25s were frequently causing crashes by retracting the landing gear of their aircraft instead of setting the flaps while taxiing. Chapanis did some observational studies and concluded that the side-by-side arrangement of the two controls, combined with the nearly identical shape of the controls, were leading tired pilots into making this error. So, he introduced the principle of "shape-coding" to solve this problem. The quick wartime fix to glue a small model wheel to one lever and a wing-shaped wedge to the other.
This, I thought, was pretty cool, but couldn't really see myself having those kinds of opportunities since my interests at the time were more in the areas of telecommunications and computers.
developerWorks: How could someone like Chapanis "improve the quality of life" in an area like that?
Kelley: That's what I was wondering. When I was offered the NSF fellowship to go work on my Ph.D. with professor Chapanis, I decided to do a little digging -- find out more about this guy who apparently had so much to do with defining human factors.
So, one day, while cruising the dustier section of the stacks in the library, I ran across this little study that the professor had done back in the 1950s. He was consulting for an electronics company, designing a new numeric keypad for this switching device they had. And he did an experiment comparing different arrangements for the buttons. And he found that people performed a teensy bit better using one layout, rather than the other. We're talking 2 or 3 percent. When I first read it, I was thinking "2- or 3-percent improvement? Big whoop. I'm considering doing this for a living?"
developerWorks: Yeah -- 2-3 percent doesn't sound like much of an impact.
Kelley: Exactly! But I'll tell you what: Later on, when I got home, I got to thinking about that little study. You see, the electronics company he was consulting for was Bell Labs, the switching device was The Phone System, and the keypad was the push-button phone that they were developing to replace the old dial phone. Here's an exercise for you: Think about that little bit of annoyance you get when you dial a wrong number. Now multiply that by the 3 billion phone calls that are placed daily in the U.S. alone and think about how much cumulative human pain and aggravation that we humans are spared because one human factors guy did a careful little study and came up with the right answer.
In fact, I looked it up many years later and did the math. The time savings alone, when you multiply it out, could be well in excess of 48 million hours per year of extra time humans don't have to spend dialing wrong telephone numbers.
Most of us in our field do this. We labor away, year after year, trying to achieve those little incremental improvements in the quality of life. The people we serve are basically comprised of every person who uses a car, or a cellphone, or an appliance, or a computer, or any piece of technology. And, you want to know something? Our true customers don't do the math. Most of them don't even know we exist.
developerWorks: So, if your true customers don't even know you exist, or that you, as a designer, contributed to a design, then why do you do it?
Kelley: Well, it's obviously not for the recognition. I think people come to this field because they recognize an opportunity to make a difference. And that's the pure motivation for it. A chance to earn a living by anonymously practicing random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty, if you will.
developerWorks: Do you really believe that your career boils down to being "kind?"
Kelley: First of all, I'd call it more of a calling than a career. And, essentially, yes.
Consider this: I'm just like anyone else when I screw up working the two-button timer of my coffee pot or I can't figure out which sequence to push on my 50-button remote to switch the TV to the DVD player. And, just like most people, I think "Boy, am I stupid." But, thanks to the influence of mentors in my life like Al Chapanis, I sometimes follow that thought with one like "Hmm -- am I just stupid or is this thing really hard to figure out?"
And, if the design space for the gadget is one I have some experience with, I might say to myself "I think I've seen this kind of confusing design before." And then you know what happens? I get provoked and start looking things up. And then, I say to myself, "This is a known problem. We know how to solve it. Why are they still making these bone-headed design decisions and making their poor users feel stupid?"
developerWorks: And this makes you angry.
Kelley: I'm not angry about my own loss -- I've long since given up spending the kind of energy it takes to worry about whether I'm technologically stupid or not. Tell you what, though: I am angry on behalf of the people I've dedicated my life to serving. And, I'm not so much angry at the individual engineers or programmers who placed and labeled the buttons or designed the convoluted sequences in which you have to push these buttons. They are predominantly dedicated professionals who are committed to quality in their own work. And, they obviously didn't know any better or they would have done it properly.
No -- I get angry at the institutional ignorance and short-sightedness that perpetrates user-hostile designs on the unsuspecting public. I think a lot of people in our field feel this way. I know a lot of my usability consulting colleagues at IBM have that same sense of dedication. I also think a lot of us are frustrated in our attempts to change the commercial culture of ignorance from the top down.
Over and over again, we have to start out by educating new clients who don't understand the key concept. A proper investment in usability engineering, up-front in the design process, will save development dollars and pay big dividends when the product is shipped. Usability isn't something you can slap onto a product after it is designed and developed. Begging forgiveness from the Suidae family, "If you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig." But I have a dream about how we can correct these misperceptions.
developerWorks: OK -- let's get back to your "dreams" in just a minute. But, first, what I'd like to do is get back to what you talked about earlier. Some people -- I know I've heard it as a practitioner -- a lot of people would call the kind of work we do, the "touchy-feely" side of human factors. What business benefits can you talk about?
Kelley: Think about the 2-3% savings on use of phones that we talked about before and apply that to business tasks in computer applications, for example looking up a customer in a database. Some businesses are losing tens of millions of dollars without realizing it. However, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the harder-to-quantify aspects of aesthetics and design. Recent studies have found a surprisingly strong correlation between usability and perceived beauty in software design.
developerWorks: Ok. So, how did you get to become president of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society?
Kelley: After serving as program chair for 5 years, and Editor of Ergonomics In Design, and working my way through as chair of many other committees within HFES, I was encouraged by several past-presidents to accept a nomination to run for election.
developerWorks: And, what do you hope to accomplish as president of HFES?
Kelley: I've led a number of different not-for-profit professional and arts organizations. And, the challenge is that a lot of the substantive work is done by volunteers who are balancing other demands on their time. But this is also the beauty of it: There's a reservoir of passion there that can be a tremendous engine for advancements. My job, as I see it, is to empower people to exercise that passion and commitment. And to give them an effective channel for their enthusiasm and eliminate unnecessary institutional obstacles. The trick is to do that while keeping the shared, long-term strategic, objectives of the organization in clear view for everyone. That's what I view as my principle responsibility in this job.
developerWorks: Ok. So, now let's go back a little bit. Now's the time that you can tell us what your dream for Human Factors and Ergonomics is.
Kelley: Ok. Well, as I discussed, the top-down strategy for educating developers and decision-makers is one part of the puzzle, but it's not enough. My dream is that we could somehow get the word out and change the way things are done from the bottom up. If we can educate the general public about what we do and what kinds of a difference it can make, then maybe, when people get frustrated trying to work some appliance or software program, their first thought wouldn't be "Boy, am I stupid." Maybe their first thought would be "could this have been designed better so I wouldn't be wasting my time feeling frustrated?" Maybe the agent of change is the specter of millions of consumers leaning out their windows and yelling "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take bad usability design any more!"
developerWorks: ...Like in the movie...
Kelley: ..."Network". Right. But all histrionics aside, it really boils down to simple economics. If the companies who design and produce technology believe that their customers are aware of -- and value -- good human factors or ergonomics or usability design, they will invest in it. In fact, you could probably criticize a product manager who devoted a lot of resources to user-friendly designs if there was no apparent business justification for it. If the consumers don't know that life with this technology could be sweeter, less frustrating and more productive, they won't know to demand it. If they don't demand it, and if the decision makers don't recognize it on their own, then there won't be a business justification for it, ergo: bad design. However, in a just world, designing technology for ease-of-use would be something you would, as a matter of course, quantify and put on a marketing brochure, and would help differentiate your product from your competitors. So, what's the key to a just world? An educated consumer.
developerWorks: If you were able to "Educate" some consumers, what would you tell them?
Kelley: Consumers: listen up. Do you care about bad design that makes you feel stupid or frustrates you or causes you to waste your precious time? Then do something about it. You're the only one who can. Find out what "Human Factors" and "Ergonomics" means. Look up "Usability" on the web. Make these terms a part of your vocabulary. Watch for references to these things in the reviews for products that you are considering purchasing. Let the winners know why you chose them. And let the losers know why you chose the winners. And if some gadget frustrates you, remember: it's probably not your fault -- and give 'em hell! There are thousands of dedicated professionals out there who are trained and motivated to solve this problem, but it's got to come from you.
developerWorks: Well, Jeff, That's a noble sentiment and I'm sure we all wish you luck on your quest. What closing thoughts do you have for us?
Kelley: At the end of his career, my mentor and inspiration, Alphonse Chapanis wrote a memoir which ended with these words: "...[T]here is one thing I have never regretted - and that is my choice of profession. Human factors has always been challenging, frustrating at times, rewarding at others, but never dull. I can honestly say in retrospect that I have had a full life - an exciting life - and that I have enjoyed telling people about human factors, educating students and others to take over where I have had to leave off, and grappling with problems of trying to make our material world safer, more comfortable, and easier to cope with. In fact, there is only one thing I truly regret - I'm sorry I've come to the end." Wow. I'll tell you what. At the end of MY career, I'd be able to retire a happy man if I could say that "by applying what I know, I've left some small corner of the world a teensy bit more of a congenial place to live in".
developerWorks: Jeff, thank you much. Thanks for your time.
Kelley: Thank you, Bob. It was a pleasure.
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