There was an interesting socio-tech design lecture by Prof Roger James
booked for Nov 5th (university of Westminster).
Prof James' thesis turns the useability design argument inside out to regard
usability issues as failures in the same way that engineering design and
manufacturing regards defects.
The standard 'standard' for quality in engineering manufacturing design is
less than 3 defects per million items (six-sigma).
Imagine this in service design. For example, less than 3 buses late or early
in a million arrivals or departures. (BTW Japan gets close to this.)
Imagine it in communication design. For example 3 or less people out of a
million misunderstanding the message of a designed graphic.
Imagine it in interface design. For example, less than three people in a
million misunderstanding how to program their video.
Prof James draws attention to the implications of it this in terms of
customer service. Customer service departments are what you need to correct
defects. If the design work is good enough you don't need customer service.
To quote the lecture abstract:
<snip>The genius of Google is you get a first rate technical experience with
zero support [ie no customer service department]. Their whole business model
is service free - relying instead on great technology, building and
maintaining user competence and an ethos of self help. As a trivial but
pertinent example there are approx 3500 books on Microsoft Office and 5 on
Google apps - yet google apps offers substantially the useful elements of
office. Should we consider this 'inbalance' a defect in Microsoft Office and
should we anticipate a campaign on service quality akin to the six sigma
product quality initiative over the last 20 years. Can one argue that
technology is finally becoming sufficiently mature and ubiquitous to imagine
this happening?<endsnip>
The companies that manage six-sigma levels of quality/defects either
produce products that are based on outstanding levels of research (think
Google, PayPal, mass manufacturing) or only do a few simple tasks from the
user's point of view (think ipod, matches, point-and-press cameras,
footpaths - and these are considerably less than 6-sigma).
My feeling is that design fields will move more towards massive increase in
use of research prior to design and less dependence on the additional design
of customer service systems to 'fix-it-later' when things go wrong, i.e. a
move towards six-sigma.
This appears to require a signficant move away from intuition-based design.
I'd be interested in people's thoughts.
Best regards,
Terry
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Dr. Terence Love
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