Creating Web Sites That are Reliable from a Usability Perspective

Comments on: Applying Kaizen to My Various Websites, Trying to practice what I preach...

Good job actually practicing what we recommend others do (kaizen, customer focus...). More management consultants need to do so. I found another thing I think can be improved, this screenshot shows how a floating box (to the left of the screen) blocks the main content:

That covering box moves as you scroll the page so it is always covering part of the content.

[Update: further testing showed this was a temporary glitch - it didn't replicate even on my machine. See comments on the original post for more details. Browsers are not perfect in executing code that is meant to be on the page, sometimes it doesn't quite download everything right, or it misses one action (such as onmouseout) and then behaves oddly...]

One of the big problems I see for web sites development is a failure to understand and test how a wide variety of users will experience a webs site. Often they are designed to look nice for the conditions that the designer has (perhaps huge screen, perhaps low latency, which can mask code issues for users that have high latency internet connections) and that they share with those who approve designs.

It is one thing, for a blog from 1 person to have less than ideal usability for a wide variety of user views. I can completely understand that. Granted I do believe those of us that encourage others to continual improve also need to do that ourselves. What I can't accept is how many web site with huge budgets have very poor coding that results in many users (given the very large user base) have to suffer from bad usability issues.

Those big budget sites should know better than to code in a way that fails to value basic web concepts such as the extremely wide variation in how users will view the web site (screen size, operating system, browser, window size, font size preferences of the user...).

We have an epidemic of bad coding practices that result in failures which then are excused by those responsible as edge cases. Good coding practices would avoid the errors. But instead we code using needlessly complex and error prone ways and then say that we can't deal with the edge cases that only impact a few people. The problem isn't that those few people are requesting some special feature. The problem is the practices used are creating solutions that look nice for some subset of cases but that are not acceptable for other users. Coding with the entire user base in mind from the start would avoid any need to treat those "edge cases" that were only made into edge cases because the coding solutions are not designed for the entire spread of variation in users needs.

The most cost effective and reliable way to deal with this is often to just avoid extra complexity. Having the popup box with additional content can be cool and it can be coded in ways that don't create the issue I see here. But to do that in a way that doesn't create bad usability for some users is complex. Sometimes you can rely on fancy Wordpress themes that have properly dealt with all those complexities. But in my experience, that is very rare. They do ok with a large set of the users but create really bad usability issues for users that don't fit what they considered the normal use case (and created "edge cases" that have bad usability). Or if you are a big budget site you can try to code all the extra complexity yourself. That can be done successfully but I find it fails often. They create fragile systems to deliver and then are overwhelmed at how to deal with all the users that don't fit their expectations for users and they just decide to let those users suffer.

I run across these bad usability practices on big budget website every single week. It isn't some rare poor practice, it is epidemic. It is similar to USA manufacturing practices in 1980: poor practices are so widespread that everyone thinks such poor practices are acceptable. Hopefully this epidemic can be replaced by much better practices fairly soon.

Related: Use Urls – Don’t Use Click x, Then Click y, Then Click z Instructions - Functional Websites are Normally Far Superior to Apps - Bad iTunes Usability and How to Submit a Podcast to iTunes - Usability, Customer Focus and Internet Travel Search - Making Life Difficult for Customers - Designing In Errors

Don't Claim Your Customer's Suffering from Your Management System Results are a "Learning Opportunity"

From, Microsoft finally admits that its malware-style Get Windows 10 upgrade campaign went too far":

It’s all well and good for a corporation to promise that its learning from mistakes, but it’s awful hard to believe such promises when the mistakes in question violate basic principles of software design and customer service

They are exactly right. This is one of the huge problems with the "learning from mistakes" excuse. Some mistakes are a sign of an extremely bad management system.

If you force the consequences of mistakes on your customers making up excuses about how this failure is a learning experience for you is only ok if you actually spell out how you are changing to assure you don't fail your customers due to this same management system failure again.

You need to design your systems to minimize consequences to customers when something goes wrong.

Acting as though a problem is due to some specific issue only with the exact circumstances that created the consequences is exactly the message you expect from businesses that have no respect for customers. It is exactly he cover your butt mentality of organizations you definitely do not want to be a customer of.

We need to stop accepting transparent excuses that indicate no acceptance of responsibility for mistreating customers. This wasn't a mistake about updating software. This was a mistake of a management system that allowed colossally customer hostile action to be taken and then continued and accepted meaningless excuses as if they were relevant. Microsoft manages to fail even the extremely low expectations we have for them over and over again.

I was foolish enough to continue to use Skype after Microsoft bought them. I added money to my account so that I would have access to Skype on my trip to China. 3 minutes into my first phone call they disconnected me. They then put up the most customer hostile form I have ever seen. I literally have over 30 questions that were required to be answered (things like what month and year did you sign up). I can't remember them all but at least 15 were insane to expect any customer to know. Needless to say they provided no way to contact them outside the ludicrous form. You can't have such repeated massive failures of basis common courtesy for decades without a horrible management system being in place.

It is so frustrating that such customer hostility is allowed to continue. Microsoft has a massive, decades long problem with treating customers horribly and making excuses for decades. This is just one more example of that pattern. Supposedly they are less horrible today than 20 years ago. Maybe that is true but they give me no reason to want to test out if that is true with their well publicized continuing of their customer hostile patterns.

Sure Apple's very poor software quality over the last 5+ years makes me frustrated with them. But Microsoft is much much worse so I have no desire to make from Macbook to any Microsoft software. Google has issues but if they would target users that don't have (or want to rely on) great internet connections to use their computer I would consider them. Ubuntu is the leading solution Apple has pushed me into strongly considering. The biggest issue I have not is the hardware for Ubuntu just isn't nearly as good as MacBooks. Granted the latest MacBook hardware choices Apple made are somewhat lame, but still it is much better hardware than others offer. Sadly it is stuck with their bad software and combine that with the sky high prices (the old MacBooks were expensive but well worth it) I just don't think I will buy another. While less than great I think one of the Dell laptops is in the lead for my next laptop.

You can't allow your business to treat customers horribly if you don't have a monopoly (or monopolistic position). Sadly for those stuck with Microsoft, they have close to that monopolistic position and rely on that. They have an extremely long way to go just to stop treating customers horribly. And treating an inexcusable failure as something they are learning from is yet another indication they are not learning at all.

Related: Practicing Mistake-Promoting Instead of Mistake-Proofing at Apple - Making Life Difficult for Customers - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card

Pretending to Listen to Customers Rather Than Actually Doing So

Comment on Are You Really Listening to Your Customer or Just Going Through the Motions?

I find myself very frustrated at how incredible poor and superficial "listening to our customers" is at nearly all companies I have to deal with. It is atrocious, often beyond the superficialness of any concern is creating hoops to waste customers time who even deign to raise an issue of persistent failures by the company (I have had this with Amazon for the last 2 months - it is amazing how they expect you to repeatedly jump through hopes while they ignore you over and over). I would have dumped them for this horrible service but I can't get them to refund my sizable balance because it isn't their "policy" to bother to refund money in your balance.

A method to get useful feedback I learned maybe 20 years ago at a quality conference, it is really simple, why nearly no companies do it is a sign how little they actually care about customer service and improvement. Just ask "customers, what one thing could we do to improve?"

Then you also need systems in place to use what you learn to improve, of course.

Related: Delighting Customers - Simple Customer Care: Communicate - Poor Customer Service: Discover Card - What Job Does Your Product Do?

Customer Service is Often More Like a Mugging Than Service

It is so frustrating to deal with most companies with monopolistic positions in the USA (which is a lot of them).

I find dealing with those companies a matter of being confronted by someone trying to pick your pocket while they both ignore and insult you and give you orders about what hoops you have to jump through if you want to stop one of the things they are doing to harm you.

Some are not that bad, I get water and garbage from the local county, they are actually the best service I get from a monopolistic provider. The electricity provider is just designed mainly to make their lives easy but they don't make it horrible to deal with them.

Getting broadband (Verizon and Comcast where I am) is horrible - dealing with them is exactly what I wrote above. Health insurance (and I don't even make any claims) is bad, and if I actually got any service I imagine it would be horrible dealing with the service providers seeking to rip you off and the paperwork being a nightmare.

I avoid dealing with the monopolistic providers as much as possible but you often are stuck. For example, I can (and have) only use sensible providers to get my mortgage, but then they are sold to service companies that are horrible and I have no say in the matter.

Much more than the costs taken by companies when they can buy politicians in order to allow the abuse of the market by dominant providers I abhor the pain of dealing with these companies as a customer and the constant vigilance required to protect yourself from them ripping you off. It is like being forced to commute in a packed subway with bought off police that allow pickpocket teams to work without interference.

Related: Worst Business Practices, Fees to Pay Your Bills - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card - Don’t Let the Credit Card Companies Play You for a Fool

Patient Centered Doesn't Mean Patient Directed

One thing I find annoying is when people talk about patient "choice" as if that is the fundamental principle in health care. We often try to simplify things so much that they are untrue. Health care is complex and trying to point to pithy sayings does more harm than good I think.

Patient focus matters but there are conflicts between what is the best care and what patients want. And there are conflicts between what those paying for care want and drug companies want and hospitals want and doctors want. These require difficult choices and in order to optimize results we need very well designed systems that take these issues into account.

Sadly I think the USA generally has very bad systems in place. The rest of the world isn't that great either, but by and large is better than the USA and much cheaper. Most health care providers care about patient care and often make heroic efforts to provide it. But the systems are just lousy.

Those systems that seem the most lousy to me around extracting cash from payers - it is absolutely horrible in so many ways in the USA. Sadly this creates hugh waste in the USA that is ripe for improvement (and has been for at least 30 years). Patient care also has plenty of room for improvement, but thankfully it isn't as messed up as the whole payment system is.

One of the things people ignore is that we are not talking about GM in the 1980s being pitiful compared to Toyota. When we look at how poorly the USA health care system does it is in comparison to other rich countries it isn't a comparison to "Toyota." It is more like being pitiful compared to 1980s Fiat or something. When you are twice as expensive with no better results than Toyota that is somewhat lame. When you twice as expensive as not very well run systems with no better results that is super lame. And then add on the top of it that you bankrupt hundreds of thousands of people a year, force people to avoid health care so they don't go bankrupt...

We need to have systems that are patient focused but that doesn’t mean patients dictate treatment. And we need to see a much wider system than we normally do. We need to be focused on healthy living not just disease treatment. And given the mess that is the USA health care system we need to focus on reducing the burden of coping with the horrible USA health system bureaucracy - that system does great damage to those having to deal with it (and it is nearly all waste that shouldn't be creating such hardship).

Response to: A Story About a Hospital Putting Safety First Over Patient Satisfaction

Related: USA Health Expenditures Reached $2.8 trillion in 2012: $8,915 per person and 17.2% of GDP - Our Failed Health-care System - Overview of 5 Nations Health Care Systems

Niche Markets

One of the things I find amazing is how focused niche markets are. I noticed this as a kid collecting baseball cards and then paying attention to all the very focused niche markets I saw. When people find it surprising that people actual focus on that I don't really find it surprising but I do still find it interesting.

Here is a good example of what I mean, a business focused on manufacturing bottle caps specifically for use in craft and jewelry projects. That is not a market I think most people think of and say wow if only I could build a business in that market I would be set.

But by focusing on customers and building your business to give customers what they want you can build a good business. That is how the Bottle Cap Company built itself. It started out selling on bottle cap products at local farmer's markets and then ended up with an extra supply and sold that on eBay. And based on that response they saw a larger global market and expanded. And now they ship products and supplies daily all over the world from their warehouse located in Nampa, Idaho.

The success of companies like Google and Apple and Tesla are interesting. But far more success is gained in small companies providing needs to niche markets. I wrote about recent lean startup weekend in Johor Bahru, Malaysia recently along the lines of providing products and services to meet customers needs and not needing to try and become the next Twitter. Sure making billions sounds nice but that is extremely unlikely. However building a successful small business is possible by managing the business well and applying good customer focus principles.

Related: What Works for One Business May Not Work For Others - Pilot on a Small Scale First, Good Advice We Often Ignore - The Customer Knows Best?

It isn't Fair to be Judged for Performance Outside Your Control

My response to Simon Guilfoyle post

It’s also necessary to acknowledge that multiple variables affect crime rates; factors such as economic cycles, substance abuse, the weather, societal influences, changes in legislation, and so on. None of these are directly within the gift of the police to influence. Also, what about where the police cause an increase in reported crime by having the temerity to find someone carrying a weapon? Surely proactive problem-solving should not be discouraged on the basis that finding hitherto unreported criminal offences is incongruous with an over-simplified crime reduction narrative...

I would say many of the examples are outcome measures of the system - which is a better measure than is often used.

However, they are often beyond the control of individuals and even police departments overall (many other factors play a part - economic development, social services system, education system...).

Likely more directly relevant the measurement error is often so high that the figures have more to do with measurement than the actual outcome. And when the figures are being used to blame then it dramatically increases the likelihood the figures will be a poor representation of outcomes.

I would rather see more focus on outcome measures. We should also reduce incentives to misreport data (often blame related).

I think the issues you raise about the system being larger than the police can tackle alone should be a reason to INCREASE the view of the SYSTEM. The important system is LARGER than the police department. When we have institutional walls that break up the system we need to find ways to knock down those walls so the system can work together. Granted this seems nearly impossible given how much difficulty we have even just breaking down barriers inside tiny pieces of our organizations.

Nevertheless that is where the focus should be. We shouldn't decide the outcome measures are not fair given where we put organizational barriers. We should decide that we need to realize when we cut funding for x it drives bad results in section a. And when we allow y to retain fitfully outdated management practices that doesn't just impact their ability to succeed it likely creates lots of other problems all over the place.

Related: Be Careful What You Measure - Millennium Development Goals

System Imposing Burden on Customers Driven by Pointy Haired Boss

When Begging for Customer Service Scores Hurts Customer Service

I always think… you want patients to say you give “excellent” service and care… then focus on providing excellent service and care! Don’t guilt trip me or don’t manipulate me… that makes me feel a bit worse about the service, when that’s not the intent. Employees shouldn’t be put in the position of begging for scores… help them provide the best service possible, instead.

The practice of telling your customer they must save you from horrible management is terrible. Managers designing a system that puts a burden on customers to rescue people from harsh treatment is about as lame as management can be. Definite Dilbert's pointy haired boss level idiocy.

Any company with this setup likely has little clue about how to use data. When you mistake the data for the proxy indication it is suppose to be a measure of you can't manage at all. Giving huge incentives to people to make the number good (like having employees impose a burden on customers to have a number better which directly burdens the customer) is idiotic.

Relate: Managing to Test Result Instead of Customer Value - Distort the data instead of improving the system - Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Students as Customers

Competition in Higher Education [the broken link was removed]

A recurring theme among faculty in public higher education is criticism of the “student as customer“ viewpoint held by administrators, politicians, and others. Most of the criticism misses the mark

I find that normally the "they are not customers" crowd (doctors, government, education) are not doing a decent job of understanding what they disparage.

It is true that it isn't appropriate for many providers of services to do whatever those who are paying want. That isn't what "customer focus" means.

I can understand how people can leap to accepting the idea that understanding "customer" needs and values is problematic - it is normally a sign of destructive management practices intertwined with proclamations to "treat customers well."

As you say there is much good to be found in "customer focus" in education but it has to be part of a sensible management system.

Related: Customers, End Users and Payers - Customer Focus by Everyone - Problems With Student Evaluations as Measures of Teacher Performance

Lean Thinking at Amazon

My comments on Michel Baudin's post discussing lean, service and Amazon:

Unlike other Shmula readers, I can't jump from this to the conclusion that Amazon are based on Six Sigma or Lean. Instead, what I hear Bezos saying is "We studied what's out there, and went our own way." And that way is a game changer in retail worldwide, worthy of study in its own right...

It is interesting to see what Amazon continues to do. I think you are right that they have learned good things and are applying them their way. Often Bezos does what I see as much more fundamental lean thinking than those that spout the term a great deal.

For example: Bezos going to the gemba, Bezos root cause analysis ... Bezos understand the weakness of traditional accounting more than most any executive (he was a Wall Street analyst), this is way more important than I ever see mentioned in what makes him, and Amazon, different.

Bezos practices long term thinking better than nearly every "lean" company (though Toyota, and some others do this very well). From this mindset many things spring - focus on long term customer value, invest in value stream (Amazon's purchase of Kiva robots for example). Willingness to go against the current fashion, being directed by Wall Street analysts what is in the businesses, etc..

There are also job announcements, over the years, looking for lean experience and expertise I have seen from Amazon (which is a clue they are interested in lean).

Trust People but Verify Processes Provide Desired Results

The idea that freedom is the only important thing is flawed. Some people want to swing from poor management systems that don't allow employees to provide help customers need to total freedom (thinking respect for people means not process controls). That isn't right.

We need to trust but verify and use processes that are successful (even if some employees think that "cramps their style"). Usually that feeling is just temporary until they learn to understand process thinking and what comes with it.

Reaction to: Quality vs. Innovation: How Much Structure Do You Need?

Related: Improving Processes Helps Innovation Efforts - Process Improvement and Innovation - Long Term Thinking with Respect for People

Profit = Market Price - Actual Cost or Price = Cost + Desired Profit

Comments on Google Nexus Q – Made in the USA

I agree with

"Deserved Profit = Market Price – Actual Cost"
   not
"Price = Cost + Desired Profit."

But what I see glossed over by many lean folks when they present this is volume and the complexity involved.  The iPhone could sell 10,000 (say, or some number anyway) at $2,000 in addition to an carrier subsidy.  They can sell millions at a much lower price point.  Market price is a movable thing (depending on volume).

Also the 2nd formula is fine for deciding what products to build (theoretically - you have to be guessing at the values).  But it is totally fine to say we need a price of $350 for x product for us to decide to offer it.

The task is then to guess right.  If $350 is not going to work you give up - or more likely go back to the drawing board.  Can we make it better for just a bit more and then sell it for $400?  Can we re-engineer certain things and lower the price to $250 and even if that means we had to get rid of the ability to use wifi will that work in the market?

It definitely can be sensible to say we can't make x for less than $400 - we are not pricing it at $300.  It might mean we can only sell 10,000 instead of 30,000 if we priced it at $300.  But since at $300 we are losing $100 a unit high volume isn't great.

I think "If the market price for a device like this is $100, then you have to engineer the total product cost so it can be profitable at that price." is very well said.  Again volume is still a big issue.

Sometimes there are price cliff points - I can't imagine selling a tablet that isn't hugely better than the iPad on specs for more than the iPad price.  So above that level the volume may be miniscule.  But I think often there are not cliff points.

And the company does get to set the price.  The market then decides to buy or not, and buy in what numbers.  Apple would probably sell very few iPhones for $3,000 more than they cost today.  How many they would sell at $100 more or $100 less may change significantly but they would still be huge sellers at either of those prices.  So that "market sets the price" idea is not 100% accurate (I don't think anyway).  I do think the first formula is a better concept than the 2 formula.  But it is something that is maybe 80% accurate?  And the 2nd isn't totally worthless (it is just that it should be looked at more as a should we offer this product or not decision).

Pricing decisions also have big long term versus short term considerations.  Apple has started pricing many things in a way which makes it really hard for competitors to undercut them.  Apple, almost for sure could charge more for the laptops they sell and the iPad and iPhone.  But if they did they make it easier for a competitor to compete on price.  This pricing decision is an Apple decision not a market decision.  The market weighs in after Apple make the pricing decision.

But the price point for a kinda ok tablet at $199 - maybe will work?  Fire seems to be doing ok, for a pretty small, kinda lame, really cheap tablet.

Apple has done well create products for prices much above what people thought was market price.  It turned out people were willing to pay more for a great product.

You can notice that we are trying to sell this car for $35,000 and we are hardly selling any.  Ok, lets make it $30,000 and see what happens.

When setting what prices you will try to sell for, looking at your costs is a perfectly sensible thing to do.  Once the market tells you that you are off, you need to adapt to the market.  It isn't super easy though.  Often you can think the market failed to appreciate the value we offered because we messed up x feature and with y missing it was an issue and people will buy only black from Apple but they won't accept that from us (or whatever).  What we need to do is fix those mistakes.  The pricing given those mistakes the market sets below what we expected but that isn't really a pricing issue it is really a damaged offering issue.  Eventually mis-understanding pricing may become obvious, but it often isn't.

Anyway, my main point is just that the "market price" isn't some easy thing to know.  It isn't like looking up the freezing point of water.  I do agree with the "formula" I just think the way it is presented is often not as useful as it could be.

Quick Mistake Proofing Ideas for Preventing Date Entry Error

I found a new failure mode for online bill pay. I had an electric bill due April 24. I mistakenly entered May 23 as the pay date 

So, by April 30, I had a late payment termination notice from the electric company. Kudos to them for the fast cycle time on getting those out. I paid the bill via credit card on their website. 

I’m not sure how to error proof “wrong date.” You?

It is easy to put in a filter that checks and then puts a big flash message:

  “The date you entered is after the due date. Are you sure you don’t want to put in a date prior to that...”

You can also make the data entry bias toward a on-time payment: require an extra step to go beyond the due date, default the value to be the due date... How you implement this would depend on the entry method.

It is really easy to do well if you are using calendar point and click – grey out all the post due date entries, if click on a greyed out entry, pop-up a message that says “that date is after the due date are you sure...” It gets less effective/cool if it is just text entry...

Even with text entry thought you can popup the message on submit of the form if the date is too late (so they enter the wrong date but you catch it before the action is completed).

You can also follow up with (using this method alone is better than nothing but it is pretty lame so I wouldn’t suggest it as the only method unless nothing else can be done reasonably) email saying “you entered a date after the due date in your last bill payment, if you don’t pay before that late fee…

Anyone what to hire me for a few minutes at a time to think of ways to make it harder to make an error just let me know. I don’t like processes that allow errors so have become fairly good and thinking up ways to make it harder pretty quickly :-)

Related: Mistake Proofing Deployment of Software Code - Improving Software Development with Automated Tests - Poka-Yoke Assembly