OK, so it has been much too long since my last contribution to this blog… must do better in 2010. And this is a slight aside from my usual topics, but I think it’s related.
For a number of years, I have been helping many different friends set-up/manage/secure/use their home computers. These are not (generally) technical people. They’re people who do some emailing, some word-processing and a lot of surfing. Our interaction usually starts with “Can you recommend what sort of computer I should get?” and I do, and it usually involves going to a local retail store and picking something off the shelf and paying for it. Nice and easy.
These machines – regardless of vendor – will come secured to the hilt with “Trial” or “Time Limited” versions of Symantec, McAfee or some other security suite. And I have never had anything but bad experiences with these products. I’ll be honest and admit that I haven’t used any paid-for security suite in depth (outside of work) for many years, but my memories are of intrusive, resource-munching, confusing applications that prompt with nonsensical messages about what may or may not be a security threat. These memories haven’t been challenged by anything I’ve seen in the trial versions since.
Invariably, these suites are the first thing I remove from a new PC, installing the likes of AVG Free or Microsoft Security Essentials to provide an adequate level of security for the types of users I’m dealing with.
I appreciate that improvements have probably been made on the behaviour of some of the more popular solutions, but I still wouldn’t have them on my computer. An application that prompts users with heavily technical messages every so often and has such a drastic effect on the performance of a machine is a bad one. And the number of configuration options that are available confuse me most of the time – and I know what most of them mean!
I feel that the vendors of these products are failing to make their products usable or friendly. And many users are left asking “What does this mean?” or saying “No” to action prompts when they don’t understand the message, ultimately hindering their experience on the computer itself! Is it getting any better? Are these vendors learning anything about their users and adapting their software? Or am I just being too harsh?
Let’s set aside the accessibility argument of whether form labels should appear above fields – I’d like to consider the buttons here. There’s no requirement for multi-language support, either.
I’ve been a web developer for 10 years. I’ve been focused on the front-end of sites (the UI) for most of that 10 years, mainly because I have developed a set of skills that have been useful in constructing UIs. I’ve migrated slowly – but with increasing speed – to the world of UX and trying to develop a set of skills that can be useful in that particular field. I can’t help thinking that more artistic skills and more of an ability to visualise and conceptualise ideas would be beneficial to me, but I am learning.