Ann's Rant: Users as Designers - Challenge of the Network Age

My friend Des, an expert in compilers at the University of Sussex, often reminisces about his days working in a hospital with a very large mainframe. He and his colleagues sat in vests and shorts and sweated the winters away in a big room dwarfed by a bigger machine, maintaining the flow of information to and from their community. Almost mystical reverence was accorded them and their punchcard-guzzler: they were the high priests of the little tricks it took to get programs processed. No one else went near. I've always thought that it must have been a bit like servicing a dragon.

By the time I moved from the techno-phobic position of my early twenties to actually working on computers, I was given my own command line. In fact, like many people you talk to now, it never occurred to me there’d been a time when computers were not controlled by the person with the task in hand.

And today computers are the playthings of the masses. Goodness, when we drive around in a new car, use a console for games or switch on the central heating we often forget how much computers are doing for us. It is only as we face the PC that full recognition hits us again of our love-hate relationship with software.

To say that ordinary people's encounters with digital technology launched HCI as a research area and usability as a practice is old hat. Des was a specialist, prepared to learn the whims of the machine. By the time I got on the scene, sympathetic designers and business-minded directors were wondering what could be done to indulge my whim for a usable front end. And that movement has taken us to the familiar situation we occupy now: a tension between making digital technology possible to work with and shifting product as fast and cheaply as possible. Of course, as computers start to disappear inside products, generic design issues of interaction have almost taken over from Human – Computer Interaction. Don Norman is most interesting on this trend in "The Invisible Computer" (1998). Perhaps, with hindsight, we will know 1985-2000 as the years of 'The Computer User'.

So what is replacing ordinary people using computers? This is the question I want to tackle here.

Norman proposes information appliances with simple discrete functions as the gadgets of the future – it's not about 'using a computer'; it's about carrying out the task that you really wanted to do all the time anyway. So far, so good. And all around to help get the task done are hardwired networks, and in the pipeline (so to speak) are wireless LANs; mobile phones that pay for parking (and maybe the groceries); peer to peer payments by email; documents that find the nearest printer; and a 'Buy' button on the TV.

But the key feature of these developments is that information gadgets do not stand alone. There are any number of mechanisms for linking systems in such a way that information, money and other key elements of the network economy can flow freely. So, despite the appearance of simpler interfaces with information appliances – and the idea of one gadget, one function – getting the functionality you want is no longer only a matter of picking the right product.

Building networked systems involves understanding compatibility issues in another league from checking whether you've put the PC or Mac version in your basket. Will everything operate in the same way over any network? Will you have to adjust your settings just the once when you buy a new piece of kit, or every time you shift mode or move into a different network region? Are there products that will predictably meet your changing needs and pre-empt them? Or will you be making decisions about services and systems with horrible frequency?

These matters also used to be in the hands of professionals. We went to work, we had network managers and we were grateful. But now each question about end functionality and the trade-off between flexibility and complication must be answered in most areas of our lives. And the trade-off is not limited to basic functionality but appears in broader issues of control, such as those affecting privacy and personal identity and security.

For instance, I may want the minutiae of my financial situation flashed to me from the bank while I am out shopping, but I certainly won't want those same details passed on to the shop I'm standing in as exchange for guidance to the speciality cheese department. Both systems will be contacting me at the same time but I don't, on this occasion, want a party line. I'd also like to be sure that no one else, without any authorised access, is secretly feeding this information into a third network.

Most of you will be with me on this, but other areas are greyer. Some people's concern about data exchange will be greater than others. Some people will have more energy for customisation than others. And all will need to feel protected.

Only the circumstances I sketch are really new. Much of that decision-making is going on – either the decision itself or the abnegation of it – in handling interactions on the Web and elsewhere. Willingness to fiddle varies. We see it in the way that some people have already adjusted the ringtones on their mobile to indicate who is calling them, but many others haven't. My phone won't even let me… or if it does, then I don't know about it – just another design problem, which one might call 'indicating functionality to the indifferent, on the off-chance'. But the point is these decisions are becoming everyday in using networks. Changing the default font on the word processor is isolated. Responding to connection is not: it's prone to real-time changes initiated by others; offers multiple near simultaneous interactions and occurs over mobile gadgets that have never needed to communicate so widely before.

And many decisions will need to be in users' control so that they can respond to circumstances changing. In fact, we can go one stage further and say that the amount of control that each user can take over the function of the service should be in the control of that user.

So, I suggest that we stop thinking about products' end-users and start thinking about the system's end-designers. Because that is what we are all becoming as we choose and use network components. Adjusting the size of HTML-created text on the webpages we're viewing will be as nothing in user empowerment terms to what is about to come our way.

And our new powers will have to be carefully managed if they are to benefit us in terms of pleasure or productivity. Making systems foolproof is far more difficult than working with stand-alones because so many kinds of interaction are possible. Catering for different levels of control takes it from difficult to mind-boggling. The usability of systems is such a big and thorny issue that only brave people are talking about it – and not in public.

But it is time to accept that the trend towards enabling end-users – initially by bringing them into contact with their own command lines – is continuing apace. If we do not see them as partners in configuration as well as users with tasks to complete, we are going to miss the key challenge of the network age.

Associated Link: Who is this woman?

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