Some considerations about usability

1. on usability…
Going behind Ford Model-T, black…
It all started on October 1, 1908.
Until then each car was built from
scratch for every customer
(custom-made), specially designed
just for him, and thus was very
expensive and very difficult to
maintain1 and repair.
After Henry Ford cars were no
longer built singularly for just one
customer. Cars were built the
same way for everybody. No fancy
cars; just THE CAR, just one
design, identical features and
even the same colour, black.
This was a big success. But slowly
things changed.
We now have the possibility of
choosing the car we like more
among the available ones and we
may choose among a lot of
different options.
This approach is common to most of the products and services offered on the
market, but, oddly enough, NOT in most of the internet based services2.
The last time you asked your bank to buy an home banking service did you get
a list of different products to choose among, a large list of options?
The most important feature of the Ford Model-T was to be the first one
builded with interchangeable parts, before each car had different parts and in
case of failure it was necessary to adapt it, the chain production is only a
by-product of this approach. This is something that should teach us a lot of
things, but is another story.
1
The same concept applies to most of the software packages and operating
systems, but again another story.
2
December 6th, 2013 ­ page 1 of 2

2. on usability…
Most probably no!
You got a username, a one time password key and the indication that the PIN
will be delivered later by physical mail.
There are a lot of different customers, there are a lot of functionalities and
possible operations but apparently the one-size-fits-all philosophy is still there!
We should have different products with the possibility of choosing different
functions and different working procedures. As an example a customer that
makes a payment every week will love multiple pages wizard helping him step
by step, but a customer that makes 10 payments a day will love to have a
single page fast multiple payments form.
The system could also continuously analyze customer's activities and propose
the alternatives that seems more suitable for that particular customer. Of
course log and behavioural analysis could also be an important instrument to
help us building new and better ways of delivering services.
The idea of adaptive system is not new, it is somehow an extension of the old
idea of programming by examples: big data and computing power are the
enabling technologies that could make it a reality.
December 6th, 2013 ­ page 2 of 2