User Experience is more than the GUI

One of my personal pet peeves is the way people in the tech industry talk about “user experience” as if it only comprises what you see on the screen.  “Terrible UI” is a complaint we hear about applications or devices – “didn’t have a real user in mind.”  While that is often true, it shortchanges the work that many, many engineers and user experience professionals do all day.  The best user experience, after all, is one that doesn’t call attention to itself because it seems so natural – and I’m here to tell you that there is a lot more to it than the GUI.

Some companies have recognized this, and have customer experience organizations that are meant to champion the end-to-end experience, everything from unboxing a device to first use to identifying and eliminating dissatisfactions that only arise after extended use.  Sure, some of the keys here are where the “send” button is or the color of the “microphone mute,” but a lot of the reason things fall into disuse or disfavor are because of mounting irritations about sound quality, erratic wireless, constant updates, lousy battery life, and so on.

In the world where I live, focused on video collaboration technologies, looking end to end at the overall experience is a key focus for a dedicated team.  And yes, they do care about the GUI, but really they are about making the technology “disappear” as much as possible.  When you are trying to connect with human beings on the other end of the video call, you don’t want to be distracted or sidetracked when the technology asserts itself in the form of glitchy video, background noise, or a remote that just won’t work.

This is particularly important in video collaboration, because the fact is that video technologies are the most sensitive to things in the network that can mess up.  If you are trying to do a video call from your laptop in a hotel room while at a busy convention, for example, maybe your client should be smart enough to turn off video by default when the overloaded wifi is choking?  Background noise is a constant irritation – how many times have you heard “whoever is typing, can you please go on mute?”  Wouldn’t it be great if the system could recognize non-verbal noises and automatically mute them – no more keys clacking or chip bags crinkling!

Video is inherently visual – so you really are trying to see the people on the other end.  In most cultures, eye contact with others in the conversation is an essential component of communicating with credibility.  But if the speaker isn’t on the camera – you lose the reason you’re using video in the first place.  Wouldn’t it be great if the camera automatically detected the speaker?  What if the camera could detect the number of faces in the room, and adjusted it’s frame of view to accommodate accordingly?

In addition, until people become familiar and comfortable with using video regularly, any hurdle to joining can be the reason they default back to the known quantity of just joining by audio.  The top two stumbling blocks are in scheduling, and then joining, a video teleconference.   Wouldn’t it be great if everything were integrated into the calendaring systems we already use?

 Our latest innovation, the Polycom RealPresence Centro, is a great witness to this focus we have.  It sports touchscreen simplicity – no manual needed – and has the most advanced capabilities in terms of tracking people, adjusting for standing or seated speakers, tracking sound, and overall call orchestration of any solution in the market.  Lights change color on the bottom of the unit to visually communicate status (you’ll know if you are on mute or not), and it even includes handy USB charging slots for meeting attendees to use to top off their phone or tablet battery life. 

I encourage you to take a look at user experience with a broader lens – and let me know what you think. What experience would you most like addressed?