wires should not behave like humans.

After I wrote this post yesterday, I had to go out among humans, so didn't have time to put in a few thoughts that occurred to me only later. Then Matt Daniels left a comment there, and I thought it's a good opportunity to respond to him and add the stuff that I figured out later.

The fact that humans often behave like certified psychos when interacting with websites only means that we should not try to make websites human-like, but quite the opposite: we need to design them in such a way to prevent obnoxious human behavior. That is, we need to design against all those opportunities that make people pissed off. Pretty simple.

And that's a purely experience design matter. It really goes against the ton of conversation going on right now around how to "humanize", "personalize", and "socialize" a brand website. And how brands online need to behave like persons, need to be nice, and conversational, and pleasant, and sociable, and resourceful, and whatever else crosses your mind if you are a [bad] digital strategist. I am just not sure that it really helps. Like, who cares if you imagined that your brand should be a "real nice person" if there's a damn stupid mistake in navigation, or the page takes forever to load, or if there's really nothing much to do on the site, or if the experience design sucks. Maybe we don't want our websites to be like humans in the first place - maybe we just want them to be what they are - interfaces - and to work damn well, in that.

So here's the answer to Matt's two observations: a) our behavior will not necessarily turn more impersonal and socially awkward as long as we don't imagine that we are interacting with humans and that it replaces human interaction; and b) I think that we need exactly the opposite of Turing's test for our websites, we need a "machine test". Is this machine working well? Can you design it flexibly for a range of uses, and also predict dead-ends and kind of drive people away from them? At the end of the day, we don't want our websites to be "personalities", we want to have an uninterrupted interaction that lets complete some task, communicate, connect with others, or just plain hang out online without being frustrated while trying to do so. Real simple.

And the less "is it a human, or is it a machine?" confusion, the better.

Comments

[Michael Surtees]

while this should seem really obvious, this question does get lost from time to time—what's the point of the site? typically someone wants to do a certain task and move on. but for some reason people like to make sites into an “experience” where it becomes much more of a production as opposed to realizing someone wants to get a bit of info, (maybe share that info later), leave the site and enjoy the rest of their day.

the catch with trying to prevent obnoxious human behavior is that you're going to have a different motivation for visiting the same site that i am looking at. there's the potential that we're going to be looking at different things first. all a designer can do is try to give a number of options for people, observe what works (and doesn't) and iterate as time goes by.

[Ana Andjelic]

yep, right on. however, even with making sites into "experiences" as you say, what defines the quality of that experience is seamlessness, not its "humanity". in fact, seamlessness is the question of technology and of design - and not a human quality.

(but i think that we think about the "experience" slightly differently -- i think of it as interactive, user, experience, and you prob talk about 'immersive' destinations, in which case i agree with your assessment on production.)

and re: your second part of the comment - yep, that is the challenge. but that's also why i wrote that you don't design FOR something, but AGAINST something. i would think those are two fundamentally different approaches. when you design against something, you don't really care what different user personas are - you are designing so every and any of them do not get into some dead-end or a cut-off point on the site.

and, of course, nothing good ever happened without iteration :) you can't really predict where people are gonna get stuck until you deliver the product to them and actually see them getting stuck.

[Matt Daniels]

Thanks Ana for the response-love.

Completely agree with the interface point. I don't know a thing about UX, but I imagine that most of the obnoxious human behavior online derives from the frustration with technology--something very different than what we see in the real world (frustration with queuing, out-of-stock, customer service).

Any site that monitors bounce rates, A/B tests, and optimizes should pass your machine test--Google does a great job of rapid-prototyping with its products.

But in some instances, adding a human touch seems to have worked very well. "A list apart" has a great article from Flickr on how they designed the site to "humanize" the experience, such as labeling a button "Get in there!" instead of "Sign in." Highly recommended read:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fromlittlethings

I like a little human in my site experience, especially to be treated like one, as if I was in a brick-and-mortar store. Should sites really be force opting-in users for email? Hitting users with hundreds of pop-ups? Requiring an absurd amount of information to register?

[Ana Andjelic]

hey matt,

yes of course, Flickr is famous for it's "human touch", but that's a matter of copy, and I tried to cover that by saying that experience designers work to prevent dead-ends (always offer some exit -- just like on the image above, from Threadless). That's a human touch - "hey, i don't have this, sorry :( -- but i have that instead. check it out!" There's a lot of examples around the web like that, and sites are becoming smarter and smarter in that sense. But again, it's a matter of language. I was trying to capture experience design decisions (for example, some of the stuff you mention - pop-ups, elaborate registration forms, etc).

p.s. thanks for the link about Flickr -- will read!

[Guy]

Hi Ana

Just followed this thread and wanted to chip in a couple of points about copy (re: "that's a matter of copy").

Agree entirely with comments above about UX. Although that wasn't what sprang out at me from the screengrab you chose.

How many brands could use the Threadless copy tone? (Or Flickr? Or Innocent?)

Many try, in an attempt to 'humanize' consumer interaction. But misjudging the level of pally-ness with your customer can irritate as much (if not more) than bad IA/ interface design.

Equally, leaving copy to the machine (e.g. the old-fashioned 404 page) can completely alienate your visitor.

@ Matt Daniels - agree about Flickr. But the copywriter (or whoever takes responsibility for the words on a website) couldn't be happy changing 'Sign in' to 'Get in there' if he/she didn't understand the UX or hadn't been involved in testing the site.

I think that writers need to work more closely with UX to ensure that words, experience and brand come together in harmony.