I met a few new people at the first day of my Bentley Course on Usability Testing. While during the class we focused on the course material the instructor had for us, during breaks and lunch we were talking about quite a few things and almost all of them lead to one thing: Having a good Product. I am sharing some of the stories here

• A couple of us mentioned that search sucks on most sites. Usually if the information is not on the home page or a few links down, we tend to look for the search box. However, its rare that we find what we are looking for in the first set of search results. And that me and another classmate of mine almost spontaneously said that we just go to Google and search for the same information and specify the site on which we are looking for. And almost always we get the result we want right away.
  • Is your product so powerful that it enables people to use other products? Or is it so feeble that your users need to depend on a 3rd party to extract useful information out of your product?

• We were talking about how quick people are to dismiss a site or a link if it does not open instantaneously. We think this is a bit more common among the younger generation and that the older generation is a bit more patient about it. But with the presence of broadband and wireless internet everywhere, it is difficult to make a case where you would expect the customer to wait. If a site does not load in 2-3 seconds, we have already created an impression about it and the site now has a bigger task to not just undo that but also work harder to meet and exceed our expectations.
  • Are you designing products for the future generation? If your product has a life cycle or 5-10 years (e.g. medical machines), do you plan for the variety of users who will use in that span? Do you think people will put up with your product? Do you think you will put up with your product 6 months down the line?We were talking about how quick people are to dismiss a site or a link if it does not open instantaneously.

• We also talked about how younger users are so comfortable in making mistakes. When they see a new interface, they don’t hold back in playing/experimenting with it. The important thing is that the product allows them to tinker with itself and get a feel for it. Gmail allows you to undo deleted emails and sent emails and Facebook allows to remove the photo you accidentally uploaded in the wrong album.
  • Is your product giving your customer the time to build confidence? Do you allow the users to gracefully recover from mistakes and not feel stupid about them?

We use so many products throught the course of our day and how many can really meet such standards. More importantly, aren’t such standards slowly becoming the norm and not the exception? Think about it.

Its not uncommon for most stand-up comedians to have at least some jokes which are profane and have foul language.But I was pleasantly surprised when I saw “The Epitome of Hyperbole” by Brain Regan. Not only is his comedy clean and observational, its something you can watch with the whole family. Kudos to Brian for being so energetic and funny in the show. He shows how to make a theater full of people laugh for almost an hour without making inappropriate references. Reminds me of Bill Cosby.

Here is a sample:

http://twitter.com/puneetsarda