Communications - February 2012

Jason hong “Design, functionality, and Diffusion of innovations” http://cacm.acm.org/ blogs/blog-cacm/104694 february 6, 2011 A few months ago, I wrote two CACM blog entries examining why great design is so hard. There have been a lot of great comments and insights from a bunch of people.

There’s one comment in particular I’d like to respond to because it poses a good question about the nature of functionality with respect to design. In the comment, Mark Tuttle argues that the functions offered by a system outweigh design, citing examples of time-sharing systems, email, Unix, bitmapped interfaces, MEDLINE, and query languages for early relational databases.

To a large extent, I do agree on the importance of functionality. If we had a system that could predict tomorrow’s stock market prices but was completely unusable, I’m sure we’d still see a lot of people making the effort to learn how to use it.

However, functionality and design aren’t separate things. A large part of design includes understanding what needs people have and what technologies can be applied to solve those needs. Design isn’t just about the user interface “skin” of graphics, icons, and aesthetics that people see. It includes the internal “skeleton” of how the application is organized, the conceptual model and metaphors conveyed to end users, as well as its functionality.

It’s also worth pointing out that in many of these examples about functionality, the systems were designed by and used by people with intimate knowledge of software. The designers already had a deep understanding of what the problems at hand were and how people did their work. In other words, the designers were the users. That’s not really the case anymore, though. Information and communication technologies are pervasive in all aspects of modern society, from finance to manufacturing, from health care to consumer products. We can’t rely solely on our intuitions anymore because the users are no longer like us.

Second, while functionality is a key differentiator for technologies in the

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“interaction design
is about always
remembering
the mantra ‘The user
is not like me.’ ”

very early stages of adoption, it isn’t as strong a draw in the middle and late stages, especially when competitors have arrived that offer products with comparable functionality.

A lot of researchers have developed models of technology adoption. My favorite one is presented by Everett Rogers in the well-known book Diffusion of Innovations, that summarizes the literature in that area. Rogers outlines five major factors that influence whether or not people adopt a given innovation. Note that in Rogers’ book, an innovation can be not only a technology, but also a process or a habit. Here, I will focus only on technologies.

The five factors Rogers identifies are: relative advantage, compatibility (with one’s beliefs and existing installed base), complexity, trialability (how easy it is to try the technology), and observability (how easy it is to see others benefit from the technology). Rogers also presents the well-known technology adoption curve that segments the population based on when they adopt an innovation, labeling people as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

At this point, you can probably see where I’m going. Innovators and early adopters have a higher tolerance for risk and complexity, and often have significant pains that need to be addressed now. In these cases, functionality dominates factors like aesthetics, usability, simplicity, and cost. If you have ever seen (or, worse, had to use) anything created for the Department of Defense, you will probably agree it fits this description quite well.

However, the early majority, late
majority, and laggards have very dif-
ferent profiles and thresholds for
complexity and value. In these cases,
the ability to create a product that fits
into people’s lives plays a significant
role, especially when competing prod-
ucts are available. This is where great
design matters a lot, as demonstrated
by products like the Nintendo Wii and
the iPod. When the Wii first came to
market, it was competing against the
large and well-established base of
Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and
succeeded by dramatically simplifying
game play and targeting casual gam-
ers rather than hard-core gamers. The
iPod came out a few years after the first
MP3 players were already being sold,
and made huge inroads by forging a
strong emotional connection to peo-
ple with its sleek form factor and fun
user interface.

Reader’s comment

I totally agree with you. It is very important to address the issues of early adopters of the product. Also, like you pointed out regarding the Nintendo Wii, the emphasis on great design and innovation in a product/software is always dependent on how established the competitor’s product/software is. Whereas, for established products, like Microsoft Office, change and innovation in the product’s design has greater risk as users tend to get confused, like with the ribbon interface in Microsoft Office. UX, on the whole, is a major factor in early stages of adoption, but emphasis on it gradually fades away as a product becomes more popular (and users don’t like a change).

Developers and designers are in peril when they ignore the functionality and UX after a product becomes very much established as they run into the risk of competitors rolling out a product with same functionality but better UX.

—Rahul Kavi

Michael Stonebraker is an adjunct professor at the massachusetts institute of technology. Jason hong is an associate professor of computer science at carnegie mellon university.