Imagine a stuffy old men’s club, finally forced to admit women. Grudgingly, the geezers do it – and discover they’re glad they did! The exposure to new ideas and new faces brings new life and a range of new experiences to what was once a closed, almost-claustrophobic society.I’m beginning to think the same thing would happen in the PC marketplace if the designers and engineers of today’s computing products would put themselves in the shoes of inexperienced users who know next to nothing about computers.
Would the result be a slew of "easy-to-use" but lame, weak-kneed products, ill-suited to the demands of power users and working professionals? I don’t think so, any more than the men’s club in my example would turn into a sewing circle.
I believe the result would be a new breed of products so well thought out, easy-to-use, and effective that everyone from beginners to power-users would embrace them -- with easier learning curves, fewer headaches, greater productivity, and more fun for everyone.
I don’t stumble on such products often, and when I do, it’s cause for rejoicing. One product I believe sets new standards in the user interface arena is the Visioneer One-Touch PaperPort Scanner.
This product’s winning design reflects a deep assurance on the part of the design team – "we know exactly what this product is going to be used for, and we’ve designed the interface accordingly."
Once the province of graphic designers and power-users, scanners are slowly making their way into the mainstream. Widespread acceptance has been held in check by high prices -- and by the relative difficulty of using scanners for ordinary day-to-day tasks such as photocopying, faxing, and document storage/retrieval.
Anyone who’s ever used a scanner for faxing knows what I’m talking about. Faxing from a scanner is always a multi-step, multi-application procedure. Not too bad for an advanced user, maybe – when everything’s working – but a miniature technological nightmare to someone who’s used to pressing the "send" button on an ordinary low-cost fax machine.
Show an ordinary office user what they have to go through to send a fax using a PC, and more likely than not, they’ll say "why bother?"
I sometimes ask myself the same question.
To some, the growing popularity of today’s multifunction devices – scanners, copiers, fax machines, and printers, all rolled into one – reflects a growing recognition of the need for greater ease-of-use. But how easy-to-use, really, is a typical multifunction device?
Take a look at the "control panel" on one of these things. You’ll see what looks like 35 separate buttons on the control panel. Many of these buttons serve multiple functions. The button labels look like they were lifted from the dead sea scrolls.
Yes folks, these things were designed by the same guys who did the interface on your VCR. Bottom line? If you want to master these devices, you’ll need to refer to the owner’s manuals regularly.
By comparison, the "control panel" on the Visioneer scanner has just five buttons – large buttons – multicolored buttons – uniquely-shaped buttons – clearly-labeled buttons – single-function buttons.
It’s as though the product were designed by the same folks who design toys for kindergartner’s, except that the performance and functionality of this scanner is nothing short of phenomenal.
In fact, I placed my $ 1,500 HP Scanjet IIC (1994 Pricing) into semi-retirement immediately after comparing the scans from the little $275 Visioneer.
Don't shoot him...he's just doing his job.But back to that Visioneer control panel, an ease-of-use masterpiece that is, nevertheless, one-hundred percent functional.
Traditional flatbed scanners feature a no-button design that requires everything, absolutely everything, to be done in software. Companies such as HP have "innovated" by adding a single scanner button – that’s fine -- but why take such a timid, faltering, half-hearted step into the brave new world of usability?
When you think about it, a no-button or single-button scanner design forces users to think differently – perhaps even backwardly.
Typically, a user will think, "I have to send a fax!" Users work in a task-oriented fashion. "I have to do this, and then I have to do that, and when I’m done, I’ll do the next thing…"
"What's wrong with putting
the machine first?"But an ordinary scanner puts the machine first – "I have to use the scanner for something" -- and the task second – "I have to use the scanner to send a fax."
Of course, this is one small example. Nevertheless, it is this refusal to have one’s basic thinking processes pushed around by a machine – rather than any kind of native stupidity on the part of users – that brings about much of the resistance to technology we find today.
With the Visioneer One-Touch PaperPort scanner, the user is presented with a row of dedicated buttons for document scanning, copying/printing, faxing, and customized scanning tasks. The beauty of all this is that these buttons map, one-on-one, to the corresponding PC applications -- and launch those applications automatically.
Put a document on the Visioneer, press the fax button, and viola – you’re staring at a fax send dialog box. It’s as easy as PC faxing is ever going to get.
Similarly, a push of the "copy/print" button can send a scanned document directly to a printer; another button-push sends a scanned image directly to an image editing program such as Adobe PhotoShop. There’s no need to perform the scan first, and then drop an icon of the scanned image onto a printer or image-editing application icon.
As well as being terrifically easy and even fun to use, this design enables users to think the way they’re accustomed to thinking – in a task-oriented, task-driven, "task first" fashion. I may be a power user, but guess what? I think the same way.
So, three cheers for Visioneer.
As an aside to the HPs of the world, the solution to weak sales does not lie in asking managers to take periodic pay cuts. The solution, to paraphrase Thoreau, is innovate, innovate, innovate – with an eye towards increasingly superior ease-of-use and exceptional product design.
The Macintosh may be dying, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need insanely great computing products. In fact, I believe the future of personal computing lies precisely in this area, and to the victor goes, well, you know.
If Bill Gates could make Microsoft Access or Excel as easy and intuitive to use as the Visioneer One-Touch PaperPort scanner, he’d be well on his way to the 100 billion mark – dragging millions and millions of happy (if slightly envious) users along with him.
