Sumana Harihareswara

“ Those who perform or reinforce masculinity -- whether they're male or female, are privileged, and *everyone,* women and men, gets trapped in this cycle of (usually unknowingly) reinforcing all these things that say hospitality, empathy, and so on is stuff that gets you demoted down the respect ladder and the payscale ladder. And naturally, all this stuff gets smushed out of our software, because it's not just *not* incentivized, it's actually penalized. ”

“ Better user experience is the best force multiplier we have at our command, so it's vital that we make it a first-class priority, throughout the development process. And with disciplined empathy we can do that - here at the intersection of libraries and tech, we can figure out how to scale hospitality, fix the new last mile problem, and actually achieve the social justice goals that so many of us got into this for. ”

“ But for all these big systems, there are little capillaries, where people exchange information or get healed or get whatever they need. And when those capillaries aren't working right, then those people just don't get what they need.
Over and over, in lots of different fields, we see that bad usability makes a HUGE difference, and that when choosing between two services, people will make very different choices depending on which service actually seems designed around the user's needs. ”

“ We in the open source community -- and code4lib is part of this -- put a lot of energy into lowering barriers to entry, like licensing and cost. And those are visible barriers that stop people from getting information. But bad usability is a barrier to entry too-- it's less visible but it's just as real. ”

“ And you can learn and exercise your empathy skills as well. If you have a sequential learning style where you prefer a structured approach, take a course in conflict resolution. If you want something more self-study, read novels and blogs written by people with lives very different from yours. And at your own institution, watch real users use your library and your library's digital services -- patrons and colleagues. ”

“ The Open Internet Tools Project's James Vasile said in his Open Source Bridge keynote last year that the privacy tech community would be better off spending the next year of our time on user experience design, localisation, and end user customer support, rather than writing new tools or features. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHsRPd_U-0
Why the bottleneck? So these examples - banking, lending, Wikipedia, healthcare, encryption - show you how bad usability can really change what choices people make. ”

“ And when the group making the software isn't very diverse, then the cycle just repeats, and gets even worse.
In general, marginalized people develop more empathy than the dominant group, because we *have to*. We have to be able to see from other people's point of view, the dominant point of view, as a matter of survival.
This is one reason diversity in a group is useful - it includes people with different perspectives, AND is likely to have more people with the ability to see from multiple perspectives. ”

“ I work for the Wikimedia Foundation in the Engineering Community Team, and I help people integrate with our API for Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, and all our other sites, and it's really exciting to me that we're finally moving towards a service-oriented architecture and away from the SCM, Spaghetti Code Model. ”

“ PGP is basically the common standard for email encryption. But PGP is incredibly hard to wrap your head around, and encryption tech in general has terrrrrible usability, customer support, and localisation, and thus abysmal adoption rates. And as a result, journalists and dissidents and activists generally don't use it, even when the stakes are really high. Instead they're using Twitter and Facebook and unencrypted email, because those are just a lot easier to use. ”

“ So I want to give you some thoughts and some examples from other communities and products, about what good and bad user experience can do, and then talk about why we technologists usually don't put enough investment into user experience, and what we can do to fix that. ”

“ I recommend Crystal Beasley's blog post, "Code Talks and Designers Don't Speak the Language" http://skinnywhitegirl.com/blog/code-talks-and-designers-dont-speak-the-language/930/ , in which she says that in general, coders don't know what to expect from user experience designers, and developers don't have good judgment procedures to know whether proposed designs are correct. She says: "representing the work of a designer requires a shift in culture" which I think is totally true. ”

“ Usability is pretty poor; a lot of offices aren't open at night or on weekends, you have to call them during business hours to make an appointment, you have to book a whole appointment just to get a flu shot, and there's a long wait once you get there. ”

“ These things do not solve problems for me, but they solve a problem for an awful lot of people which is why these things are so popular." http://www.metafilter.com/137379/Your-New-Coffee-Overlord#5456577 So, yes, usability makes a difference in what coffee people drink. And if you care about health, and education, and the working class, then this is actually scary, because the difference between user experience in two services is driving people to make bad choices. ”

“ It's a higher barrier for designers that takes time to overcome. I've found all of my team to be receptive when I've taken the time to explain the principles that guide my decisions." And I like that she mentions that -- I think in any negotiation, it's good to help people see the principles you're reasoning from, and the experiences you've had that led you to where you are now.
If you don't think empathy is one of your strong suits, you can change that. We all came into this community with some skills and without others ”

“ For a few years I've helped run internship programs that bring new people into the community of practice that is open source, and I've done my share of mentorship, and I also want to talk with people about that this week, but not right now. ”

“ I know a lot of people for whom Keurigs solve a problem and they don't mind the downsides. I respect that. I also know a lot of people who wouldn't be caught dead with one and I respect that as well. "I know it's tough to get your head around but the goal state for people with Keurigs is generally not to just have the best cup of coffee. ”

“ Healthcare OK, something a little different: let's look a little at health care. I think health care in the United States is kind of fractally broken -- like, it's broken on the macro and the micro levels, and you zoom in and you just keep finding new kinds of breakage. ”

“ And the good news is that we have resources here! As Bess Sadler said, "at this intersection of technology and librarianship ... we need to not only bring technology skills and values to library services, we need to bring library skills and values to technology services." And I'd say that includes hospitality, and access.
U of Michigan's Library Information Technology group has a User Experience Department http://www.lib.umich.edu/library-information-technology/user-experience-department , and Suzanne Chapman there also has a really interesting blog at userslib.com . ”

“ Biggest challenge for Wikimedia is gaining & retaining editors. Usability makes a difference here. Fear of wiki text. #c4l14 ‏@bohyunkim @nypl_labs will work on reducing the current 18/19 steps of NYPL ebook lending to 3 steps for users. --- @brainwane #c4l14 ‏@cm_harlow Sumana- need for diverse perspectives on usability #hellsyeah #c4l14 ‏@yo_bj #c4l14 Sumana Currently working on gaining, retaining Wikipedia editors. Little UX things make huge difference. ”

“ End of story. #code4lib @macasaurus_rex Usability is important! #code4lib ‏@bibliotechy Empathy as reverse engineering. @brainwane at the #code4lib keynote. #c4l14 @onelittlebecca Tech industry lacks hospitality and empathy; not men v women in industry, but devalued in general. Interesting thought @brainwane #code4lib @web_kunoichi "A dedicated user experience team or person makes a huge difference." I will have to go find that #code4lib thread! #c4l14 ‏@brainwane My #c4l14 #code4lib keynote notes and script http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2014_Keynote_by_Sumana_Harihareswara ... ”