Re: [Usability] measuring and improving user productivity

[Alex Railean <ralienpp gmail com>]

This is an interesting discussion, I think about this every now and
then.

It is difficult to measure productivity before we define
"productivity". What is it? The amount of income an employee generated
to the company? The number of items in the todo list that I completed
during the day? Or the psychological state of [dis]satisfaction I am
in after using the PC?

I suggest we experiment with defining this, and while in the process
it will become clear, or at least less blurry, what it is that we are
looking for.



One strategy is to take it from another direction: increase
productivity by removing bottlenecks. We don't know how to increase
productivity but we know what it is that decreases it, here are some
items: 
- frequent distractions (visual, audio)
- frequent alt+tab'ing

Modern desktop environments make it easy to do a million things at
once, causing context switches - which lead to frustration because
little gets accomplished. On a modern PC I am tempted to switch to
another window and start doing something else.

You can say that it is everyone's personal problem to learn how to
focus and not waste time; but I think that a computer is a tool we can
modify in order to help us reduce this.


Some time ago I wrote an article about information overload
http://railean.net/index.php/2008/07/28/information_overload_is_real

In the end there is a list of recommendations which I offered myself
[and am trying to enforce since then]. Maybe Gnome needs a feature
called "flowmode", in which those recommendations are enabled (and
Alt+Tab is disabled :-) and the current application is set to full
screen, hiding all the panels.


The above sounds like a good idea if you define productivity as a
function of the psychological state one is in after using the PC. I
don't feel [nor I am] productive when all these bells and whistles are
around. I know that all it takes is WILL to not use them, but they're
there and I am tempted to click on all the widgets that say "click
me".




Another thing that came to my mind (and which is in tune with the
above) is an idea I call "question oriented UI design" (which I will
soon describe). When making a UI, the designer should ask themselves
"what are the questions the user asks themselves when using my
program"?

I am now typing this email. Do I ask myself any of these?
- "what time is it?"
- "which applications are currently running?"
- "what is the state of my internet connection?"
- "what is the CPU load?"


The answer is "no", yet I have all these applets, a list of open
programs, bla bla bla - all of this is visual noise, redundant
information I don't need at the time.

This is further supported by my empirical evidence (read the article I
mentioned earlier to get the full story)- I discovered that I was most
productive if I used two screens and moved all the windows except the
one I am using to the other screen, and TURN THE OTHER SCREEN OFF.

Too bad that one needs two screens to actually try this :-)


Hence my recommendations are as follows:
- have one of the workspaces have a special status, ex: "flow mode"
- add an option to the panels called "show on this workspace", which I
  can disable for my special workspace
- add an option to a window [or a set of windows] called "flow". When
  enabled, the window is moved to the special workspace (where there
  are no panels) and optionally set to full screen

  - I don't know how this will work with GIMP or other programs that
    have several windows; there must be a way to group them and make
    it possible to migrate all of them to the 'flowspace' in a move.

    In this case the window need not be fullscreen, because GIMP has
    several windows - the idea is to have them all in one place and
    nothing else.



How to switch to this 'flowspace' - remember OS X and its widget
screen? This is NOT how we must do it, because if switching to the
'flowspace' is as easy as pressing a key - the users will be tempted
to go back to the normal workspace and see what's going on there, and
this entire method will end up being yet another annoying form of
alt+tabbing.

To counter this, the "cost" of switching workspaces must be made
higher. A simple solution is to have the user hold a special key for 3
seconds to switch back and forth.


You might say "just set all your panels to autohide = on and that's
it". No, because in this case the cost of showing the panel is just
moving the mouse to the edge of the screen - too cheap, people will
get away with it easily.





Note: "flow" is a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_state