Interfaces for People, Not Products

Interdependent Information Design

Information design should take into account the interdependence of systems. Each of our projects affects others, in small and large ways. But it’s difficult to take such a broad view. When solving design problems, information designers should examine how their contributions fit into the particular industry in which they’re working, because the consequences of their design decisions may ripple across numerous systems.

For instance, our health care systems in the United States require massive duplication of private personal information. Every form a person fills out requires the same basic data, but we force people to repeat this information again and again. The simple act of visiting a doctor requires a mountain of paperwork. You must supply your data to your health care insurance provider, which is often separate from your vision and dental insurance companies. If you visit a new doctor or a specialist, you must fill out forms describing your medical history and contact information. Then, when you finally receive treatment, you must file an insurance claim.

Perhaps a simple way to start tackling this problem would be the adoption of a universal, scannable Personal Medical Information form—perhaps conforming to standards set by a government agency or the American Medical Association—that a patient could keep at home. Then, a patient could simply give a copy of the form to any doctor, dentist, insurer, human resources department, school admissions office, and so on, instead of having to sit down and fill out the same information over and over again.

The Shared Solution

How do we navigate increasingly complex information spaces? The idea of a single user interface for multiple types of transactions is not a new one. Designers are familiar with Creative Suite® from Adobe®, which unifies formerly separate applications—including Illustrator®, Photoshop®, InDesign®, GoLive®, and Acrobat®—with shared menu structures, icons for tools, and keyboard shortcuts, and allows all of the applications to access data stored in what would otherwise be the silos of native file formats like .ai and .psd.

Google™ offers a customizable home page, on which users can view a variety of Web applications—from Gmail to Google Calendar—providing another example of how we can streamline access to information through a single portal. Since both Adobe Creative Suite and the Google home page assemble applications that already exist under one corporate roof, they present fewer challenges to users.

How do we find a way to enable people to more easily and powerfully interact with their data that is stored across applications from competing corporate entities and government agencies? Progress on the data side is well underway with widespread adoption of formats like XML and RSS. On the user interface side, we can encourage the adoption of standards and patterns. We solve the same problems for different products time and time again. We should share those solutions.

We can also look to other areas of practice for inspiration. In the realm of product design for home electronics, the concept of one interface for interaction has forward momentum. The first step was the universal remote control, which pulled together the functions of a dozen different television, cable, DVD, video, stereo, and CD remotes. Admittedly, many iterations of the universal remote have been difficult to use, so the concept is not fully realized.

However, in the same vein, the Pittsburgh Pebbles PDA Project—a partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and research and design firm MAYA—is jointly developing software for handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) that can control a much broader range of devices via Bluetooth® or other wireless protocols.

The Carnegie Mellon site describes the parameters of the endeavor, as follows: “The concept is that when users point their own hand-held[s] at a light switch, at a photocopier in an office, at a machine tool in a factory, at a VCR at home, at a piece of test equipment in the field, or at almost any other kind of device, the device will send to the hand-held a description of its control parameters. The hand-held uses this information to create an appropriate control panel, taking into account the properties of the controls that are needed, the properties of the hand-held (the display type and input techniques available), and the properties of the user....” According to MAYA, in preliminary tests of the Personal Universal Controller, “users completed tasks with 80% fewer errors and in half the time.”

In describing their contribution to the Pebbles project, MAYA asks, “What if interfaces belonged to users instead of devices?” The question for those designing digital user interfaces could then be: “What if user interfaces belonged to people instead of software?”

We are moving forward into an increasingly complex world of information systems. Now is a good time to consider sharing our design efforts and taking steps toward integrating our user interface solutions, so people can stop writing passwords on paper and start efficiently accomplishing the tasks they set out to do.