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StaffExpected

In some situations and social contexts people will expect a staff member to be responsible for operating complicated machinery, carrying luggage, showing the way or even just standing there, watching and looking helpful.

If the users think they are in such a situation, they will not even try to manage by themselves – they will patiently wait for some staff member to appear and help them (at least watch them) or go and actively seek for someone that looks “responsible”. If they are forced to proceed anyways, they will complain about bad organization and will generally feel hurt and abused.

Those situations are often there for a reason: the machinery might be dangerous when used improperly or very hard to use, the people involved might not be able to actually perform the task (e.g. dressed up for a party, drunk, lacking knowledge) or some control is required (checking tickets, approving documents). If we carelessly ignore them, we can expect trouble: from shocked stares to calling the guards or police.

Examples

Elevator Boy

When discussing various elevator interfaces with a friend, he mentioned the ultimate elevator interface, the bestest ever made, and I had to agree with him: the elevator boy. The only drawback is it’s expensive and requires constant maintenance.

There is nothing that stops people from actually operating the elevator for themselves when the boy is away – except for a very strong feeling that they shouldn’t, that it’s not their responsibility, that there should be qualified staff taking care of that. And that they will have trouble if they do.

Exposition Hostess

On various expositions you often have the devices being presented (game consoles, computers, cars) available for testing – you can just walk up to them and try them. Note how the ones that just stand there are either abandoned or monopolized by groups of teenagers. Even if someone comes to try it, he will just touch the controls briefly, look around and go away quickly. Unless there is a hostess standing by the device. She usually doesn’t know anything about the device or the company that is hiring her. Her only responsibility is just to be there, as a sign for the customers that what they do is approved. People will feel confident trying out the device because they know that as soon as they get close to exceed the allowed limits, the hostess will just ask them to stop (and usually just a facial expressions is enough).

Maitre de Maison

When you enter an elegant restaurant, you are not supposed to go to the counter, buy your dishes, then find an empty seat at some table. You should patiently wait for a staff member to take your coat and walk you to your table, then a waiter will come and take your order (sometimes a responsible person will even suggest you what you should order), etc.

This contrasts heavily with the fast-food self-service approach to restaurants. You are supposed to know what kind of restaurant you are in and judging wrong will make you look silly and feel awkward.

Self-service shops

In the eighties there were almost no self-service shops in Poland. The idea that the client is supposed to touch and carry around wares by himself even before he bought them is completely alien. The shop clerk is not only supposed to bring all the ordered wares, but he will also often decide on the brand or kind of product to best sell to the given person. And putting price tags on all the products is simply unacceptable. Older people avoid self-service shops in Poland.

Stories

Google Groups

We used Google Groups, and we sent invitations to ~100 people. Of the ~100 people, about 20 were able to click on the link, in order to join the forum. Of the remainder, we got a bunch of mail saying, “Hey! We don’t know how to do this! I want to subscribe! What do I do?” (“Well, you just click on the link, exactly like it said...”). In the end, what we ended up having to do, was just force-subscribe everybody. Since there are anti-spam throttling limits, it took several days to do.

Related

Discussion

Heh; ;)

We used Google Groups, and we sent invitations to ~100 people.

Of the ~100 people, about 20 were able to click on the link, in order to join the forum.

Of the remainder, we got a bunch of mail saying, “Hey! We don’t know how to do this! I want to subscribe! What do I do?”

(“Well, you just click on the link, exactly like it said...”)

In the end, what we ended up having to do, was just force-subscribe everybody. Since there are anti-spam throttling limits, it took several days to do.

So, in my command language, I’ve included a bunch of commands for manipulating others’ subscription status to lists:

  CREATE HolyGrailList
  PUSH Lancelot HolyGrailList
  PULL LancelotsBestSquire
  KICK ConfusedAndLostGuy
  EXIT
  • CREATE – make a new list
  • PUSH – put someone into a list
  • PULL – pull someone into the present list
  • KICK – remove someone from the present list
  • EXIT – leave the present list

I have a theory that people do not read machine text.

That is, if there’s some text that looked automatically generated, that people just mentally do not look at it, even if it’s exactly the text they need: “CLICK THIS TO SUBSCRIBE:” …

I think some sort of “Oh, but I’m not technical” circuitry shoots off, or something.

Bizarre, but I think it’s true.

I could tell you other, very similar stories, but they’re about the company I’m working at right now, so I won’t… But you’d be surprised about what people do not see.

Part of my hope in doing this, having this “command language” in the mail / conversational environment, is that people who did not think of themselves as technical, will, by watching other people do technical things in front of them, and understanding what it does– that it will be like a “gateway drug,” and inspire some comfort and understanding.

So, if a person has created some conversations, joined, left, perhaps even helped other people join or leave (pull, push, or kick,) – then they’ll expect of themselves, to know how to do that. Then, when they see a web interface, they’ll ask themselves, “OK– how do I make a list here?” …rather than, “OMG, this is technical, I don’t understand all these things, … What’s this? What’s that? OMG OMG OMG…”

I’m not sure. From my own (limited) experiences, it’s not about the technology used (whether it’s e-mail or www), but about interacting with a living person, not machine. Such an automated e-mail driven thing might have the same effect that answering machines have on people: you expect a person and find a machine.

I met a psychology major once who had a very interesting topic of her thesis: the irrational fear or aversion that people feel when they expect something living, but find an inanimate object. She cited many horror stories (some King among others), but she also mentioned one common trick from the wax museums. They often put a wax figure of a person tying a shoelace in the middle of the path for the tourists, so that it looks like one of the tourists stopped for a moment. People will normally pass that figure, until they realize it’s a figure – at which point they jump back and stay clear.

When discussing various elevator interfaces with a friend, he mentioned the ultimate elevator interface, the bestest ever made, and I had to agree with him: the elevator boy. The only drawback is it’s expensive and requires constant maintenance.

Actually, you might have stumbled on an effect similar to that of elevator boy with that google mailing list of yours. There is nothing that stops people from actually operating the elevator for themselves when the boy is away – except for a very strong feeling that they shouldn’t, that it’s not their responsibility, that there should be qualified staff taking care of that. And that they will have trouble if they do.

Interesting!

I guess I’m just going to try this out, and see what happens.

I think there should be a page about this, I’m not sure what the best name would be – or maybe there is one already here or on MeatBall?

Another example of similar situation is with the nuclear bunkers on the movies. You always have human staff in these bunkers, and they are supposed to press the button (turn the keys, etc.) to launch the “revenge missiles” as soon as they get a signal to do it. This is somehow considered superior to an automated system, because people feel that it’s one more safety buffer, completely ignoring the fact that those people have no way to validate the signals they get (at least not a lot more than a machine would have) and are specifically trained to carry the orders (I’d imagine they have tests a la “fire drill” periodically). Of course the reality is probably very different from the movies.

Yet another example, this time pretty close to what we want to do, I think: on various expositions you often have the devices being presented (game consoles, computers, cars) available for testing – you can just walk up to them and try them. Note how the ones that just stand there are either abandoned or monopolized by groups of teenagers. Even if someone comes to try it, he will just touch the controls briefly, look around and go away quickly. Unless there is a hostess standing by the device. She usually doesn’t know anything about the device or the company that is hiring her. Her only responsibility is just to be there, as a sign for the customers that what they do is approved. People will feel confident trying out the device because they know that as soon as they get close to exceed the allowed limits, the hostess will just ask them to stop (and usually just a facial expressions is enough).

I took the freedom of proposing this topic on today’s WikiOhana IRC meeting at http://wikiohana.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/IrcMeetingOctober2007

I hope I can drop in briefly, for the meeting. It’s 2:00PM Seattle time, I believe…

As for this recent thread, I thought “HumanMediator?” or “HumanMediation?” or “HumanUserInterface?” might make good language, in addition to “ElevatorBoy?.”

I think I’d go with something like StaffExpected, and move this part of the discussion there, then start refactoring…

I think it would be worthwhile to explore how such StaffExpected situations are recognized, how self-service and similar facilities mark that they have no StaffExpected and how you can have the staff in a way that will satisfy both sides.

One possibility is obvious: have that HumanMediator? who will just stand there and get bored to death, forced to smile all the time.

Another way that I’ve sometimes seen is to tell the people (or inform them in other ways) that:

  • there is no way to do permanent damage
  • they will not be held responsible for mistakes they might make
  • there is a StaffExpected member who regularly approves and fixes things I think that this might work with a wiki.

Another way is to have obvious signs, like: “queue here”, “put empty dishes here”, “this way to the conference room”, “thank you for leaving your table clean”. When people see such signs, they seem to automatically “switch” into the self-service mode. They will also feel used however.

Tell them that it’s just a front-end, a decoration made for the users, and that all the real work is done manually by qualified staff members behind the scenes.

I think that if you were able to create a black background with white font-sentences that appear a few at a time, and then fade away, kind of like text narration in movie trailers, you’d have something that almost everyone would pay attention to.

Also, at my place of work, some one put up a sign that reads:

“How to make ice:

1. Take ice cube tray out of freezer

2. Take ice cube tray to sink, and fill it with water

3. place ice cube tray back in freezer

4. Good job! Now go take a break, you deserve it!”

Seemed a little cynical to me, but it apparently has really worked.

Someone told me back in around 1999 that people see somewhere near 3000+ marketing messages a day in the US on average. It is suggested by different studies that I need to look up citations for that we purposely try to ignore or tune out a lot of that. So, in the process we may also be tuning out many other things that require us to compartmentalize our thinking in some way. I mean, we have people using a computer who are saying “I am not a technical person”. Well, yes, you are a technical person if you are using a computer to communicate with other people. But what they really mean is “I prefer not to be overwhelmed with sorting out the details of how this computer technology works.” So, they avoid or postpone, or even procrastinate, sometimes because they do not have a model in their mind of what to expect when they “activate” the affordance, or because they are suffering from information overload and they are in a “scanning and filing mode” instead of “reading, processing and acting”.

I don’t think that those “signs” must be especially visible or attract attention – after all, people in a StaffExpected situation will actively look around for such signs in order to asses the expected behavior. I think that all you need is to make those signs easily recognizable as “self-service signs”. What’s more, I believe that the users don’t even have to read them or pay attention to them if they already know how to do things or are able to figure it out on their own. They need the signs only to show them that they are allowed and expected to act unattended.

Of course, if you make those signs look like advertisements, or banners, or system logs, or really anything else than instruction signs – they have a good chance of being missed, or even when seen – not taken seriously.

Banner blindness and fear of text mode are of course problems too. On one hand, you can’t possibly put helpful hints in the content of every page in your system – on the other hand, putting them on the side under the menu or in the header and footer fails – they are not even looked at. I think that the descriptive, full-sentence commands that Oddmuse uses are one very nice approach to this problem.

Come to think of it, even signs like “keep out”, “authorized personnel only”, “access denied” or “please log in to access this feature” can make people feel more comfortable: if you can read them, then you’re at the right side of the sign. I think there is similar thing with logins: if you logged in to your account and you somehow have too much permissions, it’s not your fault – it’s the fault of the person who gave you the permissions.

There are not many people out there who will set on a journey to see what’s behind closed doors.

”… marketing messages … we purposely try to ignore or tune out a lot of that. …” When installing new software, everyone I know rapidly clicks through screens full of lawyer-written text, OkOkOkOk?.

I printed out a few web pages for someone, and I was astonished to hear that person reading out loud every word on the entire page. When I read a web page, I ignore the banner ads, the sidebar ads, the middle of the page (!) ads, the navigation sidebar, the “privacy policy” legal notices in the footer, etc.

I feel uneasy that other people can focus on and see things that I have apparently been trained to ignore.

I also feel uneasy that other people like me have such a huge “blind spot” – what if I’m trying to send an important message, and it accidentally gets “decorated” in such a way that people completely ignore it?

Define external redirect: HumanMediator HumanMediation HumanUserInterface OkOkOkOk ElevatorBoy

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