Most software is awful. It drives us crazy. It is non-intuitive. It throws up incomprehensible error messages. It refuses to do what we want. But there was a time, and there were products, which did what people expected them to do. One company which made such products was Psion with its range of Organisers.
Psion, was founded by David Potter. Later he said Psion stood for 'Potter Scientific Instruments Or Nothing'. One of the things he believed in was that software could, and should, have charm.
"Charm is a term for software invented by Mitch Kapoor (founder of Lotus)", explains Potter, "charm is very intangible and difficult to define. We can define functionality, and write it down in a spec, but there's another aspect to software. Software is not just software; software is a virtual machine."
"What caused the Industrial Revolution was the creation of the machine. Now we have virtual machines because software is a machine - a machine which is hugely more variously applicable with a well-nigh infinity of levers - which is bringing about a revolution more profound than the Industrial Revolution," adds Potter.
"The characteristic of software being brilliantly designed in terms of the ergonomics to the human being is one element of charm", concludes Potter, "when you look at the screen and say: ' Wow! if I press this button this is probably going to happen'. Or if it invites you to try it - if it's intuitive. It's also speed. When you press something it's schweeeeeet - you don't sit there - it happens. It's also about reliability and robustness you press a button and it doesn't crash. Charm defines a set of attributes that are intangible, or difficult to define, but which are profoundly important."
So why, Oh why, isn't there more of it?
"Charm is a term for software invented by Mitch Kapoor (founder of Lotus)", explains Potter, "charm is very intangible and difficult to define. We can define functionality, and write it down in a spec, but there's another aspect to software. Software is not just software; software is a virtual machine."
"What caused the Industrial Revolution was the creation of the machine. Now we have virtual machines because software is a machine - a machine which is hugely more variously applicable with a well-nigh infinity of levers - which is bringing about a revolution more profound than the Industrial Revolution," adds Potter.
"The characteristic of software being brilliantly designed in terms of the ergonomics to the human being is one element of charm", concludes Potter, "when you look at the screen and say: ' Wow! if I press this button this is probably going to happen'. Or if it invites you to try it - if it's intuitive. It's also speed. When you press something it's schweeeeeet - you don't sit there - it happens. It's also about reliability and robustness you press a button and it doesn't crash. Charm defines a set of attributes that are intangible, or difficult to define, but which are profoundly important."
So why, Oh why, isn't there more of it?
My Nokia phone still has a little of the charm of my beloved Psion, but somehow the sense of adventure has gone. Not sure I can put my finger on why.
Peter, who knows? This netbook trend might produce a re-incarnation of the Psion V. How good would that be?
My nomination for the worst software, which paradoxically is for an extraordinarily simple application, is the menus people come up with for DVDs. 99% of them are counter-intuitive and positively work against allowing you to do what you want to do. Only a tiny tiny number are clear, simple, usable, and pleasing. Why??
Well Ian one reason, suggested to me by a friend who wrote software for a living, is that software writers are commonly inveterate gamers and, in the games they play, they have to overcome numerous subtle and mind-twisting chlallenges to win the game. So when they come to write software for products, they assume the consumer wants to be made to jump through numerous hoops and over loads of tricksy hurdles befroe he's won the game and is actually allowed to use the product he's bought. How about that for an explanation of Why? cheers, David
Hi
I love this concept of charm. Not one I have heard of before but one I would have investigated back when I was a product manager for a tools company architecting the next generation development tool environment, had I known of it.
An engineer (wish I could remember his name and credit him) gave me a book called "The lunatics are running the asylum" which explained why so many consumer devices failed to be usable by their target audience.
My take-away was simple. There is NO SUCH THING as the AVERAGE USER. Unfortunately product managers and engineers continuously refer to this fictitious person as a way of simplifying the process of creating usable products. But if the target audience does not exist then you'll make no-one happy with your design!
Instead I had my tools product management team define a complete development team (our target customers), their personalities, experience, foibles as development engineers, roles and responsibilities. We then challenged the engineering team to make all of this fictitious team happy. Being smart guys, they came up with some pretty cool stuff.
5 years later I spoke to a user (I had left said company by this time) who simply stated, "I love this tool, I can get to exactly that part of the environment that meets my needs with one click."
This addresses a basic design approach. The idea of 'charm' I can see being a very useful concept for long term customer retention. Psion had it (I was a user and still look for a smart phone that 'has the psion charm'), Apple gets it (but don't yet address business users with the iphone properly imho).
I'd love to find someone who can explain the process of designing a device/system with charm. That would really have taken the design approach to a whole better level for those tools I helped create. Such concepts are transferable to any system which has a usability component that is part of its product success.
Geoff you're so right but I can't think of a single manufacturer except Apple which appears to agree with us.