Managing visual expecations

Understanding the disconnect of design across everyday experiences.

It has taken me the better part of 3 months to digest my GRE experience. The Graduate Record Examination is a standardized test used to evaluate possible candidates who are seeking a graduate degree. I am one of those candidates. In the fall of 2008 i started the process of applying to graduate school, to pursue a masters degree in Interaction design. I had long been thinking that this was a path i wanted follow and i felt it was in the perfect point in my career where I had gathered enough experience, a strong resume and a portfolio that were worthy of acceptance into some of the programs I wanted. While to date i have only heard back form one of the schools, regarding  my application, one thing has struck me about the entire process of applying to grad school.

The first and most painful thing to admit about the whole thing, is the time it takes to get the whole thing started, completed and mailed or submitted. And while i would love to dive into the whole process which has taught me a series of important lessons regarding scheduling and process. There is one thing in the entire process which can’t go without some form of commentary or call out simply because the irony behind it is so good that i could not just let it sit there.

I started this post with saying that the GRE is a test that is usually required for admission to most of these schools. When i went through the application requirements, i squirmed immediately as soon as i saw that a standardized was required. Aside from the basic fact that math is one of my weakest subjects, I had for a long time thought i was done with it and basically archived it in my mind. When the realization that this was going to be my biggest hurdle, i decided to attack the problem head on. I knew my strength was clearly not in numbers, as i had spent the last 9 years not even once considering a mathematical formula or problem. And while most people will point out that math in these exams is pretty basic, for a mind who has made a distinct effort to pretty much block it out, the math aspect of this exam was scaring me to no end. Like i said, i dived in, i started a prep course with kaplan and went on to get a math tutor to help me refine my skills as much as possible and after 3 months of preparation. I took the test. IT DID NOT GO WELL.

I would like to say that many reasons could have contributed to my utter failure, but if i could really pinpoint it on 2 things, the ones i want to call out the most are time, and DESIGN…

Our world is constantly evolving, and while some things may lag behind the times as far as technology and implementations are concerned, most of our every day interactions with technology seem to move at an equal pace that seems comfortable and for the most part not too awkward. Most basic interactions evolve in tandem to each other, everything from ATM’s to cashier checkouts, to the way you pay for gas at the pump to how you use your mobile phone, and how that is reflected on other household appliances and consumer goods.  There are always exceptions to this, the GRE interface is one HUGE And horrid abomination of what a test experience can be.  Its seems like the last 10 years of interface design and user paradigms have been intentionally been neglected by whomever decided to design this test interface. i have been forced to sit in a computer for 3+ hours trying to answer questions on a screen that makes me feel so uncomfortable, i would have paid to have the test be on paper and manually write my essays rather than sit in front of the screen these people seemed to have deemed appropriate for test taking.

When i sat down i was not only sitting in a station that was filthy, but for the lack of a better description, a station that felt like it was back in 1995. As my test started, i was introduced to a black and white almost DOS like screen. No text aliasing no colors, and a resolution that I can only imagine was somewhere around 600×400.

What is so wrong about this? At this point the SAT fill in bubble answer sheet would have been a better experience. I couldn’t seem to grasp how a company that is the sole provider of standardized testing, that has a market cornered when it comes to these types of test and generates enough income from each of the students who sign up, could in fact be so careless to provide people with the type of experience they provide. I know that they are trying to generate an experience that can be replicated in multiple countries and under multiple technical restraints. Im sure the back end application that runs the tests is lightweight simply so that it can be run on machines that perhaps are from 1995 simply because that’s the only option available. However taking into account how the Internet has managed to deliver information across as wide a spectrum as it has, in such visually compelling ways, it seems unusual that these folks would consider themselves as limited as this experience leads me to believe they are.

How is it possible that while i read an article no longer that 3 paragraph long, an article that i have to reference multiple times in order to write a response to it, i am I forced to scroll every time i want to read the next paragraph. How is it that there is no manipulation of the text sizes that display on the screen. Why is it i have to read 4 or 3 words per line before i move on to the next, when simple convention states that I can read as much as 2 whole alphabets before my eyes start having problems deciphering lines ….I simply don’t grasp how this interface with its ABCD options made it past as many people with little number of complaints.

Perhaps im spoiled and maybe the irony is only understood by me, but the result of said test might be the deciding factor on weather or not I get to go to school precisely so i can better understand how to best deliver these types of human computer interactions to people. All because the overall test experience that was used to take one of the entrance exams is so poorly designed that my focus shifted constantly to how much i could not only fix this, but make it acceptable to 2008.

Maybe my ADD is to blame, I should have just focused on answering the question and moved on. And i did as much of that as my brain let me …. but at the end of the day my gut reaction and the instinctively negative experience i had with the interface will forever mare the GRE for me. I have had all sorts of apprehensions about taking it again. Some of them simply in protest of having paid as much money as I did, for something that feels like it was designed and built in 1990 and has not changed since.

Why is reconciling this design problem so important to me at this point? because this specific interface taught me a good lesson in design principles, just because you know it can be one way doesn’t really mean it will be that way. This is true of almost any set of expectations one has on just about any subject or topic, but for me it seems that design often creates paradigms which are hard to break out of, and when we do encounter them as different entities of our everyday experience, they can cause a minor hindrance or hurdle. Its almost like the importance of having software be able to be backwards compatible… do our minds need to have said ability in order to properly process things, or can we push the learning curve to too high a place so that the basics then have to become another learning experience.

Interface design battles consistency and paradigms shifts on an almost daily basis, simply because humans evolve and with it technology also evolves, but at what point do we cease to worry about what we have left behind, and more importantly how much effort are people really putting forth to make current experiences feel current and how long will that current aspect last before the next paradigm is introduced? Is it best to keep everything Wicked simple in the hopes of catching everyone on the same playing field? nd having them not struggle to learn something new?

Im still on the, “if its worth building then its worth building right” camp… but some can argue this point easily, and that becomes a whole other post!