Blog posts tagged with 'usability'
It looks like usability is important to a lot of people these days. We recently ran a survey with Citrix's private Customer Advisory Community (CAC) called "Prioritizing Usability", and we got 106 responses, which is above average. And the respondents definitely felt strongly.
The survey was meant to gauge what kind of usability was important for Citrix to address and whether people felt usability for administrators affects end-users and vice versa. As the baby boomer population continues to make way for the new generation of echo boomers, "Old School" system administrators will be faced with the challenge of administering to an end user population that is used to customization and flexibility. That has not been a part of the "only give them what they need so they can't muck it up" policy that most administrators have lived by in the past.
Interestingly enough, most people in the CAC think our user experiences (UX) are already quite good, as you can see below: 
79% felt the administrator user experience was "good" or "excellent". 84% felt the experience for end-users was "good" or "excellent".
Notably, almost all of those who had issues with the administrator UX pointed out the lack of one console, and others mentioned printing. The end-user UX comments were not particularly consistent.
Where to focus
Still, if we had to focus our User Experience efforts somewhere, it was reasonably split with a leaning towards end-users (54%) as compared to administrators (38%). And it is partially based on whether or not the current interfaces are considered "good enough."
For those who said we should focus on the end-users, a summary of the reasons is below:
- The End-user Experience (EUX) can still benefit from improvement
- If end users reject the XenApp solution, it means there is no need for XenApp admins, or for XenApp
- Admins are trainable and can handle usability quirks. End users cannot handle as well or simply will not handle usability quirks.
- Making users happy or more productive makes IT look good and can give IT more control or ability to standardize
- Fewer support calls
For those who said we should focus on the administrators, a summary of the reasons is below:
- The EUX is already good
- More EUX improvements won't boost productivity much, if at all
- If you make an admin's work easier, the EUX will naturally improve as well since admins can respond more quickly to problems or do it right for the user the first time.
Mutual Benefits
The other interesting questions we asked were about whether or not people felt that improving the administrator UX will benefit end-users, and vice versa. Plenty of respondents would like improvements to both admin and end-user UX, as they see the benefits to each and how they feed off each other. It's a win-win.
Others, on the other hand, felt pretty strongly that it was just one-way. But the skewing indicates that more people strongly felt that IT benefits from EUX improvements than end-users benefiting from IT UX improvements. The breakdown is below:
How about you?
Do you feel strongly? Is there something here we missed? If you're not a member of the Citrix CAC, feel free to jump in (I'd hate to count you twice, otherwise!). And if you'd like to be part of this private community, we are accepting applications right now. Here is a link to the page on Citrix.com where you can learn more about the community and apply for membership: Customer Advisory Community.
Thanks for your time.
Scott Novack
Usability Design and Evaluation Team
I was fascinated by Jeff Muir's account of how the ICA web client came to be written, and also by the timing of when this happened (much earlier than I realized). It brought home to me again the curious arc Web Interface is riding, from the early days of the Web when it was a novelty to be able to run applications from a web browser, to the point we are at now where it is getting increasingly difficult to run ICA applications from a web browser, at least with the technology we have today. Making sure we are in a better place a few years from now concerns me, and makes me wonder if we need a step-change in technology.
We've known for some time that it is getting harder, and that people are running into more and more situations where Web Interface isn't working properly and they can't get access to their applications. It isn't just executives using the kiosks in airports and hotels - though you can imagine how much visibility that gets when a company has just put in a shiny new Citrix system for remote access! It also matters for customers wanting employees to be able to access critical applications from home, or from anywhere they might be stranded in a wide-scale emergency.
The problem is that security concerns have come to the fore, and browsers are increasingly trading off usability and convenience (or rather the apparent convenience you enjoy before your PC stops working for you and opts for a life making money for spammers) for better security. Browsers themselves are including more security mechanisms like the IE Information Bar introduced by Windows XP SP2, pop-up blockers and the like have become de rigueur it seems in almost any product with an Internet focus, and security suites are hooking into almost everything that's happening on your PC to block bad behaviour.
This decline in usability unfortunately goes to the heart of the Citrix value message, that access is provided from any device over any connection anywhere. Web Interface is the primary means we have of delivering on that promise, with the Internet and web browsers taken for granted as the ubiquitous baseline we can assume to exist (almost) everywhere.
So it's a big deal for us that WI is hitting more and more problems that undermine this essential role, and I am pleased to say we are now doing something about it. We can still use your input and guidance though, to help ensure we are focused on the right aspects and make the right tradeoffs.
The approach we are taking is one that has been pioneered already; you can see a good example in action here. In essence, the approach is this: accept that we cannot always accomplish what the user wants, or not always as easily or as well as the user would like. Instead of pretending that we can always launch applications at the click of a button, and treating the small matter of ensuring the user's computer has the necessary client components and security settings as a kind of after-thought, lets make that process an essential part of the user experience.
And if we can't launch applications (for reasons beyond our control), lets be sure tell the user so clearly and promptly, so they don't waste any more time trying. If we can say why, they also may have the chance to get something done about it; maybe convince kiosk owners to pre-install ICA clients for example.
I'm sure this is a topic that will get discussed a lot more, here and elsewhere, so for now I'll just whet your appetite with a screenshot from a prototype we've built recently which gives you a flavour of how we are intending to start following this approach in the near future. 
As I said in my initial post, this forum is an opportunity for you to give feedback directly to the Web Interface team, and there is a good chance that we will be able to act on your feedback and incorporate good ideas, if not in the next release then as soon as we can. So, let us know what matters to you, and where you would like us to concentrate.
Cheers,
AndrewI
-
Subscriptions
