Getting used to the pain

I was speaking with a friend yesterday about an intranet application that has been something of a headache to us. Neither of us built this application, but we reviewed both the UI and the technical design because all web work must be reviewed by our team before development can begin. During the process of our design review (which, due to the lack of preparation by the development team, ended up as a design brainstorming session), we suggested that they try three different approaches at the UI for review by the customer. They agreed. I found out a week later that their manager overruled us and told them to go with option 1. Option 1 was my least favorite, but just so happened to be the original idea the team had as well as the most flashy (in a developers eyes, mind you). So off they went and abandoned the design review.

In the last few weeks, my friend, who has been code-reviewing work by this development team, discovered some flaws in the implementation of this intranet application (which ultimately feeds form data on a public website). He wisely used this as an opportunity to revisit the design (technical and non-technical) issues with this application. During the course of these conversations, my friend was speaking to one of our customers, who just so happens to be trying this application out in development. My friend asked how it was going and the customer responded with:

"I'm getting used to it."

If you are a person passionate about creating the best possible User Experience for your organization, those words should make you ill. Ask yourself honestly, does that phrase speak well of a design to you? When you hear the phrase, "I'm getting used to it," don't you think it applies more to:

• Having to wear a suit to work every day;
• A new toupee;
• A persistent rash;
  

rather than an admin tool that is supposed to aid in the automation of a manual process?
I can't say enough about how much it bothers me that most of us in the IT world don't see the difference between "This is so easy to use, it's like second nature" and "I'm getting used to it." And that's why I think that phrase is a death knell for an application and a virtual guarantee that one of two things will happen:

1) Drastic enhancements will be requested 1 minute after the application is deployed.
2) The application will be abandoned and old, familiar, manual processes will resume.

It seems to me that "I hate this, it doesn't work for me" is a better thing to hear because your manager will see the benefit of doing some UT and a redesign. In this case, the busy, over-worked IT world sees an "I'm getting used to it" as close enough to the bull’s-eye to move on. But then again, maybe I'm just trying to create broad observations from one incident. Thoughts anyone? Maybe you can back me up or tell me I'm wrong...

Tags: Usability, User Testing, User Experience, UI, Design