Where do you start when you're approaching a complex software design problem? If you work on a large development team, you know that software engineers and UX designers will often approach the same design problem from radically different perspectives. The term "software design" itself can mean very different things to software architects, system programmers, and user experience designers. Software engineers typically focus on the architectural patterns and programmatic algorithms required to get the system working, while UX designers often start from the goals and needs of the users.

In the spring of 2009, I participated in a research study that looked at the ways in which professional software designers approach complex design problems. The research study, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, was led by researchers from the Department of Infomatics at the University of California, Irvine. The researchers traveled to multiple software companies, trying to better understand how professional software designers collaborate on complex problems. At each company, they asked to observe two software designers in a design session. At my company, AmberPoint, where I worked at the time as an interaction designer, I was paired with my colleague Ania Dilmaghani, the programming lead of the UI development team. In a conference room with a whiteboard, the researchers set up a video camera, and handed us a design prompt describing the requirements for a traffic control simulation system for undergraduate civil engineering students. We were allotted two hours to design both the user interaction and the code structure for the system.

Jim Dibble and Ania Dilmaghani at the whiteboard in their research design session

Like you, I’ve been to my share of presentations. I’m that annoying guy near the back who takes a lot of notes during it: jotting down the awesomeness, the nifty sound bytes, the structure, and the ideas it sparks. If the thing is failing, I’ll jot that down, too, and try to suss out the reason to make sure that when I present I don’t make the same mistake.

After years of doing this, I’ve come to group these successes and failures into four big criteria that every conference presentation ought to have. I’m going to share them with you now in the hopes that a) I’m right and b) more presentations will fall into the “awesome” rather than “regrettable” category.

I remember studying the concept of the “reluctant hero” in college lit classes. This is the protagonist who is thrust into the role of being a savior or hero, often unequipped and unwilling to be The One. Think Bilbo Baggins, who just wanted to stay home in his hobbit hole rather than steal treasure from dragons, or Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or even Han Solo. The reluctant hero typically needs some kind of supernatural intervention or magical object to get them to act.

As an interaction designer, I've found sometimes I need to design for the “reluctant user." This is someone who, given a choice, would rather not use the product I am designing-at all-no matter how cool the features, or how well-designed the experience. I've worked on products for disease management (“I can't wait to sit down and focus on my health condition!”), health insurance (“Sorry I can't go to the party, I'm too excited to check on my claim status!”), and—the mother of them all—filing taxes (“My dentist couldn’t fit me in for a root canal so I'm doing this instead“). In none of these cases do the users want to use the product and the related service. Yet there are consequences if they don't, so it’s incumbent on the designers to make the experience as painless as possible.

Case in point

We are helping a client assess one of their tax-related products. Measuring the effectiveness of these kinds of products is difficult. Where normally you are looking for high customer satisfaction rates, in this case, it’s really about minimizing pain, not making it a great experience they want to repeat anytime soon. Nobody wants to spend time preparing their taxes, they just want to it to be over so they can avoid penalties (and hopefully pay the least amount of tax possible). So if a user had a neutral experience, that’s actually a very positive result since we’re really starting from a baseline of ”I don’t want to do this.”

As with any project, key to success is identifying the users’ most important goals, but it's critical to keep those in the context of how much time they are willing to spend. After working with our tax software client and talking with teams who’ve worked on projects with reluctant users, we’ve gathered some things to keep in mind when designing for the reluctant user:

• If a user’s goal is to get it done as quickly as possible, make it so. Don't get cute with whizbang interactions that prolong the experience.
• Automate when possible (or at least provide options for automating). Users will likely be willing to trade some control for simplification.
• Use language that engages the user, and be careful to avoid jargon; users won’t be motivated to look up terms (for example, a user dealing with a health insurance claim dispute will want to see procedure names, not just billing and procedure codes).
• Set expectations about how long the process will take, and show (and celebrate) progress with feedback about completed tasks.
• Fill up “dead time” (such as waiting for steps in an installation process) with either useful information (such as tips or demonstrations…NOT advertisements), or provide a time estimate so the user can go do something else.
• Focus on and highlight any positive benefits that come out of having to endure the experience (such as that tax refund).

Quicken does a nice job with this last point, communicating how using TurboTax can help people get a bigger refund (free money is always a good angle to play). Another example is from home healthcare products that take every opportunity to reward the input of information and celebrate improvements in the numbers used to track health.

We’ve recently been hoping for a shot to redesign the DMV service experience, but are still in line waiting for our number to be called. While we are waiting, have any of you worked on products that target the reluctant user? What did you do?

At Cooper, we have long stressed that designers should have a seat at the product development table, along with business people and technologists. Each member of this triad brings unique insights to product development: business people assess what is viable in the market, technologists address what is technologically feasible, and designers focus on making products that are useful and desirable to users:

Over the years, client organizations have taken this advice to heart, with more and more forming user experience teams that focus on assessing and meeting user needs. However, just having a seat at the table is not enough. As designers, we can help shape and facilitate the overall conversation.

To bring designs to fruition, designers need to collaborate effectively. While technologists and business executives value design, they often sense that design decisions are subjective and arbitrary. To get buy-in, designers need to help their partners understand design rationale and decision-making. Through collaboration and communication, designers can ensure that all team members have a shared understanding of the stakeholder objectives, the user needs, and the intent of the design.

Cooper now offers “Design collaboration & communication,” a course that sets the stage for collaborating on design and communicating design decisions. In two days students learn how to involve others throughout the design process, so that the design vision is agreed upon each step of the way. Communicating design throughout the process reduces the likelihood of other team members misinterpreting or altering the design during development.

The course covers the following topics:

• Designing workshops to conduct with stakeholders to ensure a shared product vision
• Choosing appropriate research methods
• Involving others in research synthesis
• Prioritizing what should be built based on business objectives, technical constraints, and user needs
• Articulating the value and benefit of design decisions
• Defending design without becoming defensive
• Determining the right level of documentation for your development process
• Moving the discussion from features and functionality to user goals and business goals

Whether you follow a traditional waterfall model or an agile development process, the communication and collaboration techniques in this course can help you gain buy-in for your design decisions.

This course provides great techniques for designers who want to create buy-in and build credibility within their organizations. The course is also great for cross-disciplinary teams of designers, product managers, and developers who want to communicate more effectively.

Our next public offering of this new course is July 25 & 26, 2011 in our San Francisco studio. A Cooper designer can also deliver the course at your office, and the content can be tailored to fit your particular needs around design planning and collaboration.

Why is Google Maps on a mobile device so amazing and delightful? Why does Word Lens feel so mind-blowing? Why does a Prius feel so good when you get in and go? Why does it feel satisfying to look down at the lighted keyboard on the Mac?

It is noteworthy when the design of an experience is so compelling that you feel wonder and delight. When designed right it feels totally natural, some might even say it is truly "intuitive." No training is needed, no set-up, no break in flow, the tool fits seamlessly, improving without disrupting your experience; it's like a little bit of magic.

So how to design the delightful, magical experience?

In the digital world magic experiences are more likely to follow technology breakthroughs. New ways to give input (touchscreens, gestures, sensors), output (3D, haptics), and raw processing (speed, power) all provide opportunities for unexpected delight. These days passive input is an especially rich field because devices have many more sensors, and the raw processing power is ample enough to provide real-time turnaround on data-intensive tasks.

I'm using passive to describe input which is largely listening and processing signal which is self-identified, as opposed to active input where signal is initiated by the user with specific intent. Active input is keyboard, mouse, touch, and gesture. Passive input is background processing of optical, audio, kinesthetic, or other signal, and programmed response to this. In reality there's more of a spectrum between active and passive, not a strict divide.

If you'e got a smart phone, a Mac, or a new car, chances are your experience is augmented with passive input magic. GPS, accelerometer, light sensor, mic, OCR, RFID, and facial/object recognition are all used as passive input. But passive input signal alone isn't going to deliver delight. It's what you do with the signal which is where the magic happens.

Fully passive input, quietly helping in the background

Some sensors run in the background, quietly listening for the right signal which tells them to kick in and help. The fact that you don’t need to switch into a mode first makes the experience smooth and seamless, the magic just happens.

Your Macbook pro uses an optical sensor to evaluate the amount of ambient light. When the light falls below a certain threshold, back-lighting under the keyboard improves your ability to visually target the keys.

It's a small feature but it's super delightful. Your computer "knows" when to assist and jumps in to provide illumination. You don't need to interrupt what you're doing, but an automatic and subtle shift in the experience makes it better.

As more cars adopt it, the keyless entry and ignition of the Prius may seem unremarkable, but the design is still delightful.

Walk up to your locked car with your keys in your pocket, without using your keys reach for the handle and the car opens. Sit down and press the start button with the keys still in your pocket. Security is a necessary evil, allowing it to recede to the background of the experience is delightful.

Imagine speeding along the freeway, you become lulled into a less aware state, and suddenly traffic ahead is at a full standstill. Your reaction time is not what it should be, you didn't notice until it's too late to stop. But your Volvo S60 has been paying attention, it's been watching out for you and when it senses the stopped traffic it applies the breaks for you. Its finely tuned system adjusts the breaking to match the distance and your car stops a few feet from the bumper of the car ahead of you.

The radar system in your car searches for possible collisions with other cars or pedestrians, warning you and even taking action if you don';t. There's lots to go wrong if the system doesn't correctly identify and react to danger, but if it works as designed the experience is magic. Your car ceases to be a dumb hunk of metal hurtling around the roads and becomes an intelligent agent, working to keep you safe and protected. If the system only gave you a warning the experience of driving would be interrupted, instead it takes action and assists, improving your ability to drive safely.

Modal passive experiences, input with a little prompting

The form factor and design of hand-held devices often forces you to open an app (entering a mode) before delivering passive input goodness. The limited processing power, battery life and screen size simply doesn't allow for the activity to fade to the background. Also, no good interaction paradigm has been created which allows for automatic, smooth and intelligent switching between passive input modes. If it existed this would facilitate less modal choices, delivering instead the right assistance at the right time, without requiring a prompt from you.

There are a number of great apps that work with passive input once launched which deliver super delightful experiences.

Open Google Maps on a mobile device and it not only displays a map, but it pinpoints where you are and shows it. Move your device and the map moves to reorient based on which direction you are facing.

It's a magical experience because the map ceases to be an abstract puzzle. Its sensing and orienting to your position makes the map personal, it becomes an augmentation of reality, another view of where you are. This transformation is subtle, but deeply satisfying. The map unifies with the territory, its utility shifts from planning the route to navigating it in real-time.

Recent versions of iPhoto come with an amazing feature, the ability to automatically recognize and tag faces in your photo collection.

Once established the accuracy with which iPhoto performs this task is amazing. Add new photos to your collection and iPhoto figures out who's in them and organizes appropriately. It's a satisfying and delightful experience once you've trained it. It doesn't take a huge amount of time, but training anything takes away from the magic. Somehow training feels like doing work, you are part of the magic trick, not fully able to sit back and enjoy the show.

Nuance's Dragon voice transcription software used to take hours to train to recognize your voice. The experience was tedious and time consuming. This upfront work made it hard to feel wow'ed once it started working.

Today you can download a free app for your iPhone and simply start speaking. It's a pretty delightful experience because it just works. Your voice is instantly transformed into text.

The first version of Red Laser was novel, but failed to delight. What shifted the experience was eliminating the management and preparation required.

Version one required users to take a clear photo of the bar-code within a tight frame. The second version just asks users to point the video camera and loosely target the bar-code. It feels easier, more natural, more like how the eye operates. The experience improved and adoption rates shot up.

Point Word Lens at a sign in a foreign language and instantly read it in your native tongue.

A lot is going on under the hood to deliver this magical experience. Optical character recognition of the foreign text from a video grab, translation of it, and overlaying the video with replacement text, all in real-time. Of course you don't see any of this, and that's part of the magic. Your experience isn't interrupted, you see video that one instant is Spanish and the next is English. The video feed just got a lot more useful. Of course they also need to get the translation at least part-way right or it doesn't matter.

Pleco is another iPhone app that translates printed text. Like Word Lens it uses the live video feed. Unlike Word Lens the translation is fed back to you in a text box at the bottom of the screen instead of overlaid into the video feed.

This may seem like a small difference, but it interrupts and abstracts the experience. If your goal is to learn another language, seeing both at the same time would be useful, but for simply understanding, replacing the foreign language in place is a far more delightful experience. It feels more natural, and the interface itself doesn't dominate the presentation.

Sometimes all you need to do is give permission for the magic to happen. When you land on a web page in a foreign language, Google Chrome browser automatically takes action and offers to translate the page for you. If you accept, the page quickly transforms before your eyes, into language which you can understand.

What makes this delightful is that you are prompted at the right moment, with assistance which is immediate, and doesn't take you out of your browsing experience. The page maintains its layout, but suddenly the words are all familiar. Links still work, images still show up, it's almost as if a part of your brain has been turned on which can suddenly understand Japanese.

The promise of Jubbigo is huge: you speak into your phone in English, your phone translates what you say and speaks it in Japanese.

In practice Jubbigo gets the job done, but it never feels magic or delightful. You aren't forced to switch modes which is good; you speak words in and a spoken translation comes out. But your experience is still interrupted with the significant amount of processing time between input and output. The lag time between speaking and hearing the translation is more than noticeable, it dominates the experience. To be delightful you need near-instant performance. Google Maps works well because it finds your location immediately, Word Lens wows because the words are replaced in near real-time.

What makes a delightful, magical experience?

• Transformation must occur, adding utility, meaning, or even useful action
• It must happen without delay
• The transformation must maintain fidelity and accuracy to the original
• The transformation shouldn't interrupt the larger experience
• The less abstract, the more magical
• The less management/preparation the more satisfying

Take a look through the examples above. The ones that really delight are those that meet more than a few of these principles. When experiences show promise, but don't deliver you can see they fail to play by these principles.

In the field of exhibition design, the quality of User Experience makes the difference between success and failure. Unlike products or services with clunky interactions that we may grumble about but continue to use, a museum exhibit that is inaccessible is simply an expensive rock.

Want to explain plate tectonics to a 12-year old in a way that might inspire a budding geologist? Or convey the intricacies of the circulatory system to a kindergarten-age doctor-to-be? Your communication goals and audience have been identified, now comes the hard part—creating a fertile environment where learning can happen. When designing exhibits for museums or science centers, exhibition designers consider interaction, experience, interface and, critically, environment.

Museum visitors are on their feet, distracted by their surroundings and often curious to get on to the next thing. Unlike the individual who has chosen to read a magazine article or browse a website, a visitor hasn’t made a commitment to the experience or decided to engage in the content. Exhibits must entice and engage visitors, quickly, in spaces that facilitate that engagement.

A few mildly frustrating museum visits and several positive discussions with colleagues led me to consider how we construct the settings in which learning happens. Part of this is about thoughtful design, but much of it is about creating an appropriate space and then getting out of the way. These are my suggestions:

Provide resting places.

A well-placed bench allows parents to rest and watch while children explore or participate at their own pace. A seat is a space for wound-up kids to settle for a minute or for adult visitors to consider what comes next. Many museums forget (or engineer out) this simple yet fundamental factor in a visitor’s experience.

Allow for collaboration.

Provide exhibits or activities that don't require multiple users, but accommodate more than one user. Consider ways to provide multiple users with an enhanced experience. Most visitors to science museums come in school groups or with family members, and they often move in bunches throughout the space.

Don't frontload information.

Deliver the main message and pique curiosity. Let visitors opt in. Good exhibits provide opportunities for discovery and reward the explorer (or motivated learner) with something extra. Answer questions when they are most likely to be asked and provide interesting chunks of information at the time a visitor is most likely to wonder and say, "Cool!” Conversely, if you give it to them all at once their eyes glaze over and you’ve lost them.

Recognize there are different types of learners

Or, at the very least, recognize that there are different ways that people like to learn. Successful exhibits use a variety of techniques to communicate messages and engage visitors. These could involve various senses (environmental audio, choreographed lighting, even aroma stations) or offer different points of access to the same information (colorful graphics, hands-on interactives, theatrics, media pieces, or full body-immersives).

Let them get their hands dirty.

Provide a space and materials for exhibit related projects. This can be docent-led or not. Enhance learning by pairing an exhibit with materials and challenges that allow for creativity, invention, or even innovation. This could be a simple cart, with changing activities that can be restocked or rolled into the gallery when appropriate. If a subject excites a visitor, get them involved.

Limit text and avoid the urge to be comprehensive.

This is tougher than it sounds for the subject matter experts involved in creating the exhibit. Visitors, particularly young visitors, need to know this isn't school. So, don't teach and don't test. As a general rule, if it is fun or compelling, a game or a challenge, they will engage on their own. A visitor who gains an interest in a subject will explore and learn more beyond the walls of the museum. A visitor bombarded with too much information or made to feel stupid has been turned-off to the subject.

Design interactions with a low barrier to entry.

Handles should look like handles. Cranks should look like they turn. Don't make visitors waste their energy figuring out how the exhibit works before they even get to the content. Your design may be clever, it may be beautiful, but if the interaction isn’t obvious you have succeeded in hand-crafting visitor frustration. Sometimes we miss the mark and create an exhibit that is compelling, but not immediately intuitive. These exhibits inspire “creative misuse.” Instead of visitors connecting with the content, they spin the wheel, bang the handle or jump on the sensor. They may have fun, but a learning opportunity is lost and often an expensive exhibit is wasted.

What else should we consider when designing informal learning environments? This conversation is ongoing, behind the scenes at science museums and exhibition design studios. It continues on blogs, in classrooms and at conferences. As an exhibit developer working to answer this question, I’ve been humbled to discover that the best way to find out what works is to grab some kids and bring them to a museum.

All images courtesy of West Office Exhibition Design.

You’ll find discussions about designing informal learning environments here:

• Association of Science And Technology Centers
• National Association for Museum Exhibition
• Museum 2.0 blog
• Museum Design Lab seminar

We recently hosted an open studio, with presentations about using social media for social good from Jennifer Aaker, co-author of The Dragonfly Effect, and Robert Chatwani, social media innovator and Head of Global Citizenship at eBay. It brought together over 100 people in laughter, tears, and inspiration. Throughout the evening, designers and organizations came together to explore how they could use social media for a variety of initiatives, such as forest preservation, energy conservation, and education. We've posted a few photos here, and we wanted to express our gratitude to the speakers and all in the community who took part.

Designers, social advocates, entrepreneurs, and developers chatted and mingled early in the evening

Robert shared his story about Sameer Bhatia and Vinay Chakravarthy, two friends diagnosed with leukemia

Jennifer spoke about the meaning of happiness, social media, and storytelling

Robert highlighted ways corporations with authentic, core social values that can still be profitable.

The evening was a great success and left many energized and inspired

In case you missed the evening, Robert's original talk at the Stanford Business School is available to watch on YouTube: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith are participating in several upcoming events and you can learn more about their book, The Dragonfly Effect, via their blog.

Our desired outcome for the event was not simply to inform but to encourage people to act. We highlighted a few opportunities for designers, developers and entrepreneurs to use their skills for social good but hope to share a broader scope of ways to get involved in the near future. If Robert's talk about Teams Sameer and Vinay illustrated anything, it's that each of us can have a large global impact given a clear, focused goal.

Thanks everyone for their interest and involvement in our open studio, and we'll keep you posted on our events in 2011.

Kia ora. In an earlier blog post, I asked if Kiwis would be interested in a January Cooper U, and despite it being in the “dead zone” of the summer holidays, the answer was an enthusiastic, “Yes!” So, we’re happy to open registration for a Kiwi Cooper U Practicum between 10-13 January.

What’s been your proudest achievement in life? Think about this for a minute or two. The accomplishments that I hold most dear are those that have occurred mostly outside of my professional career. But are we missing opportunities as designers and developers to contribute directly to furthering social causes? Social psychologist Jennifer Aaker and social media innovator Robert Chatwani say that we are. Cooper is proud to host these two Bay Area thought leaders at an open studio event on Wednesday, November 17th, from 6 - 9 pm at our offices on 100 1st Street on the 26th floor.

Jennifer Aaker and marketing technologist, Andy Smith’s new book The Dragonfly Effect is a must-read for designers and developers. The book details how people using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube beat the odds, made a difference, and literally saved lives. It tells how a former nightclub owner made a way for some of the world’s poorest people to have clean water, how a girl’s lemonade stand inspired fundraising for breast cancer, and how Barack Obama connected with a younger generation to become the first African American president of the United States. It underscores the importance of connecting meaning with social media when trying to create infectious action.

The book begins with a very personal story: In 2007, a friend, Sameer Bhatia, was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML). His one chance of survival was to find a bone marrow donor but his odds were slim: 1 in 25,000. Sameer’s friends, led by Robert Chatwani, used social technology to find a match for Sameer. And that’s just the beginning of the story!

Please join us at Cooper’s studio to meet Robert and Jennifer and to find out more about The Dragonfly Effect and the excellent design principles that were invaluable for affecting change. RSVP to rsvp@cooper.com.

Jennifer Aaker

A social psychologist and marketer, Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Her research spans time, money and happiness. She focuses on questions such as: “What actually makes people happy, as opposed to what they think makes them happy?” “How can small acts create infectious action, and how can such effects be fueled by social media?” She is widely published in the leading scholarly journals in psychology and marketing, and her work has been featured in a variety of media including The Economist, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CBS Money Watch, NPR, Science, Inc, and Cosmopolitan.

A sought-after teacher in the field of marketing, Professor Aaker teaches in many of Stanford’s Executive Education programs as well as MBA electives including Designing Happiness, How to Tell a Story, Building Innovative Brands and The Power of Social Technology. She has also taught at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Columbia and is a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award, Citibank Best Teacher Award, George Robbins Best Teacher Award and both the Spence and Fletcher Jones Faculty Scholar Awards.

Robert Chatwani

Robert Chatwani leads Global Citizenship for eBay Inc., which covers a range of technology-driven social innovation across eBay and PayPal. Reporting to eBay’s CEO, he oversees the company’s global social impact and business goals across three areas: entrepreneurship, sustainable commerce, and communities. eBay’s platforms have enabled 25 million sellers around the world, powered the sale of over $100 billion in pre-owned goods, and raised more than $200 million for nonprofit organizations. Robert previously co-founded WorldofGood.com by eBay, the world’s largest marketplace for socially responsible shopping. Prior to eBay, Chatwani was the co-founder of MonkeyBin, an online consumer marketplace for trade and barter. Robert began his career with McKinsey & Company in Chicago and Washington DC, where he served a range of Fortune 500 clients and launched McKinsey’s Globalization practice. Chatwani received a bachelor’s degree in economics from DePaul University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He was named to Time Magazine’s Top 100 Green Pioneers of 2009.

I bought some concert tickets online a few days ago. For once I was online and ready as the tickets were going on sale at 10am.

09:58am ─ I clicked through a maze of links to finally arrive at a page where it seemed like I’d be able to buy tickets.

09:59am ─ I continually refreshed the page until a “buy tickets” button appeared.

10:00am ─ Once it finally showed up I clicked the big friendly button and was taken to a page that required even more clicking around before eventually presenting me with an “add to cart” button. Pressing it presented me with this dialog:

10:01 ─ I filled in the form as quickly as possible and clicked “join now.” Then I got this error message:

Paaaaaardon me?!?

I stared at my computer screen for a minute sorta wishing it had a face so I could punch it.

10:02am ─ As I sat there feeling frustrated, and a little insulted, all the good tickets were being snapped up by people with one word last names like Smith and Baker. Then I had to decide whether to hyphenate my last name or remove the space, trying to anticipate the consequences of the decision for will-call or credit card payments.

10:05am ─ I finally purchased my 2 tickets, using an improvised last name. (I can no longer recall what solution I had to use to make it work.)

Though I managed to get tickets I was very indignant after being told that my last name was unacceptable. Can you imagine going down to the box office to buy tickets and having the guy behind the counter tell you that he cannot accept your name? That seems absurd! (unless of course you’re shopping from the soup nazi) Yet we encounter rude and insulting behavior from interfaces all the time.

Software has replaced people in so many of our daily transactions, from buying concert tickets to shoes and groceries. Computers bring obvious improvements to the table: they can provide instant comparisons, full feature lists and recommend similar items more easily than a person could. In fact computers could make this a fantastic experience by providing a very quick, very flexible way of choosing the right seat at the right price if they didn’t just focus on just automating the analog transaction, but that’s a whole other blog post. Even in this context of database transactions it's time software started learning some manners and stopped hurling insults whenever we ask it to do something difficult.

If the request is truly impossible, at the very least inform me politely, and tell me what I need to do to make it work. For example, "We're terribly sorry but our system is unable to deal with spaces in names. If you could please remove it we'll sign you right up." That’s probably a bit wordy, but better than "we cannot accept your name" without telling me why, or what I can do to make it acceptable. The best case is for the software to deal with whatever my last name happens to be, fixing the problem for me so that I don’t have to know or care that it’s database can’t accept spaces.

If we want our products to be liked, we need to design them to behave in the same manner as a likeable person.¹ Our software should be polite, but more than that it needs to be considerate and take into account our needs and goals.

¹ Cooper, Reimann & Cronin. About Face 3. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2007 249-285