Mastering Public Controls
We frequently install AV systems in shared spaces used by people who walk in without any prior knowledge.
So how do we enable the general public to operate a complicated digital system entirely on their own?
Expectations for Public Technology
Property developers, architects, building owners, and private facilities all have an interest in deploying technology to benefit the people who occupy their spaces. It could be a theatre installed in the common area of a new condo, or a meeting space that has AV facilities to offer. Although these systems can imbue value in architecture, when people go to use these systems will they work? Will they have support from staff on premises? Should occupants be left to figure it out on their own?
At the same time as promising to benefit occupants, shared-space and public systems present a significant challenge in the effectiveness of their use. Deploying a technology package worth thousands of dollars is a waste of those funds if it's unusable or perpetually broken.
More than ever before people have come to expect digital experiences as part of their everyday life, however, most of our digital experiences are private and familiar to us. When the system is unfamiliar, and has any complexity at all, it's rendered unusable by the majority. So, how can we make good on people's expectations for public technology and secure its value?
Considering Control
Control schemes are one of the most important pieces of integrated system projects, because whether we’re installing switches, keypads, a handheld remote, or a touchscreen, much of the experience with the system boils down to its control interactions. The most involved of these controls, the touchscreen, is essentially a canvas upon which we can create any form of control interface we can dream up. But given all these options, how do we choose what’s best in each case?
Keypads offer very limited communication about their functions to the user.
Light Switches, Keypads & Touchscreens
When we walk into a room, we naturally feel at the door’s edge for a light switch on the wall. We’re so used to them being there that we often don’t even use our eyes to find them, even in unfamiliar rooms. This is a well-founded convention, and we rely upon it consistently. The almighty light switch also offers immediacy—it’s a simple toggle switch, where up is on and down is off. Dimmers expand on this concept, but remain intuitively simple.
Keypads, which frequent architectural automation systems in homes and commercial spaces, offer the next level of control fidelity. They’re generally placed alongside, or in place of, light switches, but they function quite differently. A keypad cannot be used with muscle memory alone, and it requires that we examine its button labels in order to use it. The more buttons, the more time it takes to find the function we need. Keypads are best used in cases where there are no more than about four executable functions, each one simple enough to be described in a single word. An extremely common pitfall in automation is to replace all switches with multi-button keypads, which eliminates the fluidity and speed of the light switch in favour of too many options.
Touchscreens, as a third option, are obviously the most flexible and powerful control platform. They can apply to almost any form of control, and can also communicate essential information back to the user, which ends up being one of their most essential purposes in life. However the touchscreen doesn’t belong everywhere. Even more so than a keypad, the touchscreen is a slow control point that even requires being woken up in many cases. But the power of a Graphical User Interface is in its ability to break down complexity. Perhaps the best way to understand its role in the control landscape is that it forms operating environment for an entire system.
Residential vs. Commercial
A homeowner knows their own space very well. They also have every opportunity to get to know their home’s systems intimately. The controls for their systems are equally apt to be learned over time, as the homeowner repeatedly uses it for daily life. Due to the pattern of familiarity, a touchscreen designed to allow them to navigate their system can be more streamlined, more personalized, and more verbally concise—effectively whittled down to it’s sleekest form, with unlabeled buttons that a guest wouldn’t recognize at all. Shortcuts are a key feature for the quick navigation to a particular user’s favourite controls. At the end of the day, one’s personal dashboard of controls is intended to be just that: only what one knows they want, and nothing more.
A residential touchscreen with a hierarchical, categorized approach might offer room-by-room thermostat controls, organized by floor. An HVAC control screen may look like this one from Xprt’s Kubuni™ residential control platform.
Commercial systems are shared by a larger group of people, with a lower level of familiarity, and must therefore follow a different pattern. Since the system's user experience (UX) begins and ends with understanding the user, in a commercial system, we’re faced with a user ID that is non-deterministic and entirely generalized. This is a radical difference from a residential control pattern that imposes the need for far more explicit communication, and a good deal more hand holding for every step involved in navigating the decision tree. There are few opportunities for shortcuts at all. In their place, there becomes a clear need for wayfinding.
Categorized vs. Sequenced Wayfinding
In communication design, wayfinding is a system of signage that allows person to find a place they need to go. Walk through an airport and you’ll see hundreds of signs, complete with numbering and colour coding schemes—an entire system, designed and deployed specifically for the facility and its many destinations.
When navigating software, the concept of wayfinding also applies. Instead of a three-dimensional space with hallways and rooms, software can be mapped out in a variety of ways. It might be broken into categories of functionality, or broken out by purposes of use, such as a menu system allowing for file management, editing, view settings, and help. Software navigation might also be formed around an ultimate result or goal that the software may offer. That is, a described goal can form doorway into a setup path that also provides options for further specifying the goal. Describing goals to users helps to clarifies their intent and context and eases their decisions.
A decision tree is the best way to understand the underlying architecture of a control scheme, where there are navigable paths to various outcomes, and a way to return to the start of the path.
Categorized controls are most frequently separated by function. When we break a system into experiential categories such as video controls and audio controls, we naturally present them as the primary options, for navigating the system. The user can select a functional area, and once through that door, they control only that set of functionality. The benefit of this relatively intuitive form of control is its ability to naturally present an exhaustive listing of that category’s functions, such as all the lights in an entire house, broken out by floor, room, and light. The downside to this format ends up being cross functionality between category. If the user wants a 'macro' function that turns lights on, lowers blinds, an plays some background music, that combined function exists outside natural categories, breaking from the logic. It’s a shortcut for a complex function for a familiar user.
Sequenced wayfinding is a completely different approach, that surrounds analyzing the most likely subset of outcomes from using the controls, then provides guided pathways to them, with simple decisions presented along the way. The beauty of this solution is its containment of complexity. It places the user on a track and manages the cognitive load that they carry along the way. This is a massive help to a person who’s just stepped up to the screen and is trying to find their way through the system to a deterministic result. It eliminates the need for them to understand the structure, categories or hierarchy of the system while navigating through it, and it allows them to select from all categories from a context that they understand, because they selected it.
Categorized wayfinding involves allowing the user to navigate by category, with all results available to them. It also forces ‘shortcuts’ to exist outside the categories. This open-format approach requires that the user possess knowledge of the system, and forces them to come up with the shortcuts that they want in order to expedite control.
Sequenced wayfinding requires that we identify the most travelled pathways, then setup sequenced paths to follow along to get to them. Along the way, we can present options to allow the user to steer towards a more specific outcome. There is no need for shortcuts in this approach, and they would only confuse an unfamiliar user.
The home screen or entry point into the control scheme is completely different for controls that rely on categorized (LEFT) versus sequenced (RIGHT) wayfinding.
Controlling A Gym
You’ve just moved into a new condo and are exploring the building, because you know that it’s got an enticing set of shared amenities. You find a games room and a theatre room, then you notice the pool and stumble up to the gym. Through the glass, you can see a number of TVs showing a Canucks playoff game. It's the third period. As an avid Canucks fan, you decide to walk in, hoping that the sound is on too.
It turns out that there’s music playing in the room, but you happen to see a touchscreen glowing on the wall near the entrance, and it appears to be offering controls, so you head over. On its screen you find options for volume, channels, music, and ‘Change Setup’. There’s no one else in the gym, so explore further.
After a few taps, you've discovered how to change the music station and adjust speaker volume. You then tap 'Change Setup' and are presented with options to either 'Watch TV' or 'Listen to music'. Having missed at least 30 seconds of the playoff game, you anxiously tap 'Watch TV', hoping that it leads to something good. Two taps later and there it is staring you in the face, not 30 seconds after walking in: “Listen to this channel.” Moments later, the Canucks score, the place is filled with the sound of cheering, and you're fists are pumping.
Prominent located near the entrance of the gym, it’s immediately apparent what the touchscreen is there to offer.
Video Conferencing in a Shared Meeting Space
You and your colleague have been asked to arrange a catered meeting, and the boss wants to impress some potential clients who’ll be Zooming in from Arizona. Your office has a boardroom with a TV and you regularly video conference in there, but the room is cramped, and stale. It’s certainly not ideal for the catered gathering, so the idea is to find somewhere else. Your colleague has seen the building’s nicely appointed rooftop lounge and reluctantly says, “It does have a video conferencing setup.”
At lunch, you head up the elevator.
You find your way past a kitchenette, a couple TVs and an open space to gather, to find a boardroom table at the end of the large room, with a rooftop patio next to it with a view of Stanley Park. Then you see the prominent touchscreen just off to the side of the table. You tap its screen, and it welcomes you to the space, offering a single button to ‘Get started’. You tap it, and are presented with options for hosting a party, or for a hosting meeting.
With the Arizona clients in mind, you tap the meeting option, hoping that it’s going to jump to life with a direct video connection to Phoenix. Instead, it’s offering four options:
Host a Zoom video conference
Join a Zoom video conference
Host a laptop presentation
Host a presentation using AirPlay
A storyboard describing the paths though the Kutano controls for a town hall meeting space.
Dashboard Controls
The fun hasn’t ended for you in the rooftop facility. With your colleague still chatting with you on the screen, you decide to explore what the space might offer for before and after the Zoom conference, as this is a catered meeting where the local team will also spend some time enjoying the view, a beer, and some good food. You recall that there was an option for ‘Entertainment’ on the touchscreen, and head back over to it. With the Zoom conference still running, the touchscreen allows you to explore to that option, so you head in and find options for ‘Listen to music’ and ‘Use the video screens’.
Moments later, you’re playing a music station and exploring video options for two other screens in the space. At the top of the list of available options is a 'ambient video', so you tap it curiously. A slow a fly-over of the Scottish Highlands adorns the screens at the kitchenette and central hall area. The decision is made. You’ll use this space to host the meeting, and your boss will be ecstatic. You’ve built a strange confidence about it, and as you tap the ‘shut down’ button, you remember that you still need to grab lunch. ...It’s only been 14 minutes since you got up from your desk.
Dashboard control are those that need to be available while running a system.
Full Circle
We see our ultimate goal as creating systems where the underlying complexity is completely removed from the user experience. When technology is relegated to the role of a supportive utility, it becomes relatively easy to focus on the people who'll use it. There are so many ways to state why we do what we do, but perhaps the best is this:
Think about a time before electronics, even before electricity. We had no desire for the contrivances that we now live with, and people weren’t confronted with an endless sea of technological options like we are today. But today's myriad technologies and enticing experiences can offer us great value if they're navigated effectively. This is the true burden of our work. We help people to navigate a horrendously complex and changing world of technology, by providing a raft to float upon an expansive sea of options. If the raft tips, people can drown, so we take our work very seriously.
Our raft is a touchscreen.
