transparency matters

I was reading Kathy Sierra’s weblog earlier and thinking about a meeting that I had yesterday with some Lotus engineers about what we’re doing for One Laptop per Child. (Yes, Lotus has a lot of good ideas, even if we’re not turning all these kids into Enterprise Messaging Users.) She is talking about the sensation of waiting for results from a doctor:

When I arrived, I told the technician my story, and literally begged her to rush the results. “7-10 days is how long it takes for the doctor to review it and get the results to your doctor,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do to speed that up.” I could barely breathe or walk, but I managed to get through the exam. But now the worst part begins… The Wait. The first wait is for the ten minutes it takes for the tech to review the film to make sure the pictures aren’t too dark, light, or blurred. Once they’ve checked the film, they either walk you back to repeat the test, or send you home to start The Wait. So there I sat, waiting for the tech.

I’ve been through this. It’s the worst. 2 days to get results for a test are often the worst of your life. It’s the possibility of fear. Fear around the next corner. Like some kind of slow-motion horror movie where you know there’s some terrible monster sitting around the next bend in the cave and you can’t not go there…

But back to reality. There’s an important lesson here in designing good experiences. If you’re going to make someone wait, transparency is the key to making that wait tolerable, and even enjoyable. The context for the Lotus guys was what they had discovered in building business workflow processes. That is, it’s important that if you submit something to someone else that they are able to see you working on it, or not working on it, what its status is and how long it’s taking. It keeps an otherwise onerous process and makes it seem like you have a sense of control. Taking the sausage out of the factory, I suspect.

Ever send a piece of mail to a customer support center and get back one of those messages that says “Thanks for contacting us! We’ll get back to you in 3-5 working days!” Wouldn’t it be better if they said “Here’s a link to a way to track your problem. You can see who has it, what the status is and how many people are in front of you.” Maybe it would take 5-7 working days, but it wouldn’t matter. At least you could see yourself moving from the back of the line to the front and who owned your problem and what they were working on. Think about it.

But once I made this connection, I started to see the pattern other places as well. Seen a TV while waiting in line at a bank? How about at a bar or restaurant while you’re waiting for food? Those are there because people have discovered that if you have something to distract you, any wait that you have to make appear to take far less time. The experience matters. (See also: JetBlue.)

Another comparison: the US postal service vs. FedEX. When I drop something in the mailbox, I always have to reach deep into this well of trust that I keep hidden and I say to myself It’s the US postal service. They haven’t screwed me before. Of course it will make it. This is in stark contrast to the experience that I get when I’m using FedEX. I don’t have to worry as much about the trust issue. (OK, I probably should but I’m talking about perception here.) I can track that package from beginning to end. I know what city it’s in, I know what its last status was, and they can actively inform me about the status of the package. Transparency at work. I wonder if the guys at FedEX knew they were designing a packaging experience as much as they were a way to route packages around the world.

Why does this matter to us? Because we design processes, too. From the licenses that we put on code, to the way that we work with contributors, to the way that we make decisions. As an example, even if we’re not including people outside of a small group in a decision, it’s important to at least inform people of that change. That at least lets people know that what we’re doing, and why. Not just that that thing has changed.

Remember that what we’re doing here isn’t just about creating programs or making the world more free. Every one of us is part of the experience that others have when they are touching our small world. And every one of them should have a decent experience. You know, so they stick around.

Oh, and of course, the whole point of Kathy’s web log is that you should be thinking about those things all the time when you’re dealing with people. Be it friends, customers, contributors, whomever. Transparency is the great equalizer for fear.