I take the Seoul Metropolitan Subway system to work everyday, compacted like sardines in a can. I was in no rush to get to work the other day and as I took my time through the system, I started to notice the signage around me. I found some interesting ones.

(My personal favorite) In case you find yourself in the possession of a shopping cart in the middle of the subway system, we won’t ask you how you managed to get it down the steps and through the turnstile, but you absolutely cannot take it with you on the moving walkway.		You probably won’t know what floor you are on since it doesn’t really matter underground and we don’t tell you, but the restrooms, should you find yourself in need of one, are located somewhere between B4 and B3.
Just follow the blue line into the wall to transfer to the Blue Line.		Make sure you fully decipher the meaning of these random signs before you get on the escalator. And btw, falling down the escalator is not permitted.
Please make sure your feet are in a good mood before attempting to negotiate these steps.		This is where you call to “S.ave O.ur S.ubway”
These seats are reserved for the people who did not listen and fell down the escalator, or have back issues, or (we understand it happens sometimes) just had too much kimchi and rice for dinner.		However these seat are reserved for those in wheelchairs, should they want to get out of their wheelchair and want to sit on these really comfy seats, or those who can magically balance a cane without any hands, or are hiding something under their dress, or are being attacked by tiny aliens.

I went to buy a microwave the other day. I thought it would be simple. But then is anything really simple these days? I had three factors I decided to consider: Price, Design and Usability.

Price:  A microwave is an everyday appliance and hence I wanted it to be cheap. The cheaper the better.

Design: I wanted a microwave with a simple design. No Cuisinart stainless-steel. Just something I could bear to look at in the kitchen.

Usability: I think most of the time I use only 3 features on a microwave. 1) For heating small things up I usually guess 20 seconds and if it’s not heated I try another 20 seconds. Heating something has never been a precise science ever for me. No one measures the mass of a slice of frozen pizza from last night. 2) Sometime I heat larger things which I guess in 1 minute increments. 3) I also heat the occasional popcorn and frozen meal. Both have instructions and I need a way to input precise timing.

So why is it so hard to find something that fits those things. When I find something that is simple, it’s totally unusable. Why do cheap things have to have really ugly design? What was suspiciously annoying was the fact that this was the same case with all the major Korean brands.

In the end, as it usually is, it is a trade-off. Either pay dearly for something that is unusable, or pay for something that is moderately usuable, cheap but ugly. Most Korean would choose the more expensive and better designed product over the more usable one. I am finding out that Korean generally have a strange bias towards things that are “pretty” (which isn’t always the same as “well-designed”). I have overheard conversations at work where people say, “I don’t use that [website, phone etc] because it isn’t pretty”, and not because it is unusable. People here are more forgiving if it is pretty. Don Norman agrees that people generally perceive attractive things to work better.

[A]lthough poor design is never excusable, when people are in a relaxed situation, the pleasant, pleasurable aspects of the design will make them more tolerant of difficulties and problems in the interface.

Product designers in Korea must know this, and they must work with the marketing department to make sure that the products that are at the lower end of the price scale look ugly so that people don’t buy it and buy the product that is more expensive not because of any added functionality or production cost, but simply priced higher over the “ugly one.”

Bruce Tognazzini observed something similar when he wrote:

What a strange situation. You take a mediocre product and rework the design to make it better. Your design is a success, by any reasonable measure, but the resulting new release is actually worse. You redouble your efforts and matters become untenable. It doesn’t matter how brilliant and effective your designs, the more they improve the product, the less usable the product becomes.

The clean design but expensive and unusable	The ugly but cheap and usable

What people consider “pretty” is culturally subjective. What one culture considers cute and pretty, another culture considers childish. Cyworld as wildly popular social networking site made this mistake when they launched in the US, maintaining their “pretty” aesthetic which was part of their success in Korea. This alienated a lot of the teen, youth audience who viewed Cyworlds avatars and wallpaper to be more fit for a pre-teen audience. Now they have more photos and less “prettiness”. This is why it is acceptable for grown adult women to don Hello Kitty accessories in much of East Asia whereas it will be viewed as plain freaky in the much of the US or Europe.

In the end, I settled for the  cheap and ugly microwave. For better or worse, the usability professional in me prevailed.

In my 6+ years as a consultant, "it depends" has been the favorite in my phrasebook since I first heard it from Lou Rosenfeld back in 2001. It is a phrase that has served me well and in most cases squarely meets hardest questions that are thrown at me by clients. It disarms the question, and gives both me and the clients pause for thought. It also removes the burden of providing a simple answer to what usual are very complex questions.

So I was asked a question from one of my colleagues yesterday:

"In an SMS interface, should the user be presented with the to field first or the message text field first?"

I wanted to say, "it depends", but I was stumped by the fact that this simplest of phrases is pretty hard to translate into Korean. That’s a problem. My best consultant weapon had been taken away from me. If you translate it, it goes something like, "you have to consider multiple factors":

Ugh. Not as simple or self contained as "it depends".

So I replied with the next best thing: "The answer is simple: both!" 

Your ability as a consultant rests on what you follow "it depends" up with. What does it depend on? You have to quickly analyze the variables that can shine light on the problem. What are the factors that make it a complex problem?

In this case, the variables seem to be, what do the users prefer doing? Some prefer the enter whom they are sending the message to first (me), but others want to type the message first (my colleague). So an interface that allows the users to do both easily is the solution.

Market research seems to suggest that users will get used to whatever the telco provides them with: SKT (#1 in Korea) has the message text first, LGTelecom (#3 in Korea) you enter who you are sending it to first. No help there.

The usage scenario this problem arises in is when the users is writing a new message. In most cases I assume that users are replying to messages that they have received, so making it easy to reply to a message is also key (in this case the user only needs to type the message). Clearly defined multiple paths are important here, and answering the question with an A or B answer seems to defeat this fact and reduces the restricts the experience that the users expect.

Now back to the bigger problem: I just need to find the Korean phrase for "it depends" before I face a real client.

UPDATE (2007-10-19): After asking an old friend who has been a consultant in Korea for the past 9 years, he told me that there is no really good way to say "It depends" in Korean. In Korean this may actually sound arrogant and offputting. He says the best way to assert yourself is by saying, "In my opinion, it depends on these factors…"

Strawberry bus stop — yum

If you have ever wondered what the experience of being inside a strawberry is like. The level of detail is pretty impressive, I must say. Those indentations on the seeds are pretty realistic.

Commuting as an experience.

It’s about a 10 minute walk from the subway station to my office. The simplest way is to take the main streets around the outside of the block, populated by office and retail buildings, as indicated by the red line.

The more interesting path

The more interesting way is to take the green line, through the block, into the housing, and the urban fabric. If I hadn’t taken this route, I would not have discovered that there is a bakery at the first turn. You can smell the freshly baked bread as you approach it. It’s a point in the trip that is anchored by smell. I pick up a croissant for breakfast there.

Another reason I prefer this route is because there is less noise. I can hear my iPod better. There is also less people, and feels less like a rat race to get to work. I can take my time.

What’s interesting is that there are quite a few others seem to share my preference and have found this route through the block. So the lesson here may be that optimal is not the necessarily the best for all. There will be others that will seek a more rich, different, or in this case peaceful experience over the simple, optimal but noisy experience.

As for me, I just like the smelling fresh pastry in the morning.