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Filed under Design on October 20, 2006 by Chris LoSacco

Why Interfaces Matter for Every Business

Perhaps an alternate title for this post could be "How Time Warner Won My Money with an Interface," or the equally appropriate "Why Cablevision Sucks." No matter what you call it, interface design played a big role in one company getting my monthly cable dollars over another. In fact, one could say that a UI played a significant role in convincing me to move to my new apartment. And anyone who has had to move recently knows that's persuasion.

My first place in Brooklyn only had one cable provider servicing my building: Cablevision. That was fine by me. I didn't have especially outrageous expectations for cable service; I really only wanted the basic stuff, plus high def channels, plus HBO (for The Sopranos, of course). Cablevision gave me all of that for a reasonable price, and I didn't give it a second thought.

Except every time I watched TV, I got frustrated. The user interface for Cablevision's digital cable service constantly and consistently made me feel stupid and impatient. The worst part was the performance: when I launched the "guide" feature, it would take ten seconds or more to appear, and sometimes just sit at a black screen until I got angry enough to unplug the box and plug it back in. Browsing the info screens for my favorite programs would lag for a few seconds before displaying. Even just changing channels would take about 2-3 seconds per channel.

I put up with Cablevision's atrocious service because I just figured that it was representative of the state of digital cable software right now. We just hadn't figured out proper caching yet, or how to best use the generous bandwidth provided by the coax pipe, or the formula for inexpensively squeezing better hardware into the boxes. Since I wasn't really interested in solving these problems, I figured I was doomed to suffer in silence.

Imagine my surprise when, at my friend's apartment, I experienced the Time Warner cable interface for the first time, and realized that all of the problems I had with Cablevision were, in fact, just Cablevision's problems. Time Warner's interface was fast and responsive. It was clean looking, understandable, unobtrusive. The remote even had a one-button on/off feature that controlled the TV and the cable box at the same time! Why didn't Cablevision have this stuff?

My lease was up on September 30, 2006, and during the month preceding, when I was deciding whether or not to move (I really didn't want to have to go through the hassle), the fact that my prospective apartment was serviced by Time Warner played a significant role in convincing me to take the new place. Just to escape a crappy UI. Think about that for a second.

I think there are two important lessons here. One - little things make a difference in the user experience. The Time Warner interface is much sleeker, sure, but just the fact that it doesn't make me wait for more than a second is a huge improvement over Cablevision's sloth-like software. Two - and this is the real kicker - users will pay more money if you improve their lives. I am paying more money to Time Warner, for the same service, then I was paying to Cablevision. And I'm happy about it. I want to give them my money, because they are providing me with superior service.

Long story short? Spend time on making your user experience great, and they'll pay you for it, even if you cost more. If that's not a pretty big incentive, I don't know what is.

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