Web Performance Matters

Where performance is concerned, you should never underestimate the importance of the customer's perception. Usability specialists know this, because they focus on quality metrics that cannot be measured except by asking (or observing) customers. But technical professionals, who focus on more concrete metrics, tend to ignore issues of user perception.

Yet no matter how much time we spend systematically and objectively designing, measuring, and tuning our products to make sure that they really do run fast enough, in the end customer satisfaction is always a very subjective matter.

A couple of urgent projects have slowed my recent blogging activity. But this week a friend pointed me to Talkback: Your stupid user tricks. This consists of reader stories submitted in response to Dark tales from your friendly IT help desk, an earlier 2006 InfoWorld article about the experiences of help desk personnel, ... the poor folks who deal with user logic day in and day out.

Improving performance

Among the readers' posts I found a funny story, and a serious lesson too:

A few years back our communication dept contacted someone over my head and demanding a brand new "superfast computer". Well that was approved and I was given the task of upgrading that computer. I went on ahead and ordered all the parts to make them a "superfast computer" the only thing I didn't order them was a new case, just because the old case worked fine even if it did look a bit old and used.

So after a week or so I got all the parts in and built it for them in the old case and put it in their office. Right now they had the fastest computer on my network and I figured they were satisfied. I was dead wrong, they complained that I was blowing them off and just gave them back their old computer. Ok well I recently purchased a new case for my computer (which happened to be the same as their old computer), so I wiped my hard drive rebuilt the O/S and applications and gave them that computer. They were happy then because it looked new and fast. They never found out that they never had anything faster then their old computer and that I had a "superfast computer", I just love people like that.

-- Posted by: Mark at April 14, 2006 01:29 PM

This article was actually a follow-up to Stupid user tricks: Eleven IT horror stories, which contains more amusing stories.

The customer is always right

Of course, it's always easy to make fun of users who do something silly, but maybe we should be learning at the same time. ComputerBob commented:

As a long-time computer support person and educator, I've always observed that many IT people like to feel intellectually superior to their clients by sharing stories about how stupid they are. Personally, I think that showing disdain for your clients is a totally demeaning activity that only shows how little you respect them, and serves only to foster mistrust and widen the communication gap between them and you. It's also a good way to end up being fired. Share your stories if they teach good lessons, but please drop the attitude of intellectual superiority.

-- Posted by: ComputerBob.com at April 15, 2006 10:10 AM

ComputerBob makes a good point. And I can see from the testimonials on his site that his advice is sincere; it reflects his own work as a dedicated teacher.

Summing up ...

As performance specialists we should never become so focused on the technical details of our work that we lose sight of what our customers really want. This mistake is common at all levels of high-tech companies, from the CEO to marketing management to customer support down to the most junior programmer. But the most successful organizations are those that truly listen to their customers.

So always remember that no matter what you think, Web performance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Page Illustration: The moon illusion is a familiar example of the difference between human perception and measured reality.

Tags: InfoWorld, ComputerBob, user perceptions, stupid user tricks, performance, Performance matters, Web performance