Don't Make Me Think - Really?

GPS can be a real marriage buster. Using the damn thing often makes me and my husband argue. You see, we are a mixed marriage, he loves it and I hate it. It's amazing how that calm, reassuring voice of the GPS (we call her "Alexus") gets us worked up while we are on a nice excursion somewhere. It all comes down to different styles of receiving and processing information and our personal relationships to maps and digital tools. 

I recently met with a group of students from New York University's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program. We were talking about the relationship between wayfinding through physical space and navigation in digital media. One of the students brought up the work of Steven Krug who wrote, Don't Make Me Think, the seminal book on web usability. The book is now twelve years old but Krug's ideas still carry a certain currency in the user experience world.

His basic premise is that websites should be intuitive, allowing people to smoothly navigate digital information. He said that the search for navigation and other cues should be effortless for the largest number of web users. When Krug wrote his book, the web was still developing - users were learning the paradigm and developers were learning how to create user friendly interfaces.

Let's dial forward to 2012. Most of us know the web protocols and we can surf without thinking too hard. But what about that cranky world of GPS? It's a tool that has transformed the way we get travel directions. The GPS paradigm is the ultimate "don't make me think" digital interface, and therein lies the problem. I fear we are creating an army of map illiterates and travel nincompoops. When you use the GPS you don't need to understand context, landmarks, geography, or the cardinal points of the compass. You don't think, you just follow directions – turn left, turn right, keep going straight ahead, or make one of Alexus's "legal U turns" – her not-so-subtle sign that a mistake has been made. A journey made entirely by following the GPS leaves me cold. In the process I didn't have to think and as a result I haven't learned much about our travel route or built up a store of knowledge for next time. I have no meaningful picture of where I've been or where I'm going. That bugs me because I am a Wayfinding designer whose job it is to help people with their travels. 

My goal is to design systems that empower people to be intelligent navigators. My colleagues and I create what we think are universal and simplified mental maps of complex places so people can get the big picture of that place. With those maps as a foundation, we can craft a hierarchy of Wayfinding directions that give people an understanding of where they can go.  We then design a suite of wayfinding tools so people can access those directions in different environments and  at different points of the journey. The goal is to help people explore and find their way with confidence in unfamiliar places. They might have to think a bit as they absorb this wayfinding information but they will be confident, well informed navigators. 

The thing about GPS is that I never have to think, so it makes me feel powerless and stupid. What if, when we programmed the GPS, we entered the wrong Springfield? God knows where we might end up!