Employee Spotlight: Jonathan Henke

For this issue of Making Mail Work, we interviewed Jonathan Henke, Lyris’ new Usability Engineer and asked him about his role in the company.

My title is Usability Engineer. So, my job is to be part of the engineering process to work for the usability of the product, to make sure that it works well for people in real-life situations.  I also work closely with JD Peterson, the Product Manager, to determine what are the priorities for upcoming releases of the product.

What does usability entail?

Usability encompasses a variety of areas.

• Learnability: How easy is it to figure it out the first time?
• Memorability: If you've done something before, how easy is it to go back and find it again?
• Efficiency and ease of use: Once you've learned the system, tasks should be as streamlined and efficient as possible
• Error reduction: the system should be designed to help prevent errors
• Satisfaction: the product should be enjoyable to use, not frustrating

Part of it is getting a better understanding of what users need to do with the software—how they use it, what sort of tasks they’re trying to accomplish, what their work environment is like, etc. So, I’m working on learning more about all the different kinds of customers that use ListManager, all the different scenarios that they use it for. For example, the workflow between creating content and creating a mailing. In previous versions of ListManager, these are two different processes where you create the content, then you have to go out of the content to create the mailing. In 9.2, we’ve streamlined that process, so now when you create content, there’s a button to save it and then go directly into importing it into a mailing in one step, rather than having to do these things separately.

Another example where we’ve studied and improved usability is in our new templating system. Templating is particularly designed for situations where the overall layout is fixed and you just want to change the text or the images for a specific message. Our new templating system is specifically designed to make it easier to do something that should be easy. The complicated stuff, such as setting up the template, is done ahead of time; the day-to-day use is easier. For example, there’s more drag and drop functionality in the new system, there’s more immediate feedback where you place your image or content, and you can immediately see what the end result will look like.

In our development process, I used a prototype version and had a number of internal people who were new to the feature use it so I could see how easy it was for them. Based on their experience, we identified some areas that were confusing or problematic in the prototype stage that hadn’t been obvious to us when we were designing it, but that you could tell by watching them actually try to figure it out. So, we went back and revised the design to help solve some of those problems.

This is the type of thing I hope to be doing more of with customers who are interested in giving us some of their time—giving them a chance to try out new features and give us their feedback about what in particular they do with ListManager and how this might or might not be a benefit to them.

Tell me about what you really love about your job?

What I really love about my job is the moment of discovery where you realize a way that you can make something better. And often that comes just by watching people and seeing what’s confusing to them, where it all of a sudden hits you – “Wow! That little label is really misleading” or “If the other thing were over here in this section, it would make much more sense.” So, those moments of discovery are what I really enjoy. It’s sort of a mixed bag though because usually it’s something that you missed before and which then becomes so obvious later. But I do love finding those little things that make using the product a lot easier, those little tricks that help people out.

I got involved in Usability in graduate school. I have a Masters degree from the UC Berkeley School of Information, where my emphasis was User Interface Design and Evaluation. From there, I worked for six years in a research group at the University and started here at Lyris in August of last year.

Jonathan is always on the lookout for customers who can give product feedback.  You can help in several ways:

• Talk with Jonathan about how you use ListManager, what tasks are most important to you, and what problems you want solved.
• Participate in a usability test of ListManager, either in-person or online.
• Pilot-test prototypes of new ListManager features before they're released.

Your feedback can improve future versions of ListManager!  If you're interested in participating in a usability test or interview, please contact Jonathan at (800) 768-2929 x1539 or usability@lyris.com.

Contact us at editor@lyris.com to share your ideas. We may include it in the next issue of Making Mail Work!