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Usability is expectation

My boxers need a redesign. Either that or I need to find a different brand of undergarments.

Today, for the seventeenth time this year I showed up to work with my underwear on backward. I discovered this 45 seconds before an important meeting, when I rushed to the bathroom to try a preemptive #1.

Do you know how confusing it is, as a man, to unzip your fly and find your equipment, um, unreachable? It’s so disorienting that it takes a while to figure out what’s wrong, and you stand there searching around in your pants for a cotton flap that just isn’t there.

The other men in the bathroom notice. Their respect for you drops reflexively. Because a man who can’t sucessfuly pee at a urinal without doing a both-hands-down-his-trousers jitterbug deserves ostracization. He is cut off from the pack. A loser.

But I am not a loser. I can urinate with the best of them (one-handed, button-flied, etc.). It’s just that the design of my boxers conflicts with a decades-long established usability standard.

And that is this: when it comes to clothing, and especially to boxer-briefs, the tag goes in the back.

You see, the geniuses at Nautica decided that on this particular model of underwear the tag (washing directions and all) would be in the front.

That means when I wake up, pseudo-comatose, at 6:45 in the morning, and put on some fresh undies, chances are I’m going to put them on wrong.

Because the user interface completely ignores my expectations.

After 24 years (give or take a few diaper-years) of using the product, I’ve come to expect the tag in the back. That, in turn, lets me know where to put my right and left legs, and ensures that I won’t get stuck in the handicapped stall of a restroom 15 seconds before a boss-meeting performing an acrobatic switcheroo while standing on the toilet seat so nobody sees me.

Usability testing would show that my boxers are not intuitive. Consultants would be hired, strategies devised, someone would put in a RFI and someone else would create PowerPoint presentation (imagine the clip art on that one!).

And all of this would lead to the conclusion that, while putting the tag in the front might look nice, and it might even have some advantages (easier to read, etc.), it just doesn’t line up with people’s expectations of how a piece of underwear should work.

So what does that mean?

Usability is impossible unless you understand your users’ expectations. That doesn’t mean you can never innovate, or do an interface that works differently from what’s been done in the past. It just means if you’re going to do that, it has to be a conscious, considered choice, with an understanding of what the consequences might be.

And if you know your design choice goes against the established grain, realize that you’ll have to educate your users. The tag in the front might be a great idea, but if you don’t explain it to me, I’ll just keep putting my damned underwear on backwards and thinking about how next time, I’m going to buy a more intuitive brand of boxers.

How could Nautica have done better? First, make the tag stand out more (it’s a dull blue now). Make it bright red, and big. Then, add a nice bold arrow pointing forward.

Don’t be afraid to make bold design choices, especially if you really think it’s worth it.

But understand your users, and help bridge the gap between their expectations and your innovative design.

PS - Yes, it has occured to me that I’m just unskilled at putting on underwear and this is really more user error than design flaw. But this is my post and I don’t intend to humiliate or embarrass myself in it. Feel free to do that in the comments.