Most mistakes are caused by human errors, Google user experience team understands this well and last week announced the launching of a Gmail Labs feature called "Undo Send," that lets users abort the sending of any Gmail message--if you use it within 5 seconds. Undo Send lets you snatch an email back before it gets sent out. Not sure it allows user to increase what’s the lag period, I think 2 minutes works for me better.
Other error forgiving features already available include Gmail's capability to watch for words like "attached" in the body of an e-mail and to check you if you’ve actually included the your attachment; and a feature in Google Apps (the corporate version of Gmail) that puts orange borders around the names of e-mail recipients that are not inside your company--to alert you to not send confidential information where you shouldn't. This is definitely useful as we often made mistakes of sending it to the wrong person because of auto-fill address.
I think the next enhancement should be scanning for “words” that show strong negative emotions as we know we often regret what we said when we were angry. So the feature will hold your email for 15 minutes and ask you if you really want to change these words or suggest some alternatives.
I think the notion of ”undo” is a very interesting one, lawyers understand this notion very well when they write contracts. There are so many decisions in our everyday life that we wish we could ‘undo’. How often we press the wrong button while we configure a new device and we have to start over again or worst got stuck because there’s no way out. We (humans) are both the strongest and weakest variable in any complex system. The strongest because we are versatile, adaptable, learning beings equipped with the most advanced and fuzzy-logic computer—our brains. The weakest because along with our adaptability is our variability. For the same reasons that even extensive planning, we also err in many situations where we have never erred before. Just look at our current mess in the financial system.
We are often reminder that human errors cannot be avoided. And all too often human error is an explanation, it is never a solution, yet we most often go forward shaking our heads at the sad but inevitable fallibility of people or, better yet, with a deceptively comforting bandage fix and a promise that it will never happen again. Bandage after bandage, eventually they begin to wear out and the vivid lesson grows dim with time, and we set ourselves up for another error. Overtime these errors pile up to point until it becomes system failure.
The whole idea of human factor is to address human weaknesses while facilitating human strengths. Human factor is not just making better switches and safer devices; it is about compensating for human errors. And if possible allow us to undo our mistakes. Forgiving user experiences are not easy to come up these days. The world can use more human factor specialists.
Imagine a group of human factor specialist sitting together and rethink the following three things:
Undoing Credit Card Purchases. From how we shop and how we much we decide to pay for each statement period. They could easily come up with dozens of way to “undo” our mistakes. I think many people can use an “undo” function in shopping with a credit card. Lots of untapped innovation opportunities here.
Undoing Voicemail. Can you imagine if we could simply go back and change the voice mail we left before they pick up the message? How often you wished you’d done a better job when you left a message for a future employer, prospect or ex-girlfriends? How come no one thought of that feature?
Undoing Marriage. There must be a better way to “undo” this than divorce. Human Factor folks will find better solutions than the lawyers. The Google idea may be applicable here, how about 60 days lag period that allows either side to opt out?
