“It sucks. I hate it. I don't know how to do it” (1).
-- Evelyn Limon, Class of 2011, on her interactions with Banner
-- Evelyn Limon, Class of 2011, on her interactions with Banner
Evelyn Limon is not alone in her frustration with Banner, Brown's new information management software system. Almost all the students and professors who use the multi-million dollar system have found problems with it, as can be seen by the pages and pages of Banner-related letters and editorials that have filled the Brown Daily Herald this year and last, nearly all of them lambasting the system (2). It is noteworthy that the complaints are almost all about the interface of the system; very few focus on the capabilities of the system or on programming bugs. The fact that so many users are paying attention to an interface at all is a sign of poor program design, according to Soren Pold. “Interfaces should be intuitive and user friendly, should not 'get in the way' or otherwise be evident” (3). Interfaces, by their very nature, are limiting, controlling devices. As we cannot communicate directly with machines, we use interfaces to mediate the interactions between humans and computers. The result of this mediation is that users can only perform tasks that an interface allows them to perform. Most of the time, users are oblivious to this imposition of control and instead view software as freeing, an opening up of the seemingly unlimited possibilities of the digital world. When fighting with Banner, however, users do notice the limits being placed on them, and they don't like it.
The first thing one notices upon logging into Banner is its extremely sparse layout. There are no graphics except for an off-center “Brown University” logo at the top of the screen. The vast majority of the display is a blank white expanse. There are just a few lines of left-aligned black Arial text and a few colored links. Those colored links will prove to be the most frustrating feature of the Banner interface. We are forced to navigate through Banner by using its deeply layered, unintuitive, inconsistent tree structure. Our very first choice is between the ambiguously named master categories of “Personal Information” and “Student and Financial Aid.” The distribution of information between these two branches seems completely random. “Citizenship Status” is not found under “Personal Information.” To obtain this personal information, the user must navigate the following exact path: Student and Financial Aid --> Student Records --> View Student Information --> Effective from Spring 2008 --> Citizen. Links back to the previous page are only occasionally present, so if you make a wrong turn, you often must return to the beginning of the tree and start again. Matthew Fuller describes a similar failure in the menus of Microsoft Word: “to many users it is likely that [a certain] option should be so far down a choice tree that it drops off completely” (4).
Unlike in Microsoft Word, there are no flashy wizards or dancing paper clips to point us in the right direction. There is no ability to search for the information or tool we're looking for. When faced with terse menu labels, our only guide are the occasionally present semi-helpful descriptors. Where will “Admissions” lead me? The questionably useful descriptor reads, “Review Existing Applications.” If I follow this link, I am presented with the following message: “To Apply for Admissions, first select the Application Type you want to complete.” There follows a drop-down menu which is completely devoid of choices.
Hitting this type of dead end is an all too familiar occurrence in Banner. It is obvious that the designers did not bother to adjust the Banner experience for the different populations that use the software. For example, I am given the option to access “Graduate Student Financial Aid” and am urged to “Update Marital Status.” Despite its sparse aesthetic, the interface falls prey to an interface weakness usually found in much “busier” layouts: the useless “feature mountain” that Fuller notices in Word (4). The message from Banner is clear: I am not worth its personal attention. Perhaps this should be expected given Banner's URL: selfservice.brown.edu.
Speaking of URLs, a complicating point arises from the fact that Banner is not stand-alone software, it is contained in a web site. However, it doesn't behave like most web sites today. In her article “Reload,” Tara McPherson analyzes essential themes of the interfaces of modern web sites, such as personalization and a sensation she calls “volitional mobility.” “We imagine ourselves navigating sites, following the cursor, the Web... [generates] a feeling of choice, structuring a mobilized liveness which we come to feel we invoke and impact, in the instant, in the click, reload” (5). This type of excitement, momentum, and sense of liveness is utterly missing from Banner. There is no “feeling of choice” as one navigates Banner's incomprehensible tree. Even movement in Banner feels static as the user is shunted from one sparse textual landscape to another.
If indeed a successful interface is an interface you don't notice, Banner is a huge failure. Banner users are painfully aware that their interaction with the machine is being mediated, and not mediated well. Necessarily, control and limits are present in any software, but that doesn't mean that there is no place for user creativity and individuality within a program. As Fuller writes, “Software is reduced too often into being simply a tool for the achievement of pre-existing neutrally-formulated tasks” (4). This, unfortunately, is the case with Banner. By combining an inflexible, unintuitive menu organization with an aesthetically displeasing layout, an impersonal feature set, and a particularly undynamic web site, Banner blasts apart any attempt at creating an illusion of user freedom. Users tend to walk away from their interactions with the Banner interface feeling as if they, the user, have just been used by their computers, instead of the other way around.
(1) Chaz Firestone, “First-years test Banner registration”, The Brown Daily Herald, September 5, 2007.
(2) Editorial Board, “Diamonds and coal”, The Brown Daily Herald, April 26, 2007.
(3) Pold, Soren. "Interface Realisms: The Interface as Aesthetic Form." Postmodern Culture, 15.2 (2005): ??.
(4) Fuller, Matthew. “It looks like you're writing a letter.” Telepolis 3 July 2001.
(5) McPherson, Tara. “Reload: Liveness, Mobility, and the Web.” New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. Ed. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun & Thomas Keenan. Routledge, 2006. 199-208.
