Fast-growing Tuitive seeks to put unintuitive programmers in back seat of software, Web design

Call center software and e-commerce sites have made many an Indiana tech firm a name and a bundle. The downside is they
often leave end users scratching their heads—or worse.

Jonathan Arnold sees big business in cleaning up the confusion caused by programmers, who often
put features and functionality ahead of making their product intuitive to use.

Arnold’s seven-person firm, Tuitive, is earning
a name for itself by making Web sites, software and digital device interfaces more intuitive for the
end users. Tuitive’s pitch is that happier users will drive more sales for those companies.

Tuitive’s approach is paying off for Crowe Horwath, a public accounting and consulting firm that
just won a $1.3 million state contract. Crowe hired Tuitive as a subcontractor to help it win the Web
portal contract with the Indiana Department of Education. The portal will allow teachers to create and
manage lesson plans and curriculum in a new way.

The IDOE cited Crowe’s "excellent effort around user interface design and human/computer interaction."
Tuitive will analyze the ways teachers interact with computers to help Crowe develop the most user-friendly
portal design.

"We
don’t want them to have to change their life to use the technology," said Arnold, whose firm is housed in a former IPS
school at 338 S. Arlington Ave., in Irvington.

Arnold’s firm has embraced the concept of "user-centered design," which has strong momentum
on the coasts. The philosophy involves painstaking analysis, starting early in the design process, of
how users will interact with technology. Even the mood of the user is anticipated.

"We give them a name. We give them a face.
It’s empathy," said Arnold, 36, an Anderson University graduate.

That’s in contrast to the usual approach of rustling up the most technically proficient programmers,
who often are narrowly focused on maximizing features or capabilities. That can leave a Web site cluttered
with buttons, including many that are rarely clicked, that overwhelm the user.

"It’s never weighted as to how it’s going
to be used," Arnold said. "Human beings don’t tend to think in the same way as programmers."

He argues that poor design takes its toll in
the business world, where needlessly tedious software can erode job satisfaction of workers who use it
on a repetitive basis. That can contribute to higher job turnover and additional training and support
costs.

Tuitive has lassoed
a number of local contracts, including Bluefish Wireless, which provides wireless phone management services
for 20 Fortune 100 companies. It made an e-commerce portal easier to use by eliminating some confusing features, said Joshua
Garrett, IT director at Bluefish. "We were able to convert more eyeballs to purchases."

Tuitive’s first big out-of-state job was for Flixter.com,
a movie-centric social networking site.

The business is still small—still measured in how many walls it’s had to knock out in the former school to accommodate
growth. Sales are projected to approach $1 million this year from about $600,000 in 2008.

Arnold’s niche business is the result of years
of observation. In the 1990s, he worked for an Indianapolis insurance company, keeping its computers
running and trying to prevent employees from dropping dead of despair from the software of the day. He
soon created a Web site for the company.

In 1998, he formed his own Web design firm, Descom, the predecessor of Tuitive. Some hired him after they were well along
in design, having already blown much of their budgets after running into problems.

"It led to some soul-searching on how technically [a site] was developed," he said.

About three years ago, Arnold became a full
disciple of the user-centered design philosophy. He surrounded himself with like-minded believers such
as Travis Smith, who majored in psychology in college. Smith was incredulous that the radio on his new Subaru
had no obvious button to push for an iPod connection. He boiled down the procedures into a label and pasted it to the radio
faceplate. While he was at it, Smith put new labels over other buttons, the way he thought Subaru should have done it to make
things more understandable.

"It is only a real feature if it is a usable feature! I could probably make toast on the engine block, too, but Subaru
does not advertise toaster functionality," Smith writes on the company’s blog.

Arnold, meanwhile, is obsessed over a space
heater.

To meetings with
prospective clients he lugs a heater that would appear to be a gem of industrial design, with its buttons
symmetrically arrayed. Go ahead, he asks—which one would you push to turn it on?

No, it’s not the large button as one would think—that’s the "turbo" heat button.
The control panel was probably designed for the convenience of engineers and for manufacturing ease,
he said.

"Why should
we even need to read labels? Why should we have to think about it? One of my sayings is, ‘Don’t make me think.’"