Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide you with an in-depth description of my experience installing Norton AntiVirus 2002. Several images and descriptions are included, along with numerous comments about the usability associated with the installation process. 

Introduction

This is a highly detailed description of my installation of Norton AntiVirus 2002. I've written it in sequential fashion so that you can pretty much follow along with my progress, from start to finish. It took me 87 minutes to get the software installed and running. 

I do not discuss how the software works. Instead, this article is strictly about my software installation experience. I've included 23 images in this article, which might be overkill for some people, but I felt it was important to show you what I saw. In this way we can experience the pain of the installation together. I've also included several important comments about the usability of the installation process. 

In effect, this is a case study about the usability of the software installation process for a very popular software product. Hopefully some developers will read this article and find ways to improve the process. Similarly, I hope that the business leaders at Symantec and the other software companies read this and choose to make improvements. 

Key Points

In some ways this was a typical installation and in other ways it was not. No matter how you perceive the process outlined above, there are several lessons to be learned:

• Installation can take a lot of time. This took 87 minutes of dedicated time. That is a lot of time! Users are sacrificing hours and hours of their time to install software. I'm estimating that Norton's users have spent nearly 1 billion minutes doing installations (87 minutes x 100 million users). This is a serious issue. It's a multi-million dollar problem.
   
• Users are often forced to reboot their machines many times. This is painful. Some machines can take 5-10 minutes per reboot. Think of how much time users must wait! Everyone hates to reboot. Being forced to rebooting 4 times is insane. 
   
• Users are often given very little control over the installation process. The End User License Agreement (EULA) stinks, the prompt boxes offer little information, and users are generally forced to obey the installation software. The structure is sometimes good and occasionally leads to fewer problems, but users are powerless.
   
• Users are not given good information about the installation process. What is the software doing? Where are the files going? What are they installing exactly? It is often a big mystery. Many users really need to know what is going on. Of course, the rule should be that the installation program should give you a lot of decision making information or they should hide the information. When information is there, but it is ambiguous, users are punished. Decisions are difficult.
   
• Unfortunately, users are forced to buy software that is painful to install. I needed to update my virus protection and I needed to get new software. While many people say that this is the best antivirus software available, that doesn't mean that it offers the best installation process. (Think about that.) Perhaps other antivirus companies have a better installation processes, although I really doubt it. 
   
• Reports like this  one are important because they put focus on the total cost of owning software. Many software vendors only talk about the software as it operates, not how to get the software installed or uninstalled. These other activities take time and energy. This should be important to companies also because their support lines get hit when installations are difficult, even when their software is flawless.

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