Tag Archives: user experience

There’s snow need to worry!

20 Dec

Call me a cynic but I’m a little skeptical of most companies social media policies; usually they’re just another route for further direct marketing.

However, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the use to which Blue Star busses and First Buses Hampshire have put their Facebook pages.

Throughout the recent cold snap both have used their accounts to give frequent updates about the road conditions and changes to bus routes affected by snow.

The staff have been manning the pages throughout the day and night, giving early warning of all changes and delays.

As a regular public transport user I’ve been very grateful, ensuring that I can get to where I need to go without much fuss.

Using social media platforms such as Facebook and twitter to support your customers, respond to queries and provide transparency is real world usability, straight out of book.

Anyone familiar with Jakob Neilsen’s usability heuristics will recognise the following:

1. Visibility of system status

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

2. Match between system and the real world

The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

3. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

4. Help and documentation

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

The interesting thing is that the system, in this case is complex, made up of the delivery platform, in office business representatives, bus drivers and customers.

The platform is being used as an agent to ensure that the real word system notifies and supports its users in completing their tasks.

For a usability geek, the snow has been a lot of fun :)

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Matching the offline shopping experience with an established web presence

7 Apr
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5718960&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
via adaptivepath.com

About the Mission Bicycle Project

Mission Bicycle was started in 2008 as a online side business of web development consultancy Chapter Three. With strong initial sales, Mission Bicycle looked to open a flagship retail space in the Mission District of San Francisco and secured a lease on 766 Valencia St. in February 2009. With three months to open the store, Mission Bicycle partnered with Grayscale to design the interior space and Adaptive Path to develop product selection and purchase experience and signage system. The store opened in May 2009 resulting in a 50%+ net increase in bicycle sales for the company.

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Don Norman on the Design of Future Things, April 2008

7 Apr
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf

via vimeo.com

Don Norman discussing the Design of Future things – April 2008 at the IIT Institute of design.

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Don Norman Interview – UX Week 2009

7 Apr
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2963837&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=59a5d1&fullscreen=1

via uxdesign.com

Video from February 2009 – Don Norman Interviewed by Peter Merholz of Adaptive path.

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Bad UI – Bit.ly sign up form

16 Mar

Which form should I fill in to sign up to bit.ly?

Okay it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the form on the left is the actual sign-up form. BUT when I was presented with the page I was immediately drawn to the “Tweet from bit.ly” pannel. I though, perhaps I could use my Twitter credentials to sign up.

Being the curious guy that I am, I decided, to just enter my details and click sign up. That when I got the customary error traps.

Hey Bit.ly how about doing a Five Second Test? I’m certain you’ll find the visual prominence of the “Tweet from bit.ly” panel overpowers your goal of getting people to sign-up to the service.

My advice

Move it to after the sign up process is complete or at the very least, reverse out the panels.

P.s. Why would I actually want to tweet from bit.ly what’s the sell?

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Bad UI – Which icon is delete?

16 Mar

Web outlook task bar showing X and recycle bin for delete

Which icon should I click to delete a selected message?

  • If you chose the ‘X’ then yep you’re way smarter then I am :)
  • If you chose the Recycle bin then you’ve just emptied your deleted messages.

Two function on the page which do very different things but both use a standard visual vocabulary for the delete function. On the messages screen what is the most important function? To delete a message or to empty your delete messages folder?

Don’t make this mistake.

Think about the context a task exists in and simplify your UI to match the users mental model. Global actions should be reserved for an area of the screen which is away from contextual, task based actions.

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Beginners, Experts and Perpetual Intermediates – User Typology

26 Feb

In Twitter usability: Is it really a problem? I argued that the “usability” issues experienced by novice users aren’t worth worrying about as user is only a beginner for a fleeting period of time.

I’d like to expand on that slightly as the concept of designing for Beginners, Expert and Intermediate users. This topic preoccupies most people who design interactive systems, Who are our target audience? What are their competencies?, and if we don’t understand the nature of the users over the long term we are liable to design in problems without even realising it.

As Alan Cooper writes in both About Face and The Inmates are Running the Asylum it’s the Perpetual Intermediate who you want to keep in mind.

The experience level of people performing and activity tends, like most population distributions, to follow the classic statistical bell curve. For almost any activity requiring knowledge or skill, if we graph number of people against skill level, a relatively small number of beginners are on the left side, a few experts are on the right and the majority – intermediate users — are in the centre.

He goes on to say

Statistics don’t tell the whole story, however… the beginners do not remain beginners for very long. The difficulty of maintaing a high level of expertise also means that experts come and go rapidly, but beginners change even more rapidly.

The occupants of the beginner end of the curve will either migrate into the centre bulge of intermediates, or they will drop off the graph altogether and find some product or activity in which they can migrate to intermediacy.

If this is true then a good user interface must enable beginners to make a smooth transition into intermediacy. It must enable them to quickly understand the features and scope of the application while not restricting the expert user, who demand faster access to functionality they use most in their work. However, a really good user interface must dedicate most of its efforts to meetings the need and objectives of the perpetual intermediates.

As cooper says

Perpetual intermediates need access to tools. They don’t need scope and purpose explained to them because they already know these things [ED: they learn that in the beginners stage]. Perpetual intermediates will be establishing the functions that they use with regularity and those that they only use rarely. The user will demand that the tools in their working set are place front and centre in the UI, easy to find and easy to remember.

If you’re interested in find out more about this, I’d strongly recommend reading The inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper for a good UX orientated view. If you want in a more technical book then read About Face 3: The essentials of interaction design also by Alan Cooper  (they both cover pretty much the same ground with About Face going into slightly more technical detail).

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[UX Technique] Wireflows Diagram

24 Feb
Media_httpnformcatrad_jfbse
Image credit: nForn’s UX Trading Cards series

A Wireflow is a blend of a wireframe and a user journey.

By all accounts it’s a little bit labour intensive. Although I assume that will depend on how detailed the wirefame aspect of your diagram is but it strikes me as a great way of helping clients to visualise the user journey in context of the screen layouts.

Other resources

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Twitter usability – is it really a problem?

27 Jan

An interesting essay entitled “Experiment: Twitter Usability – A new users first experience” has been bubbling up on my twitter timeline today. It raises some interesting usability issues on twitter particularly regarding new users.

On face value these could be a problem but they aren’t and let me tell you why.

Firstly, the “new user” phase of someone’s engagement with twitter is fleeting. You are only a new user for the time it takes you to:

  • Sign up
  • Post a tweet
  • Follow someone for the first time.

From then on out you are a user. You want to keep up to date with your friends, let people know what your up to and to start building up your network.

Over time and through accretion you become an expert user. You learn to optimise your typing style to adapt to the restrictive 140 character limit, you use a short hand vocabulary that would make doctors seem as if they are speaking in plain english.

Twitter understands this and that’s why the site is designed to support users and expert users. Sure, they could make the sign up for a little easier but you’ll only fill that in once. You will however use the update control, and timeline as your primary view of the twitter platform constantly from then on out. Which is why they are the most prominent features of the site and easy to learn.

Here’s the rub – twitter is a messaging platform, one which most people engage with through other tools. A quick scan down my timeline show that no one is using the website to post messages. They are using: Tweet Deck, Tweetie, HTC Peep and countless other clients. So the “clunky” nature of the website is irrelevant to most users of the twitter platform.

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Design of everyday things, Second Edition

14 Jan

Design of Everyday Things, Second Edition. Once Sociable Design is in its final form, I intend to update DOET (as DOET-2). The principles have not changed, but the examples in DOET-1 are stale.The world of everyday things changed and so too have I. I have learned much since DOET-1 that will inform, modify, and broaden the discussions. I’m looking for good examples.They have to be timeless. I want DOET-2 to last 20 – 30 years, so any examples have to be things that will be relevant decades from now. For example, suppose I would have had photographs of teletype machines in DOET-1: who today knows what they are? Doors never get obsolete.)

via jnd.org

How very cool :)

Not only will there be a second edition but we can suggest example for Don to include.

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