Here’s a server error page that makes you feel good about the company or service.
It humanizes them. By that, I mean that it makes you feel that they have a sense of humor – and humility – and hopefully gets you to realize that there’s people behind the service; it’s not just a faceless corporation.
That’s a good thing.
This is just one of those little details that distinguishes companies who really keep on top of every aspect of the user experience from those that don’t.
Plus, I really like Slideshare.net. I keep all my best slide content there. So there’s that.
Last week I gave a presentation at the Online Marketing Summit 2010 about website usability and conversion. I used the famous Ling’s Cars site as an example of conversion, arguing that “unique” (read: ugly) design coupled with “stealthy” usability can facilitate conversion.
You can check out the preso here, or go to Slideshare to see it in full-screen glory. Bonus points to anyone who reports back with the page number of my “Captain Obvious” reference. I hope you enjoy the presentation. Please feel free to email or comment with questions, refutations, counter-arguments, and the like. -Paul
Janet Six over at UXmatters posted her latest “Ask UXmatters” article. This time it’s about building UX teams. She featured a bunch of my thinking on how to prepare and change organizational cultures for more effective user experience implementations. Which was gratifying. I’m glad the field finds my content useful. (You can always read that [...]
(Note: Here’s another guest post from Andreas Bossard, proprietor of the blog News of the Future and author of several excellent UsabilityBlog posts. Today he talks about his travails with the Paypal help system. Enjoy. -Paul)
I wanted to get help in Paypal, that’s why I clicked on “Help” and expected to see the help section [...]
I thought I did a decent job presenting about strategic user experience at Usability Marathon 2. I just remembered that they posted the webinar slides (and voice as well, if I’m not mistaken).
So here it is. I received good feedback on it. YMMV. But I hope you enjoy it.
Usability…Or Strategic User Experience?
View more presentations from [...]
Click to view full size
Originally uploaded by Matthew Oliphant
Just saw this via Matthew Oliphant’s Flickr collection. I have two unrelated observations to share with the Twitterverse / blogosphere / interwebz:
1. Hey, at least they’re sayin’ so.
2. “Chromed Bird” makes me think of Maltese Falcon.
Look, no one said I had to be 100% on-point and all [...]
Yesterday I posted about a discussion Jared Spool and I had about the import of the iPad.
I made the claim that the handset would continue to be the innovation driver, and as soon as it had the computing horsepower to drive a large LCD monitor and run productivity applications, it would be the primary and [...]
I really thought I’d be able to resist bloviating about the iPad. But then I read this tweet from Jared Spool:
Is nobody else talking about the iPad’s interesting facet? It brings the gap between phone & computer manufacturers closer together.
It got pushed to his Facebook as an update, where I flippantly responded:
And that’s a good [...]
Here’s the thing about LingsCars.com: It works.
Yes, it’s ugly as sin, an affront to the design sensibilities of practically everyone.
And this picture doesn’t do it justice. Go to the site, you need to see the seizure-inducing blinky-blinky.
But it works. It really does.
Let’s unpack that a bit. What do I mean when [...]
Old-school readers of UsabilityBlog may remember my (ranty but well-reasoned) diatribe against EULA’s and how they’re presented in software user interfaces. (Also check out my follow-up posts here and here.)
This picture I took the other day reminded me how easy it is to corrupt and degrade the user experience with obtuse [...]
Check it out now. Today. Go on, you know you want to. And here’s the scary thing: IT’S STILL BEING UPDATED REGULARLY. How scary/awesome is that?
Here’s the URL: http://www.Havenworks.com.
I should also post Ling’s Cars. I’ll get around to that this week. In the meantime, enjoy HavenWorks, and try not to have [...]
This post grew out of my response to a question on the IxDA discussion board. Russ Wilson, fellow Austinite, UX VP at a large software co., and all-around good guy, posed this question:
I’d like to get people’s opinions on the value of “company-wide” design guidelines (for software applications/websites)?In theory, design guidelines could help to remove [...]
Y’know that last post of mine where I pointed out that I didn’t know what to do with the “Yes” button?
I discovered what that button does. It’s probably the second-worst case scenario. (First worst-case scenario is that it makes you lose data or a setting you’ve selected.)
It CLOSES THE WINDOW.
Classic. You just can’t make up [...]
I just took this screenshot this morning. Here’s the situation: I’d just installed new trackpad drivers on one of my Windows laptops. This laptop’s trackpad is a bit hinky, so I knew I wanted to get into the trackpad’s control panel and make some settings changes.
So I clicked the trackpad’s system [...]
This is just a quick pointer to my latest UXmatters column, which is a follow-on to my article from September about the perils and pitfalls of testing your own designs.
In this follow-on, I revisited some of my more bombastic points about testing one’s own designs. Thanks to some excellent comments by several colleagues (and colleague-slash-wife), [...]
Not exactly a usability post. But still worth a chortle. Or maybe a guffaw. OK, how about a titter? No? Alrighty then.
And while we’re talking Amazon.com, I need to post someday soon about how fantastically great Amazon’s “Amazon Recommends” marketing emails are. They rope me in more than I’d like to [...]
So I was looking for a good price on a little Honda I’m interested in. I stumbled across a site that pings all the dealers in my vicinity for their best price.
One thing I do when I’m not sure of how trustworthy a site is…is use my initials instead of my [...]
Illustrated in this simple dialog are three common errors that software producers make:
Assuming that users know what the heck their acronyms mean,
Not helping users understand the implications of selecting/not selecting an option, and
Using a single selection control to perform what appears to be a combination of two actions (e.g., [...]
Really? I need permission from EVERYONE?
Well OK, but I think that’s going to take awhile…can you give me some time to get everyone’s permission? Or do you need to know right now?
Fine, be that way.
