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(Note: It must be “beat up on Amazon day” here in Central Texas, because I just noticed that Russell Wilson over at Dexo Design just posted an article about Amazon’s “can’t sign in from home page” problem.)

After all these years, Amazon still hasn’t fixed that wonky “new customer” / “returning customer” interaction.

For those of us who tab their way through form fields, this one bites me in the butt every time. First I enter my email, then I tab to the password field. Then I enter it, tab to the commit button, and get whacked by the “Oops! You forgot to say you’re a returning customer!” gotcha.

Now I love Amazon like crazy, but this one is such an EASY fix. Why is it still around after all these years?

Once again I had a sub-optimal experience with an interactive voice response (IVR) system.

I called AT&T to check on the status of my service call - we haven’t had dial tone on our land line since mid-Saturday - and the system asked me to input “my ten digit phone number, starting with the area code.” Which I dutifully did. And you know what happened? Nothing.

And more nothing.

A whole bunch of nothing.

After a good 7-8 seconds of waiting I sighed and figured I should probably press “#” or something.

Sure enough, after pressing “#” the system cheerfully confirmed my input (”You entered yadda yadda yadda, is this correct? Press 1 if yes” etc.) and went  about its business.

This is deeply annoying and a bad user experience. From the experience perspective it’s bad because it puts a barrier in front of the caller and leaves her guessing what the system expects from her. And it’s bad from a business perspective because it increases the probability that the caller will zero out of the system and attempt to get transferred to an agent. Which costs the organization money.

So here’s a bit of advice to IVR designers…and know that even as I dispense this advice there are people out there who think about IVR’s and VUI’s 24/7, and whose advice is much more comprehensive. (I should know; I married one of these peeps.)

• For touch-tone input where you know the length of the input, don’t require me to press “#” when finished. Just take the input and move on.
• If you absolutely want (or, doubtfully, *need*) me to press “#” when I’ve finished entering information, then TELL me that you need me to press something. And tell me BEFORE you have me enter the information. Don’t just leave me hanging after I’ve fed you data. It just makes your organization look inattentive and/or stupid.
• If for some bizarre and mysterious reason you can’t see your way clear to telling me what is expected of me up-front, then tell me something like “If you’re finished entering your number, press “#” to finish” when you notice that I haven’t entered anything in a few seconds.

Unless you’re using a screenreader (or a feed reader, duh…) you probably noticed the updated visual design I launched today.

Hope you like it. The blue was starting to get to me.

Shouts to Sandeep Gayke for the Wordpress coding fu. Recommended.

Today I’m posting the presentation and source document from my UPA2009 presentation “A Kit For Building User Experience Teams in R&D Organizations.” The talk went very well; nearly everyone in the (somewhat small but whatever) audience spoke up and contributed.

Happily, when I posted links to this content on Twitter I got about a half-dozen retweets, which for a second-stringer like me is not too shabby. So I think you’ll like this preso and the kit doc, which I’ve released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. BTW you can learn more about this license and what it means at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/. Basically, it means you are welcome to make use of the content as long as you attribute it to me and you share any derivative works under the same license. Which I think is more than fair, and leads to boatloads of good UX karma besides.

And here’s a little bonus: I asked my friend and session chair Lyle Kantrovich (@lkantrov for the Twitterati in the crowd) to take notes on the audience comments and contributions; which he peevishly (kidding! I meant happily) did. I’ve posted his notes below.

Before I link you out to the content you might be interested in the “story behind the story” of this presentation. About 7 or 8 months ago I decided to submit to UPA2009, and scoured my hard drive for something appropriate. I realized that I had created a comprehensive resource while at Sage that detailed how to staff, budget and run a user experience team at a medium-to-large software organization. I figured that this was as good a submission as any. Plus, it really fit my whole “get the organizational structure and processes right” theme. If you’ve been reading me for any length of time you know I have a passion for this area of our field, having trained in social/organizational psychology and built several teams over the past 12 years.

So I submitted a proposal, which went something like this:

This submission provides an overview of a “User Experience Kit” that one user-centered design team developed as an implementation guide for other product teams within their global organization. This kit was first released in mid-2007 within the organization, and has been used in the organization to guide the creation of four additional teams since then. The primary audience for this presentation is people who are able to drive change in their organizations and have the authority to support those changes with allocation of resources.

And it got accepted. Yay.

Of course I put off writing the presentation for months, but not for the usual reason (i.e., pure procrastination). As the day of the talk drew nearer, it became clear to me that the kit itself was a really boring story. And I don’t do boring. I HATE boring. I have high standards for presenting, I do it well, and I was stressing out about how boring this talk was shaping up to be.

That is, until I realized that the more interesting story was *why* I had to create a UX implementation guide/kit, what it said about my then-organization (and other organizations), and what we as a field should be doing about it.

And then everything was alright, I wrote some entertaining slides (keep on the lookout for “Captain Obvious”) and I gave a kick-@ss talk.

So, without further ado, here’s what I covered in my talk:

• The sad truth about the need for a “UX kit”
• A bit about the kit itself
• An extended discussion about launching UX teams and spreading UX in medium to large orgs

As I mentioned above, Lyle was kind enough to capture discussion notes, which I’m including immediately below. However, I recommend looking at the preso first (either in .pdf format or on SlideShare) and getting the kit source doc before reading the discussion notes.

Thanks again Lyle for capturing the audience comments. Here they are:

• Come back with data to show the value of what happened during UX processes.
• Be more of a teacher – share UX  techniques (aka “UX freeze-tag”).
• Be flexible.
• Triage projects early on – to discuss how UX can help.
• Focus on convincing people who can be convinced.
• Have an open-door policy on usability lab.
• Create an internal blog with test highlight clips.
• Conduct a quarterly UI workshop.
• Stay relevant – you know if you’re relevant by # of people coming to you.
• Focus on money/budget & key influencers in the organization.
• UX has to manage a lot of different things at the same time.
• “Customer Experience Bar Raiser Review Board”  - executives that help set UX direction.
• Selfishly share the glory – co-present success stories with clients/partners.
• Find a mentor/peer outside your organization to learn from, commiserate with and share with.
• Find an aspirational (design/product) example – something that reflects what you’d like the UX to look like.

A Kit For Building UX Teams [preso pdf]  [kit doc]  ::  Paul Sherman

I had a really good time presenting and watching others present at Big (D)esign 09 in Dallas two weeks ago. One highlight was getting to hear Norm Cox’s keynote. My presentation was well-received from what I can tell. But I got so busy prepping for UPA2009 that I completely forgot to post my Big (D) presentation.

So, my presentation from Big (D)esign “Usability Or User Experience?” is now available here at my business site (ShermanUX, which I clearly don’t plug enough…). My co-presenter Kaaren Hanson is still working on getting her slides in shape for general consumption.

Tomorrow I’ll follow up with a post linking to my UPA 2009 presentation.

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A few days ago I twittered that Facebook now feels like walking through the midway of a second-rate, shady fair, with barkers and carnies shouting at you from every booth, tent and dark corner.

Here is the screenshot that made me feel like this. It was one pop-up piled onto another…and they weren’t ads, this was actual functionality that I as a user was supposed to attend to and act on.

I’ll be honest with you: this isn’t a tightly-reasoned judgment about the usability of Facebook. This is a from-the-gut reaction from an occasional user: Facebook’s user experience is out of control.

I’m not saying that the whole “Facebook-is-a-platform” thing is wrong; in fact I think opening up to third-party apps was a brilliant way to jumpstart the creation of an ecosystem. But there are consequences to this move. And one of them is that, from the perspective of an occasional user who is loathe to annoy or Facespam his friends, Facebook’s user experience makes me feel like I’m always one step away from falling prey to a social virus masquerading as an app, one that is going to spam my friends and make me look like a bonehead.

Which is why I don’t ever, EVER knowingly poke, join a cause, throw a pie, etc. I say knowingly because it’s highly likely that I’ve inadvertently Facespammed my friends through the simple act of responding to another’s entreaty. Bad on me, I know. Honestly, I have no idea if I’ve done this or not…and that’s a big part of the problem. Facebook (or more accurately Facebook’s apps) doesn’t readily inform me of the consequences of my potential or actual actions.

Which leads me to the issuance of a blanket mea culpa: If I’m connected to you on Facebook and you’ve received something stupid from me, please accept my apologies. And know that from now on, my mental default when it comes to Facebook’s carnival of social-viruses-cum-apps is “no thank you, I’ll pass.”

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Found at the Lowe’s off of Anderson Lane in North Austin.

I asked the cashier how often she has to help customers who pay with a debit or credit card, and she replied that before the design modification she had to help customers more than 75% of the time.

After one of the cashiers made these after-the-fact design mods, cashiers rarely have to assist customers.

I’ve been on this soapbox before, so I’ll let someone else explain why, for the vast majority of personal computer users, Linux sucks.

It’s painful, sad, funny, and infuriating. Bryan Lunduke starts off his presentation at Linux Fest Northwest by *trying* to talk about Linux’s shortcomings in a variety of areas, particularly multi-monitor support, graphics drivers, audio, wifi, etc. Of course, during the first 7-8 minutes Bryan shares the stage with a tech  valiantly trying to get projector video to work.

You’ve heard it from me, but listen to it from a Linux expert. Highly recommended.

Linux Sucks (And What Can Be Done To Fix It) ::  Bryan Lunduke

Craig Tomlin of Useful Usability interviewed me and has posted the interview. Read on for his questions and my answers.

Interview With User Experience Expert Paul J. Sherman :: Useful Usability

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I don’t know if this happens to all y’all, but I always have a hell of a time figuring out which button *opens* the elevator doors and which button *closes* them.

It happens every time I get in an elevator. Invariably, after I’ve already boarded someone runs to make the elevator before the doors close completely. As soon as I see them, I try to be helpful. I go to hit the “door open” button, hesitate, shift my gaze from one to the other in a semi-panic, and then jab the WRONG button.

I think I’ve figured out why I have such trouble discriminating between the two icons: the “door open” button (on the left in this picture) looks to me like the image of a *closed* door, and for some reason the action implied by the outward-facing arrows just doesn’t register with me.

Similarly, the “door close” button on the right, with its two strong vertical lines defining the outer edge of the icon, just seems to me to look like two open doors. And like the other image, I just don’t grok the arrows in the picture.

Is it just me that has this particular problem, or is does this design confuse others as well?

Here’s a pointer to a very short article I wrote for my UX friends in Hong Kong at Apogee.

Usability Testing Does Not Equal A Good User Experience ::  Paul Sherman via Apogee

Long-time readers may recall that I’m the project manager for the Usability Professionals’ Association User Experience Salary Survey. This will be the third time I’ve run the survey since 2005.

It’s the preeminent salary survey in our field. Many hiring managers depend on it and a number of industry analysts report on it.

I’m encouraging my readers to take the survey. There’s a lot in it for you. For one, non-members of UPA can download an all-comers version of the survey, and it’s still got loads of useful data. UPA members get a more extensive version of the survey, with lots more detailed analyses.

I just checked the survey site and we’re up to 1,350 responses, which means we’ll almost definitely exceed the response from 2007. Join the crowd, help out your field - and your career - and take the survey now.

Of course it’s going to take me and the volunteer crew a few weeks to crunch the data write the report, but it should be available by early June. Check back here or at the UPA site in a month to get your copy.

If you want to look at the previous survey, follow this link to download it from the UPA site.

The UPA 2009 UX Salary Survey ::  Usability Professionals’ Association

My dear Apple Mail….you know I love you, don’t you? Yes, you caught me on the rebound, right after my breakup with Outlook. And you *know* how much I was invested in that long-term relationship. That was a difficult, difficult breakup. And that whole flirtation with Gmail a few years ago…let’s just say that was a fling, an overreaction to my newfound freedom from the shackles of a desktop-bound email client.

In my heart I knew that I could never settle down with a web-only email client. And I’m glad you were there for me when I came to my senses.

Apple Mail,  I really believe that our relationship is built on solid foundations. I don’t just love you for your “not-Outlookness”; I love you for you.

So that’s why I want you to know that when I offer you this bit of constructive criticism, know that I do it from a place of love and mutual respect.

So here goes: would it be too much trouble, Apple Mail, if when I clicked on a .zip attachment, you told me where you had expanded it? It would be great to know where my files were. That’s all.

I know that part of a successful relationship is overlooking your partner’s little failings. But for some reason I can’t let this one go. It just sticks in my craw. So I thought it was better - and *healthier* - if I spoke up now, before it built up into a hardened core of resentment and started affecting our relationship.

I know I’m far from perfect myself. You probably have a laundry list of complaints about me. I have too many folders, for one. And I can almost hear you thinking “Why don’t you zero your inbox every day?” I know, I know. I’m working on these things. I’m doing the best I can, trying to be the best me I can be.

So let’s just make a mutual agreement to keep working on our individual issues, for the good of our relationship. How does that sound to you, Apple Mail?

Just noticed a tweet pointing out this designer’s Flash homepage.

Creative? Undoubtedly yes. Also annoying and a bit nauseating.

I’m not going to get on a usability soapbox about this. It speaks for itself. And it  speaks a mixed message.

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Hey, what can I say. Sometimes I’m on a tear and I write lofty big-picture conceptual pieces on the state of the user experience industry. Other times I can crank out an incisive, perceptive screed that absolutely devastates a design.

And still other times, you get this: a post about a garden variety, seen-it-before bad design. In this case, you’ve got your classic chromostereopsis issue, where the red-text-on-blue-background renders the text shimmery and hard to read.

And dare I say it…this isn’t exactly the most attractive landing page on the Interwebs. All told, it just reeks of “we’re too cheap to hire a designer, and we’re doing well enough that we don’t care.”

Here’s another guest post from Andreas Bossard, who you may remember did a well-received post last year on the Sony Ericsson PC Suite. Thanks for contributing again Andreas! -Paul

- - - -

How fast things change. I wanted to write about a workflow in LinkedIn, which had annoyed me for months, but they have fixed it in the meantime, before I could publish the article. So anyhow, here is the article. -Andreas

One of the most used functions in Linkedin is to add a new user to your own network. If you don’t know the e-mail address of the person or other personal information you can choose “I don’t know xy”.

Then the user can enter a personal message and click the “Send Invitation” button. Which opens the following message:

The only way to proceed is to click “Go back to xy’s profile”. The personal message is lost! You stepped into the Linkedin user trap.

Of course, according to the Linkedin policy you’re supposed to add only contacts you personally know, but since you can bypass this rule anyhow by selecting “Friend”, it’s illusory to educate the user by punishing him to re-enter a personal message.

There are two solutions to avoid this unpleasant interaction:
- A “Close”-Button instead of a “Go back to xy’s profile”-button
- Pop up the message immediately, when the user selects “I don’t know xy”, instead of giving him the feeling, that he now can enter a personal message for that person.

As we can see, they solved it with a “Cancel” link.

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Not much to say about this little guy, except that it reduces peoples’ trust in a website when these types of error messages show up.

I know, I get it: this type of message is helpful to the programmer. But does it have to be exposed to the customer?

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Here’s the thing, Intuit: that *is* a valid email address. Gmail has this really neat feature where you can append “+[foo]” to your email handle, and it’ll still get delivered to your regular gmail address.

Why would I want to do this? It’s a great way to filter email, for one. You can simply set up a filter that searches for the “+” strings, dropping them neatly into different folders on your desktop email client.

More importantly, using the “+” is a great way to figure out who’s selling your email address to spammers. If all of a sudden you find that you’re receiving lots more spam to your “+badcompany” address, you can be sure that Badco has sold your address to spammers and other ne’r-do-wells.

So is that what companies are afraid of? Are they afraid that they’ll be found out as a company that aids and abets spammers?

Or is it simply that their programmers are too lazy to write accurate validation code for their web forms?

Caveat: I’m not calling out Intuit exclusively on this. Intuit’s a great company and I personally use several of their products. This has happened to me at many other sites.

Maybe I should start my own little “accept the plus sign” Internet meme…hey, everybody has their 15 minutes…

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This is a great example of how poor service design drove an unnecessary support call.

I received my TxTag toll tag in the mail, along with a TxTag starter kit. (TxTag is the Texas version of an EZPass toll tag thingy.)

I read through the welcome letter, looked at the card, and noticed something: the number on the tag did NOT match the number on the welcome letter. My first thought: oh crap, they sent me the wrong tag, and now someone else has MY tag..and is probably racking up toll charges with it!

Great, I thought. Now I have to call the Texas DoT and chase down a solution to this problem. So I picked up the phone, slogged through their barely-tolerable IVR, and finally got a human. When I explained my issue to the rep, he said that everything was actually fine.

It turns out that everyone is actually assigned a *tolltag* number and an *account* number…and even though they both start with a (very Bond-esque) 007, they do not have to match.

Well great…so I basically wasted about 20 minutes feeling like my account was screwed up and figuring out how to contact the agency, only to find out that their poor service design was at fault.

This is not the right way to kick off a relationship with a new customer.

My latest column at UXmatters was just posted. It’s part 2 of my December article “The User Experience of Enterprise Software Matters.” Again, my main points are:

Organizations making enterprise-level technology selections often do an incomplete job of assessing the real-world effects of the new applications they impose on their staffs’ workflows and processes.

and:

The technology selection process typically neglects methods of evaluating the goodness of fit between the enterprise users’ processes, workflow, and needs, and the vendors’ solutions. Organizations could avoid many a rollout disaster simply by testing the usability of vendors’ solutions with employees during a trial phase.

In this part 2, I pick up where part 1’s “j’accuse” leaves off, and actually provide a framework for enterprise user experience practitioners to employ when trying to get involved in the assessment of enterprise software under consideration by their organization. Rather than recap it all here, I’ll just point you to the article.

The User Experience of Enterprise Software Matters ::  Paul Sherman