Blogging about user experience, usability, and design
From the category archives:
This is a good example of how to tell people about new or improved features. Yes, it’s a bit intrusive, but it’s easy to dismiss if you don’t want to look at it.
The dialog is clearly designed to entice me to investigate LinkedIn’s improvements. This is a good, if not-so-subtle pattern for notifying users about changes to your website.
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It’s all about context, yes. Some immensely complex UI’s are necessary in certain domains, for certain workflows. But sometimes you can just look at a UI and know that, for whoever its intended users are, it’s a horrible failure.
So it is with this Ferrari steering wheel. Via FastCompany and @JasonSpector, look upon the horror and of course watch the vid. Bonus points for the headline “Ferrari F10 Steering Wheel Looks Like a Robot Barfed on It.”
Here’s the vid about it too. Enjoy.
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Yes, the world has another after-the-fact design modification to add to its motley collection of hacks, patches, fixes, taped-on signs, and Sharpie-improved user interfaces.
Found at the Kent State University bookstore, where I ducked in to buy an umbrella during a downpour. I was there to do some customer observations for a product line I’m working on, and had to walk between buildings in a solid rain storm.
Notice the attention to detail on the mod. The counter clerks must’ve really been tired of walking people through the transaction flow. They even highlighted “BLUE LIGHTS” with blue marker, just so people would get the message.
This is nine kinds of awesome.
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I know, I know, this is how “The Design of Everyday Things” starts. The difference is that I found this instance at my local bank. The whole “Wells Fargo experience” is chock full of questionable design actually; I’ve struggled with elements of their web site, physical branch locations and ATM’s.
But it’s always good to catch one of those classic design gotchas in the wild, as it were. So look upon it and know that as long as there are problems out there like this, there’s work for those of us who try to make the world a more user-friendly place.
And yes, every time I leave the bank I pull the damn handle. And that’s because physical affordances are more salient and engaging than labels and signs.
I asked the bank employees how many people pull instead of push, and they just sort of heaved a collective sigh. I took that to mean “a lot”.
I’ve gotten more UX mileage out of that bank than you’d believe…
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…and by some, I mean two. Three if you include the Slideshare pic from a few days ago, which I’ll lazily repost below.
First, here’s one from Mr. Tweet:
Cute, funny, capitalizes on a well-known existing meme. It’s not too objectionable, meaning it’s not going to piss anyone off in a major way. Overall, a good user experience in a crappy situation (i.e., you’ve tried to browse somewhere or save something, and it didn’t work.)
Next, here’s an RSVP and profile “completer” from eVite:
The context is different of course; this isn’t an error message. I get the fact that they’re trying to help people learn more about each other. Still, the “If I found 1K” question is whimsical but bothersome.
I don’t know why it sticks in my craw like it does; maybe it’s that there’s a disconnect between their intent (connecting people and helping people know each other better) and the execution. I guess it’s just that knowing the answer to that question is a crappy way to build connections between people.
So here’s my bottom line: Mr. Tweet w00t, eVite fail.
Oh, and here’s the Slideshare error message that I liked:
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This my friends is how you increase trust and confidence through your UI.
In this case, it’s Travelocity that has done this, with the simple addition of some content about disclosing information before the user makes an irrevocable change.
Good on Travelocity for this one.
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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.
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(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 of Paypal.
Instead I saw the following:
All that I read when scanning through the page is:
Help information isn’t available in English yet. […] select U.S. English.
So I need to change the language to U.S. English. Okay, I try to remember all the steps that they tell me, go through them and reach this page:
Hmm. I cannot see U.S. English. How to select U.S. English now? I think I will contact the Help Center. …But wait a minute… I could not access the help pages, that’s why I came to this page in the first place. I’m trapped in a can-not-get-help-loop. *argh*
Note: If I select German, then the help center is shown! But if I was an English speaker I would not be able to get help. I think this bug exists only for Swiss users, otherwise it would be fixed since a long time.
What to learn from this mistake by Paypal:
When I clicked the help link, I need help immediately!
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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 dominant computing platform.
Several smart commenters weighed in as well, so check out their comments here at the post’s permalink.
Anyway, it turns out I’m not much of a prognosticator. It’s already being done.
Check out the video to see Citrix’s Nirvana phone driving a full-size LCD, keyboard, and mouse, and running Windows.
Now *that’s* what I’m talking about.
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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 thing why?? :-)
Graciously, Jared ignored my dumbass comment and persisted, writing this:
Seriously, I think there’s going to be some really interesting synthesis here. Nokia, LG, and Motorola really haven’t done anything scaled up before. The laptop & netbook players haven’t gone this small.
The competition will be interesting. Of course, there will be a lot of crap produced. (It’s Sturgeon’s Law.) But, there will be some really interesting innovations.
All because Apple had the balls to try something nobody else had done before. I think that’s the most significant part of all this….
(And here’s a question: How will Google respond? After all, they have Android on the low end and Chromium on the high end, but neither will really talk to each other.)
His follow-up got me to thinking. I didn’t respond point-by-point to his last comments, but his points helped me to suddenly sharpen my thinking and spin out a scenario in which tablets aren’t the wave of the future, but phones will continue to be.
So below I present to you my reasoning for why and how tablets are at best a diversion, and the real innovation will continue to happen with handsets. Read on for yet another opinion on the future of computing.
I agree with what you’re saying J. But my thinking is that until we have a truly convertible handheld-slash-desktop (and mobile computing) solution, the gap will continue to be a chasm into which product after product will fall into.
Now I’m not the most visionary person in the world, but it seems to me that the big, latent, unmet needs are this:
- I need a mobile device that fits in my pocket, that allows me to do [pretty much what the iPhone, Android, and BB handsets do].
- I need a computing device that gives me my familiar input devices (read: keyboard and pointing device), gives me access to my apps and content, and provides a large enough viewing area so I can work productively.
Notice that I didn’t say “contains my apps and content.” That was intentional. It doesn’t take a tech visionary to see that both our apps AND our content are migrating to the cloud.
Anecdotally, I can affirm that I am mighty tired of “curating” the content on my hard disks. I’d rather that stuff just lives in, is accessible from, and gets backed up in the cloud. And I WILL pay money for that. So, long story long, you’re right, the iPad comes close. But I think the real opportunity is this:
- My phone-like mobile device does it’s thing while I’m mobile.
- When I need to sit somewhere and work, I dock it. Then it pushes (at the VERY least) 1280×800 to an LCD, and automagically connects to my keyboard and mouse, to my suite of apps (wherever they may live – Office Live, Google Apps, whatever), and to my content. (And of course it brings up all my social interfaces.)
Obviously, handsets don’t have the horsepower to do this…yet. But they will. It’s clear that current PC architectures have massively oversolved for the computing horsepower problem, and if you’ve read any Clayton Christensen you know this is a scenario that’s ripe for disruption by a “good enough” solution that addresses the market’s new value dimensions.
Netbooks are an ongoing attempt to serve these new dimensions of value, but they’re constrained by having to run either bloated legacy OS’s or not-ready-for-primetime Linux distros. Plus, they don’t serve as phones very well. Imagine holding one up to your ear… it’s like Maxwell Smart with a shoe to his head.
And you probably noticed I didn’t address the “how do I work productively when I’m mobile?” scenario. I’ll grant you that. But it’s certainly not an impossibility…I can envision a netbook form factor device with a big-@ss slot for receiving – you guessed it – my mobile phone-slash-computing engine.
So, to sum up:
- You’re right, things are getting interesting, and
- If product makers can make the phone the bearer of CPU horsepower, connectivity, and OS, then everything else becomes a terminal that the phone docks to or slides into.
And I’m adding here that this last point is what makes tablets superfluous.
Thoughts?
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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 I say it works?
It’s simple. The site fulfills the goals of the business, which I’m guessing are:
By those simple measures, the site is learnable, memorable, usable, and creates a unique brand experience to boot. (No, that is not a pun on the UK’s use of boot for trunk.)
Go ahead. Check it out for yourself. And give yourself these “typical” usability test goals, just to prove my point about the usability of LingsCars.com:
And here’s the kicker: I’ve established that it’s somewhat usable. Now, is it memorable? You bet it is. Admit it – the memory of the first time you saw lingscars.com is burned into your synapses. Psychologists call this “flashbulb memory” – memories that are so strong, you remember where you were, what you were doing, and a host of little details associated with the memory.
Granted, your flashbulb memory of Ling’s Cars is probably of the Kennedy assassination, Challenger explosion, or 9/11 variety. But still, I guarantee that you won’t soon forget about Ling’s Cars.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually experiencing prodromal migraine symptoms just having Ling’s site in my peripheral vision. I’m not defending the so-bad-it’s-good design in and of itself. What I’m saying is that even the worst design can serve its organization’s goals. It’s a high-risk strategy, yes. But does it work in Ling’s case? I think it does.
Update: A commenter below points out that the site doesn’t exactly fill you with warm fuzzies about the reputation of Ling’s Cars. That is, it doesn’t score points in the professionalism and trust categories.
I would argue that certain businesses need that more than others. If (like me) you grew up in the 70′s and 80′s in the NYC area, you probably remember those Crazy Eddie’s commercials. “Crazy Eddie’s! Our prices are so low, it’s insane!” And of course the pitchman jumped around like a lunatic. They didn’t come across as a staid and somber corporate entity. But they didn’t need to. They were differentiating on price. For electronics, that’s frequently the deciding factor.
Is it the same with car leasing in the UK? I have no idea. But I suspect that Ling is indeed trying to differentiate on price – notice the frequent references to “low prices” on the site. And do you need to build a staid and somber site to trumpet your price differentiation? Probably not. In fact, one could make the argument that the site actually *supports* the price differentiation claim thusly:
Ling’s Cars…our prices are so low, we don’t even bother spending a lot of money on our site…we just home-build it so we can keep our prices low.
Maybe that’s a stretch. Thoughts?
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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 and unfriendly language.
In this case, I was at the bank setting up an account. The rep handed me the account agreement, and then told me that the bank didn’t require me to sign the actual forms anymore; they’d recently begun collecting signatures electronically. I have to admit that bothered me a bit, because my “electronic” signature looks nothing like my pen and ink signature.
Putting that aside, the experience of providing my signature on the device was not good.
The face of the device I needed to “write” on was raised about 4-5 inches, and there was no way to comfortably position my hand while signing. The bezel was not flush with the screen, which caused the edge of my hand to bend in an unnatural way, further deforming my signature.
And then there was the lawyerly language. We’ve all had the intimidating and negative experience of viewing a legal document in paper form. I don’t think a single person will dispute the fact that legalese is intimidating and obtuse. Not surprisingly, that experience is intensified when rendered digitally. And then there’s the ridiculous aspect of referring to something “herein”, which applies to a document, but certainly not to anything “in” the UI of the device I was interacting with.
And no, the full agreement was not presented onscreen for me to page through. The rep simply handed me the written agreement, then slid this device across the desk for me to “sign.”
The various user experience disciplines – usability, information architecture, interaction design, etc. – have been laboring for the 20-odd years of the tech boom to create great user experiences. Let’s not let the lawyers screw it up.
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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 a seizure. (And if you do, it’s not my fault.)
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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), I modified and built upon my original recommendations and provide some modified guidelines. Here’s the summary guidelines. To understand the reasoning behind them, go read the whole article.
Guideline 1—When testing your own designs, don’t think of it as a test to pass or fail, think of it as part of your design process.
Guideline 1a—Test early, test as often as possible, and test lo-fi prototypes rather than making usability testing a make-or-break event in your design lifecycle.
Guideline 2—When testing your own designs, you should seek disconfirming evidence, but be alert for joys and delighters, too.
Guideline 3—When you’re trying to solve a design problem, usability testing serves design. It’s a tool. Use it to improve your design, not to justify your actions.
Comments about these guidelines? Email me via UsabilityBlog, or comment at UXmatters.
Testing Your Own Designs Redux ::? Paul Sherman via UXmatters
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You *will* smile when you see this design. Trust me. You will.
Then come back and we can talk about why it’s so smile-evoking.
Philco PC from Dave Schultze on Vimeo.
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I’m putting an article together for UXmatters on the topic of usability testing and validating one’s own designs. My goal is to develop some guidelines for self-testing.
I’d love to get your feedback on some questions I have:
Thanks in advance. -Paul
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Let me be up-front about this from the beginning: this is a half-formed thought. But its implications are very, very interesting.
So here’s what just happened: I had a desire to take in some emerging thoughts in the user experience field. I wanted some fresh thinking, some exposure to new presentations.
For about 8 years, my first instinct has been a) browse to Google, b) type in “user experience”, and c) browse the list of returned search results to see if anything new strikes my fancy.
This morning, I didn’t do that.
Without even realizing I was changing an ingrained habit, I went to Twitter.com, typed “#ux” in the search box, and browsed the list of returned tweets. I clicked a few, starred a few, and made a mental note to come back and check out some of the links to preso’s.
Then I sat bolt upright when I realized what had just happened.
This, colleagues and readers, is an early warning. An indication that one of my consumer habits is open to change, and could very well tip into a new and different routine.
And if it happened to me, it can happen to any of us.
I don’t know if you’re grokking the import of what happened, so I’ll restate it: something in my sub- or semi-conscious mind decided that the resource I’ve been relying on for years might not be cutting it any more, and it directed me to try a more real-time and dynamic resource.
I will certainly follow up on this in future posts. But right now, I think this incident opens up several interesting research and design questions, such as:
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Found this on Digg.com today, and promptly added it to my “Questionable_Designs” set on Flickr.
What a great example of after-the-fact design modification.
It makes me wonder what the context was. Did someone set this up for a young child or an older relative? Or did they do it for themselves?
In any case, it’s a great reminder of why us user experience professionals do what we do.
For those of us in design: remember, you shouldn’t design for *all* the edge cases. You shouldn’t even design for most of them.
Why? Because you clutter the user interface when you try to account for all possible user needs.
A reasonable question to ask at this point is this: if you have a set of rich capabilities that *some* small subset of people might want to access, what do you do?
That answer is actually easy. There’s two things you can do in this very specific case of a TV remote.
Both of them are examples of what I think of as “beyond here be dragons” design. Without going into the etiology of that (in retrospect kinda obtuse) metaphor, let’s just say that it’s often a VERY good idea to surface the UI for your minimal main user stories while burying the controls and interactions for the complex edge case capabilities behind an access point that clearly indicates that the functionality is not intended for most people.
So how do you do this for a TV remote?
Advantages: The cover makes it clear that, well, beyond here be dragons. Effective.
Disadvantages: Presence of physical parts probably means higher cost to manufacture. Physical parts (i.e., cover and slide) also wear out.
Advantages: No additional hardware requirements. Provided the unit can receive updates, the software interactions can be improved if the initial UI design support for the complex stuff isn’t, shall we say, usable.
Disadvantages: Slowwww. Error-prone, especially for interactions requiring alphanumeric input via “point and pick”.
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For some reason this slipped my mind for the last two weeks. On August 15th I delivered two talks at ProductCamp Austin 2009. Before I link you to the talks I wanted to give hat tips to the crew who put together this ProductCamp. It was a fantastic, energetic, and crowd-driven “un”conference, and I highly recommend attending one if you get the chance. They’re springing up in many major metro areas, so finding one shouldn’t be hard. You can learn more about BarCamps at this site.
The first talk I gave was “How To Achieve A Great User Experience For Enterprise Software” and the second was “From Personas To Production: The Role of Personas, Design Briefs, Stories, Storyboards, and Wireframes in the Ideation – Design – Build Process.” The second one had more people than the enterprise talk; which I guess shouldn’t really surprise me as the enterprise talk is more specialized. But the enterprise attendees were full of good questions and there was lots of good within-audience discussion. The feedback I’ve gotten on these two has ranged from slightly to strongly positive. So I’ll put them in the “win” column.
Oh and my past presentations are also available on Slideshare.net here.
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I know that as a professional user experience practitioner I should avoid angry rants, as they’re (mostly) unproductive.
But here’s the thing: I am PISSED OFF right now, I feel cheated and abused by this printer’s designers, and I have no real recourse except to call out the manufacturer and tell them just how thoroughly they have failed me… and in all probability, many other customers.
I’ve owned this printer – a Canon MX860 – for about a month. So far so good, I’ve been able to connect it to my network and print plain paper documents with no problems.
So this morning I tried to print a half-dozen photos so I could send pics of the kids to my 99-year old grandmother. Sending attachments or a link to my Flickr account is not a viable option. She wants pictures, big pictures. Pictures she can hold in her hands.
No can do. I’ve spent more than 45 minutes crawling around the backside of this stupid time vampire of a machine, trying to figure out why it insists on printing from the rear tray, and realizing I don’t know how to load this until-now-unknown-to-me rear tray.
I’m angry. This stupid piece of crap printer just stole almost an hour of my time. And I still don’t have the damn pictures to send to my grandmother.
So you fail, Canon. You fail hard. It’s a pity actually. I really like and enjoy my Canon cameras. But you’ve just stolen – yes, stolen, as in consumed without my agreeing to it – an hour of my time. Think that’s a trivial amount? It’s not. Not when you multiply it by x number of people who’ve also struggled to print photos. And I’m sure “x” is not a small number.
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