• Slow-loading, zoomy Flash animation? Check.
• Music that kicks on when page loads? Check.
• Throbbing animated .gifs? Check.
• Eyestrain-inducing oversaturated color palette? Check.
• Borderline offensive use of models in suggestive food-eating poses? Check check and check.
• Bonus points: The site designer link leads to an Apache setup page. Oops.

The site’s got one thing going for it. But I’m guessing they didn’t actually research the advantages of radial menus for speed of onscreen target acquisition….it’s more about the pizza visual metaphor. The pizza pie menu is actually more efficient than a drop-down menu. Read up on the advantages and drawbacks of radial menus here.

But the zooming pizza slices are, let’s just say, optically unpleasant.

Could this be another “so bad it’s great” site, like Ling’s Cars? Maybe. I have half a mind to reach out to the site’s proprietors just to find out. I’m just so slammed with the new and growing company I don’t have any time to go on this type of adventure these days.

Check it: www.pizza-pop.ch

Ubuntu One: Where Do I Look? What Do I Do?, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

This is an object lesson in how not to lay out a screen.

Background: While configuring a Linux PC, I found myself setting up Ubuntu One, Canonical’s cloud sync service. After I entered the confirmation code I received via email, I was taken to this screen.

My first reaction: Blargh! Where do I look first? What do I do?

Let’s break it down:

1. None of the calls-to-action appear to be primary. Nothing screams “Start here! Click me first!” The most visually prominent calls just sort of step on each other.
2. The layout is an eye-hurt. No really. I’m not exaggerating, it /actually/ hurts my eyes. I can’t recall the last time a screen layout actually made me go cross-eyed. Little thought seems to have been given to aligning the controls, text and links. I don’t mean to be too snarky…but it looks like the UI fairy barfed up links and controls onto the screen.
3. When I was a wee UX lad, mama always told me “If you can’t choose one font size, might as well use them all.” Unfortunately, mama was wrong. On this screen it’s disorienting. It adds to the difficulty users will experience trying to find a “start here” call-to-action.
4. Screenshots are helpful…in theory. But they have to illustrate something helpful to the user. This one falls short. The detail is too small to be of use. It just causes eyestrain. Or maybe I’m just getting old, and you youngsters have no problem with it. Well good for you. And get off my lawn.

I know I’ve ranked on Linux in the past, so I readily admit that Canonical has made great strides creating a better user experience for desktop Linux. Ubuntu 11.10 is by far the most usable Ubuntu release ever, and Ubuntu has always stood above other distros in ease of install, configuration and initial/ongoing use. But like any app or OS that comes from a legacy of “built by geeks for geeks”, there will always be areas of the user experience that don’t get the UX love and attention they deserve. This screen – even though it was probably created for more recent distributions – reminds us of Linux’s geeky origins.

One last thing, and this is a completely preference-driven personal peccadillo of mine…bevel-lowered grouping boxes must die. Hate ‘em. They’re /so/ Windows 3.11…

This is an impromptu video of me interacting with the Google+ “add people to circles” feature.

Like most things we interact with in the world, there’s some good and some not-so-good to the experience.

First, the good:
1. The people “cards” are just the right size. The picture is just right also – big enough so I can recognize the person, small enough to fit their name.
2. It was also a smart idea to just show the target’s name (or email if the name is unavailable). It makes for easier and quicker scanning and target acquisition.
3. The whole card is a click target.
4. You can select multiple cards with clicks; no CMD+ or shift+click necessary. However, using a key combination (which some people will carry over from the desktop software interaction paradigm) works just fine as well.

The not-so-good:
1. Drag and drop appears to be the only way to get people into circles. Really? Given Google’s demonstrated commitment to accessibility, I *can’t* believe this is the only way to manage circle assignment. I must be missing something. That just can’t be.
2. A few times I highlighted multiple cards and then inadvertently deselected them. I have no idea why or how.
3. Believe it or not, on first view I thought Google+ had only found 28 (7 x 4) people I knew. It took more time than it should’ve to realize that the card area was scrollable. I might not be able to pin that on Google however. I used Safari on Mac OS X 10.7, which together are a walking advertisement for iOS disappearing scrollbars.

So what does this little spiel demonstrate? I guess it shows that even cutting-edge design with massive resources behind it can still occasionally be a struggle for users. Oh, and don’t forget the accessibility.

I’ve Found It: The Worth Thermostat Ever, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

After many years of working in user experience, I’ve found the semi-mythical holy grail of poor design: in my grandmother’s condo I encountered the dreaded “which way is which?” thermostat.

Just looking at this picture, you might think that pressing the left-facing button would lower the temperature, and pressing the right-facing button would increase it. And you’d be wrong. At least, I think you’d be wrong.

If only they were reversed, I could at least deal with that….but sadly no, what we have here is *both* a 90-degree control rotation (or negative 90; I’m not sure), and some kind of mode problem where I couldn’t actually just change the temperature on the fly without entering a “temperature change” state.

And no, I never discovered how to enter the “change temp” mode…I just sweltered in the Florida heat for the rest of the visit.

Here’s a great example of how feature requirements and design have combined to cause a lost sale. Some background: This is the donation page for the Presidential candidate I support. I’m not getting into who it is; those who know me personally can probably guess, and those readers who don’t can visit candidates’ donation pages until they find this example.

I’m your typical semi-involved voter: I care a bit about local policitics, I try to vote in every election, but don’t always make the smaller or off-year ones. But I do care about state and national politics, and since I live in *the* quintessential swing state, I feel like my vote actually matters.

This morning I received a call-to-action email asking me to donate, and followed the link, landing at the page you see (in part). I noticed the “Make this a monthly recurring donation” checkbox, and immediately thought “Awesome! That’s what I want to do!” I figured it would be easier for me to just automagically kick in $25 per month until the general election was over. So I ticked the box, expecting to get one of those “For how many months?” dialog or AJAX partial page update. Nope. Nothing. Which sucks for the candidate and party, because I – and I suspect many, many other small donors – only want to make a recurring donation until the general election is over. And if I can’t do this – or easily figure out how to do this – there is no way I’m setting up an autopayment.

This is a classic failure of the product managers and designers to understand the customer. They may *want* me to set up an autopay in perpetuity. But I guarantee that most small, semi-involved donors most certainly do not want to do this.

Lesson: Learn what your customers want from your product and what their motivations are when they use it. Wishful thinking about user behavior is not a good way to meet their wants and needs.

I’m on my way back from my company’s all-hands meeting.

After all the excitement and motivation the week inspired, I felt moved to write a UX mini-manifesto. A mini-festo, if you will.

Excuse any grammar or spelling issues; I’m composing in Evernote on my phone. I would love to hear my readers’ and followers’ comments on this post.

You’re an experience design practitioner. In your organizations, you should be responsible for:

• Creating an inviting and well-designed initial user experience.
• Designing and validating:

Along the way, you also:

• Collaborate on the definition and optimization of product development lifecycle processes with our functional neighbors – i.e. PM, Dev, QA, Marketing, and Social/Community Management.
• Measure, track and improve the user experience.
• Discover opportunities to delight customers in ways that are not easily discoverable by market-level research methods.
• Occasionally uncover strategic jobs that customers need doing, and design opportunities for more sustaining vs. incremental product innovations.
• Provide the business with both strategic and tactical customer insights and understanding.

eBay: Hah Hah, Made You Think!, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Standard disclaimer: I am a user and fan of eBay. When it comes to user experience, they do lots of things right.

Here’s one thing they did wrong: They provided half-hearted, linkless “help” in the form of “to do x, go to [place A] or [place B]“, without including links to those locations. This is a no-brainer and should’ve been coded ages ago.

As a result, I had to hunt around for a small but still-annoying period of time before I found where I needed to go.

Somebody add that to the eBay UX fix list.

Message Can’t Be Blank? Why The Hell Not?, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

This screenshot is about a year old, so my apologies to the site if they’ve fixed this UX issue.

The point remains, however, that when someone wishes to unsubscribe from your email list, it is incredibly imperious to *require* them to explain why.

Sure, as a business you might *like* to know, but you have no right to demand an answer.

That’s treating your visitor rudely.

A Dubious Claim, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Paypal goes a little too far with this login transition screen.

“The world’s most loved way to pay and get paid”?

I don’t think so.

Using marketing-speak in the UI is one thing. It’s come to be expected and (mostly) accepted. Just make sure it doesn’t trigger your users’ BS detectors.

Whatever You Do…Don’t Search For “ASCII Mr. Burns” Or Google Will Flip Out, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Really Google? I’m on my home network. No one else is using my connection, according to my outbound connection monitoring software.

Nothing but little ol’ me on Firefox.

One-Try Lockout? That’s BS., a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

This is a pure customer experience issue: I was just locked out of my AT&T wireless account after a SINGLE INCORRECT PASSWORD ENTRY.

I suppose it’s theoretically feasible that someone was trying to crack my account at the very moment I was trying to legitimately log in, which would explain why I was locked out after a single try. Odds are, probably not.

Thanks the inconvenience, AT&T.

And companies wonder why we call instead of self-service on the web. It’s because the web is basically a brittle support mechanism.

Given that the average support call costs anywhere between 5 and 50 dollars (sorry, no recent reference; going from memory), I’m about to cost AT&T ~ 15 or 20 bucks because someone decided to implement a single-attempt lockout policy.

Whatever. Time to call a CSR and burn some of AT&T’s cash.

RushLimbaugh.com…Wait For It…Not Enough White Space, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

This morning I followed a link from an independent writer’s feed, and found myself for the first time on Rush Limbaugh’s site.

I don’t like the guy or what he stands for. He’s a liar and a bully. But let’s get beyond that and talk about his site.

Clearly there’s too much…stuff. Multiple rows of nav, a riot of highly saturated opposing colors (ouch my eyes), and…not enough white space between elements.

Maybe he did that on purpose. That would be so meta and clever if he meant that. Get it? Not enough white space? Because, uh, that’s what he believes…there’s not enough white space.

Yeah…somehow I doubt it was intentional.

There’s A Lot Of User Assistance In That There Screen, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

My company uses this product to (surprise!) document our expense reports. When I started a few months back, one of the first emails I received from my colleagues was the “Here’s how you create an Expensify report” message. It was that hard.

Last time I logged in I noticed a whole bunch of user assistance in the UI, including a “faux-modal” lightbox that provides links to the two most common actions (“add expenses” and “new expense”). They’re not the most well-crafted sentences in the world, but they get the points across.

Because I was in a user-assistance-y mood, I also noticed the “How do I?” links on the left for the first time. I have no idea whether they’ve been there since I started using the app, or whether they were new as well.

In any case, while Expensify’s main workflow isn’t exactly the most well-designed interaction I’ve seen, at least they’re providing a bit of guidance at the front end.

A reader sent me a link to this infographic about user experience jobs. Although I disagree with a few items in the skillsets and tools section, I found it useful enough to pass on.

Yes, her organization is a UX recruiting firm, but that there constitutes disclosure, and the fact that I’m receiving nothing from them by posting this constitutes full disclosure.

I don’t know exactly why I’m getting all journalistic about this, so without further ado here’s a screenshot and link to the graphic. Enjoy.

Classy Fridge Infographic, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

I just like this infrographic from our refrigerator. There’s something classy about the dress shirt cuff and suit sleeve. Also note the grey circles that call attention to the different ice cube maker switch states.

Not sure I get the warning though. “Ejector fingers”….riiiight…

Expensify Makes You Feel Good About A Password Reset, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

And this, folks, is how you put your customers at ease and make them feel better about interacting with your web app.

Lesson: If you have an opportunity to a) make your customers not feel stupid, and b) make it easy to fix a mistake, do it.

NYT Joinwall = Bad User Experience, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

I’d love to get a peek at the New York Times’ server logs and see just how many thousands of bounces this page generates every day.

Understand, it’s not a bad interaction design. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how to treat visitors.

In other words, the NYT is shooting itself in the foot and driving away visitors in droves.

How Not To Incorporate Graphs In Your Blog Post, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Finding myself working in the info security world, I have little doubt that the content of this article is spot-on.

The problems lay with the graphs embedded in the article:

1. The graphs are unreadable at the embedded resolution.

2. It’s not immediately clear that you can click to embiggen them. You merely *hope* that you get the hand cursor when you roll over the images.

3. When you do click the image, you’ve lost context. Even a simple title or line or two of text recapping the post content prior to the image would help maintain continuity and context.

On the plus side, at least the embiggened image is not the same size as the thumbnail, which is probably in most people’s list of top 10 annoying web design flaws.

Yes, There’s Room For Funny, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

If your brand and on-web persona fit the attempt at humor, that is.

This little piece of fun is from Woot, who pretty much define funny in the e-commerce space.

In this case, I was amused enough to get that little brand affinity glow.

Good experience.

Mashableahhh, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Mashable’s gotten a bit, um, *busy* over the past few months.

OK, it looks like someone barfed food coloring on the page. There. I said it.

Now That’s A Delightful Feature, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

From the Delta Airlines iOS app. It solves the age-old problem of remembering where you’ve parked at the airport.

If you don’t have a fancy-shmancy smartphone, here’s an analog life hack for you: Just write the row number on the little ticket and PUT THE TICKET IN YOUR WALLET (or purse).

Uh, you *do* have a pen in your car, don’t you?

…but you know you’re going to click anyway.

http://www.gershoni.com

The kicker? They’re a design firm that purports to understand UX design.

FIle Under "If You Have To Stick A Sign On It, It Ain’t Usable.", a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Found at an e-Reader display table in an airport somewhere.

The post title says it all really.

Small But Good Feature, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

For whatever reason, I’m not a big RSS feed user. I like visiting blog and aggregation sites rather than taking in the content via a reader. Which is why I appreciate this little feature in the corner of The Consumerist‘s banner that tells me how many posts have been made in the last day.

It’s not as slick as, say, Huffpost‘s auto-refreshing web content, but it does the job nicely for me.

More Like A Jackson Pollock Than A Dashboard, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

They call it a dashboard, but it looks more like a middle-period Jackson Pollock painting.

There’s just no good scan to this screen. Like Gertrude Stein’s Oakland, there’s no there there.

OK, let’s get specific:

• Poor use of white space.
• Crowded and uneven blocks of text.
• Mysterious graphs and charts.
• Color? You know what they say. If you don’t know which to use, just use ‘em all.
• Speaking of color, if I scored a 93%, why do I get a big “you fail” red circle?
• Visual black hole at middle-left.
• It’s unclear where – or even what – the main calls-to-action are.

And today started off so promising…

More Drippy Nav, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Here’s AquaPure’s less painful but still annoying little brother.

The main annoyance comes from the organization of the nav elements. It turns out that moving your mouse to acquire targets in a curve from top left to bottom center is surprisingly hard.

Oh, and bonus points for the completely superfluous Flash intro. Check it at http://www.cuno.com/

Remember, if you need to include a “skip intro” on your home page, you shouldn’t have the intro in the first place.

Nav Gone Wild, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

We have well water, so I was looking for aftermarket filters to fit our reverse osmosis filtration system. And then I found this gem of a home page.

Either the designer has no sense of how people scan web pages, or AquaPure’s marketing / branding leader decided to go crazy with the whole droplet theme.

Either way, this is visually excruciating. Which is quite impressive given that it’s shape and layout, not color, that’s causing your eyes to cross.

55 Page EULA: Yeah Right, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Insanely long EULAs must die. And on a phone, no less.

Local News Site: My Eyes, They Burn…, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

Not much to say here except ouch. Design 101: Don’t mix saturated red and blue. Chromostereopsis FTL.

Impossible To Sign Design, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr.

I’m not sure you can tell from this picture. But the issue with this design is that the designer positioned the signature box at the top of the screen, which in combination with the raised area of the bezel makes it nearly impossible to sign.

The bezel immediately above the signature box is scored with gouges and scratches, testament to the failure of this design.