…but you know you’re going to click anyway.
The kicker? They’re a design firm that purports to understand UX design.
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Found at an e-Reader display table in an airport somewhere.
The post title says it all really.
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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.
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Insanely long EULAs must die. And on a phone, no less.
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Not much to say here except ouch. Design 101: Don’t mix saturated red and blue. Chromostereopsis FTL.
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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.
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I like this. I’ve always been a fan of the link phrase + elaboration text pattern.
The challenge is to not let the content cause the page to appear too busy. When that happens, the user goes into skim mode, and their gaze starts jumping around the page.
This account landing page comes close to overload, but I don’t think it crosses the line. YM – and your opinion – MV of course.
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So there I was, happily using MacUninstaller to tidy up my MacBook Pro. Up pops this dialog. And it stops me dead in my tracks.
It started out innocently enough; asking me what my preference was for keeping the results of the scan. Then came the elaboration text, which induced a slight bit of thought. OK, I thought, I think get it…but wait, WTF do those button labels mean?
Maybe I’m just bad with logic. But I honestly couldn’t infer what action each of the buttons would initiate, what (if any) difference there was between any two of them, and most importantly, what the hell I was *supposed* to do, that is; what the “safe” action was.
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Overall, this is a fairly good example of a touch interface as well as content and layout for a voting UI.
Mind you, it’s not without some flaws. The language of the tax levy itself is too long by about, oh, 2 dependent clauses. And while the language itself has obviously undergone significant de-lawyerfication, it’s still a bit of a tough read. Then there’s the “6 mills”, which the stupid, pre-espresso me thought was referring to actual mills. You know, mills that make stuff.
But the saving grace of this experience were the BABs (big-ass buttons) for voting for or against this levy, as well as the labels clearly indicating what action you were taking by checking a box.
I’ve seen other voting UI’s simply use the words “For” or “Against” – sometimes even “Yes” or “No” – in combination with a description of the proposed levy.
So: not perfect, but could’ve been much, much worse.
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I’m ambivalent about point-of-need user assistance tactics like this example from Google Docs. Clearly users need to be told about new features that could potentially save them time and effort. But do approaches like this actually work?
I pose this question because there’s an elephant-in-the-room issue with this tactic: namely, all too often this approach is more of a little roadblock on the users’ path to completing their intended task, and not a helpful piece of information.
Maybe we expect too much from this tactic. Maybe it’s alright if it just plants the seed, leaving a memory trace that the user recalls later on.
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People are usually too busy fawning over Apple’s sexy hardware and application design to notice the good job that Apple does in handling the blocking-and-tackling areas of the user experience.
Check out this 404 page. It’s got everything the user needs to get back on track: friendly error message, a suggestion to search, and for those browse-driven visitors, a nice comprehensive-yet-managable site map.
Nice job Apple.
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I love after-the-fact design modifications.
They’re crystal-clear evidence that a design has failed to meet the needs of users.
In this case, I’m guessing that the Boston Subway workers got tired of answering out-of-towners’ questions about how to get to Logan Airport, so one of the more enterprising of them made this addition to the subway map.
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Not sure what this error message means, but it can’t be good. +1 for blob reference though.
I know I know, it’s meant for developers. Which just begs the question “Why show it to the users?”
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It’s difficult to convey how vexing this app is without actually showing it in action. All the same, I can’t recall the last time I encountered a UI that was so full of inappropriate metaphors, unexpected behavior, and unclear information.
Where should we start? OK, how about that stickshift control. Seems straightforward at first…until you start thinking about those icons. What exactly do they mean? I *think* that the aircraft icon means “High performance”, but what does the walking person mean in relation to the aircraft? And “Auto”? Does the ordering of the detents reflect in increase in performance from left to right? Right to left? If not, why use a shifter-and-slot metaphor?
Now let’s talk about the interaction: Why did ASUS go to the trouble of making the user *drag* a faux stickshift in a slot in the first place? A horizontal click-and-drag isn’t exactly the easiest motion in the world. I’d like to watch a person with motor disabilities try to drag it.
Then there’s the radial graph thingy on the right….really? If you could see it change when you dragged the stickshift, you’d immediately notice that It’s not easy to discriminate between different states. Call me old-fashioned, but why not a line or bar graph? Conclusion: someone in Taiwan got a little carried away with the Photoshop…remember designers, just because you *can* doesn’t mean you should.
And those four larger icons up top? I bet you think you can click them. Psych! You can’t. They’re just kinda there for show or something. Unless I haven’t yet figured out how to make them work. Which is a distinct possibility, given my experience with this little piece of bad UX.
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Bad menu. No donut.
Distracting and overly busy item icons. And the repetitive “My” hurts readability.
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With two simple bubbles, Amazon’s Kindle app for the Mac tells me where to start and what I might want to do next. Nice touch.
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From Teambox. Little touches like this bubble aid the new user’s onboarding experience by rewarding their behavior with a little recognition.
This little bubble welcomes and also rewards the user with a micro-achievement (“Your first Conversation!”). It also provides guidance in that it suggests how Teambox can be best used.
My only criticism is that it doesn’t fill an inductive role. That is, it wastes the opportunity to induce the user into exploring other important, useful features of the application.
Of course, everything in design is a tradeoff. Adding a third paragraph saying “Here’s what else you can do” examples and links would probably overcrowd and distract from the primary message.
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