This is very cool.
Showing posts with label Usability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Usability. Show all posts
August 09, 2011
April 01, 2011
March 29, 2011
Hmmm. Poor Form. #usability #forms
Given the recent launch and refresh of some notable usability firms, including Adaptive Path and InUse.se, I’m often surprised at how out of date and 'unuseable' some user consultancy sites are.
Setting aside the minimalist simplicity that is Jacob Nielsen’s Useit.com, industry pubs and orgs like BoxesandArrows, UPA (yikes), and others are showing their age or seem to be trying to make a point - of what I'm not certain ('Hey look! We built in HTML5 and are W3C compliant! Yeah, we know it looks terrible...).
I found some nice resources on OptimalUsability.org so I gave them the benefit of the experiential doubt I was feeling. Then, I went to sign up for their newsletter. Luke W. would have a fit.
The form is short enough that it could be all left justified to avoid horizontal scanning and facilitate form completion. The form labels could be right justified or top aligned – again to avoid scanning. The optional ‘How did you hear about us?’ field could benefit from a dropdown for information purposes.
Worse, two grey buttons at the bottom of the form. Granted the ‘Save Profile Changes’ is a little bigger, but it can be confused with the ‘Cancel’ button.
I'm guessing this was an OOTB form implementation, but it left me wondering about the resources I was subscribing to. I don’t mean to pick on them specifically, and forms do generally suck, but this one bothered me.
March 19, 2011
I just want to get off the !@**$ bus! #usability
Here's one for Don Norman.
I ride the bus a fair bit and I've had a chance (since I'm just sitting there) to do some User & Task analysis.
User Goal: Get off the bus.
Task: Open the door.
Task Completeness: I'd say 3 out of 10 users are able to accomplish the task without 'incident'.
User scenarios: Touch the door, bang on the door, wave their hands furiously at the door, yell at the bus driver, run to the front of the bus, kick the door, swear.
Calgary Transit bought some new buses awhile ago that have this engineering miracle. It uses motion sensors above the door frame to activate the hydralics to open the doors. Only it doesn't work very well for a couple of reasons:
1. Riders are 'used' to the old doors. The old doors have a crash bar on them that is a well-known affordance - push on the bar with some force and the door opens. The new doors are asking the user to abandon an established mental-model in favour of something else and it doesn't work very well.
2. The new doors aren't 'engineered' to be usable. Oh, they've been engineered alright - to work the way the engineers intended, but without thought of how a user will interact with them. Rather than push on the door (which seems to lock up the process), the user has to lightly touch or wave their hands (like an automatic hand dryer). Then, they have to WAIT for the door mechanism to cycle and open the door automatically. If the user pushes on the door prematurely, again it freezes up.
Even when familiar with the doors workings (as an experienced user), I still encounter difficulties with the mechanism. The engineering is not user-centric and I would daresay, faulty.
Jacob Nielsen use to say that any user testing is better than no user testing. I wonder if the folks that built these doors even bothered, or didn't like what they saw...
March 03, 2011
A nice User Experience Model (via @berenicering) to go with a fun one and an original. #ux
The first is a nice checklist from Greg Melander, the second is a fun one I found a couple of years ago. The third, by Jesse James Garrett, is one still refer to often to remain grounded.
February 24, 2011
Nice touch with the Footer Nav on @fastcodesign (cc @littlebigdetail) #UX #Usability
I like the footer design on FastCoDesign.
It's eyecatching, usable, clickable.
The label colour matches the masthead colors for a particular day - a nice touch.
April 08, 2010
Every time you make a PowerPoint...
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