Here are four links which every person especially those in usability should have a look at.
Kim from cre8pc talks about the scary stuff behind website Usability reviews. An accomplished Usability expert, I agree with her on the travails of a Usability reviewer.
You don't need an introduction to Smashing Magazine if you are in the world of Design. Vitaly and Sven discuss 10 usability nightmares you should be aware of. It's a detailed post featuring atleast one site for each night mare.
Chrys Bader of Clever Cookie talks about the best and worst logos of the century. Though not in agreement, it gives a new perspective.
Barbara Krasnoff talks on information week about the download duel she faces while downloading from IBM and Open Office. I am sure you have seen this a 100 times before.
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Must read Usability Stories
How to make good use of your past Posts? Use MineKey!
Information overload is a big issue. Take this blog for instance, we have about 140 posts on this blog. Many of these posts don't lose their relevance with time, but they get hidden in the vastness of the web. This is a challenging situation for any blog publisher. How do you as a publisher ensure that readers of your blog, find more posts from your blog or other sources according to their interest? One product which might help you address this issue is the Minekey widget. In the following post, I will go through the user experience of Minekey.
The Website is clear of all clutter normally associated with widget sites and has good navigation. Using the widget or seeing any related statistics requires one to login. The Signup screen is pretty simple requiring minimum details. Providing more details like Gender, Date of Birth is optional and can be done at a later time. The login name is by using an email address, saves us the trouble of remembering one more login name. It would be great if they can integrate with OpenID.
A few glitches while entering the Date of Birth are
i) The Date field is only one digit wide, hence it's two digits dates are not visible.
ii) The minimum year is 1940. (Oh! oh! I am 67 and should not blog!!)
Next comes, the most important, the Widget itself. Creating the widget is pretty straight forward and intuitive. One excellent thing, I found is the ability to change the size of the widget easily. Not many widgets give this feature.Good job here. But again here it's not without blemishes.
i) There is label with "1" in it(see the figure). What is the purpose?
ii) Once you click on add widget, a transparent overlay comes up. Check for your self the two screens below and you will know what I am talking about.
iii) The widget colors itself is a problem, the cheerful theme widgets don't come in a wide range of choices. In the Fully Customizable mode, I cannot customize the border styles. I don't see a reason for not providing a fully customizable widget.
Clicking on My Reports takes you to details of the statistics about your reports. A good looking simple functioning UI greets you. I am happy with the reports being available for today, yesterday, Last 7 days, Last Month and overall. Ability to check stats over a date range would be nice to have. However, what I as a publisher would like to see, is more details on "Articles Clicked Through". Currently it is just statistics except under the Today and yesterday mode. Ability to see these statistics will give me more idea on the interests of my users. I don't see why this is not being done currently.
Another interesting feature is the My History.
This is shows me the list of all the articles I clicked on various Minekey widgets. I can also share this history with others. A good thing when you are trying to build a community around your widget. Except for this, I don't see any other use for this. Also, I see a bunch of bananas next to some items, what do they mean? I have no clue.
To summarize, I feel this is an excellent tool in the hands of publishers. However, what bothers me (the reason you see it at the bottom of my blog and not on the top side bar) is the limited ability to customize the widget. The experience using the site is good, a clean and and simple interaction across.
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Fundamental Email Mistakes
A few days back, I have written about Delighting Users with Email in Three Simple steps. Immediately after I published that post, I got another email from a company called MineKey. You can see the screen shot of the mail below. What impression does it leave about this company?
- Dear Blogger: Don't I have a name??
- I am excited to let you know: Ok, so What?? What is in it for me?. See the difference it makes, if we rephrase as "You will be excited to know"
- Syndicate your Blog posts: Understand your end users. They are bloggers alright, but they may not be in the same line as you on the technology front. Tell them in plain simple terms. Have a simple,"Reach Wider Auidence" for the subtitle and then explain the technology behind.
- Uploading your OPML: Use action oriented language. "upload your OPML". Same with the joining the published network, use action!!
- Please let me know: Compare this with the way Briow requests for feedback. The users have to take time to provide you feedback, so respect them and their time.
Also check out the above message at the fag end of the mail. (I scroll down more than a page to get to this). Not only was all the scrolling unnecessary, but also this message at the end robs of the slightest sympathy I have for Minekey.
Remember in an email, you are writing to a real person and marketing your product to him/her. Break away from your corporate mould and speak human.
PS: Being a IIT KGP alumni startup, I have soft corner for Minekey and want them to succeed big time, in spite of being disappointed with their offerings. The main reason for this disappointment, some simple small things that are they are doing wrong. In a near future post, I will review the user experience of Minekey.
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Delighting Users with Email in Three Simple steps
You have registered with for a product or service on some site. How many times did you repent the move later. You get spam all the time and there is not break from it. Recently I got a mail from a company with which I registered a while back. It turned out that this company has launched a new web site and wanted the users of it's previous products to try the new one.
If it were a normal promotion mail, I would have thrown it to the trash. However, in this case I was pleasantly surprised and decided to write about them. Check the mail I received.
The company is frenchtutorial (A very good product they got) and the new site is Briow. The reason I am delighted
- Dear Ramjee: address me by my name and not like Dear User et. al. This is a no brainier, but I find many companies missing this step.
- Bangalore: This requires a decent amount of work in preparing the mailer. How many companies do you see taking the pain to customize the mailers to you the user.
- The tone of the mail, is not to just let you know of the product but also one of a request where your feedback is sought.
The above mailer is a beautiful usage of automated mass mailing and personalization.
Three simple steps to mind while sending your mailers:
- Use Personal Salutations.
- Use personal details intelligently in the copy(mailer).
- Give user the respect he deserves.
A Substandard Orkut!! is the Indian youth Icon
Orkut was chosen the MTV India's Youth Icon. I am not in agreement with Orkut being chosen the Youth Icon. I know Orkut is very famous among the Indian youth. But Indian Youth Icon. I don't agree. Check this link for more on this. What is more damning is the absolute neglect for usability from a product of Google stable. I had decent expectations from the recent release of Orkut, boy! was I disappointed. Read on for more.!
I will not go on with what is good about Orkut. It does not matter as it is quite popular in this part of the world(India). From a usability perspective, it is one of the worst I have seen.
These are just some of the stuff that I faced in my limited use of the tool (about 2-4min every day). As a product, it is one of the most substandard I have seen on the web. If the Orkut usability team is hearing me, folks get your act now.
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What does User Experience Team do?
What does User Experience Team do? This is a question to which all user experience folks must be able to answer. The usual perception that hangs around is that any body user experience is something that can be taken care at last. And hence, the user experience designer never gets the due he/she deserves. This nice presentation explains in a very clear manner what User Experience Team does? and also why it is important for the product. Click on Read More ! below for the slide.
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Sony Listens to me!! Makes the Remote simpler
How can we improve the design of some mundane things that we come across daily? How do we improve the usability of something as small and as a tv remote? Read on how two companies have come up with interesting solutions to make a tv remote / a washing machine more user friendly. Check out these innovative solutions.
If you have read this post, you know my design philosophy. You know very well how I hate those TV remotes which are a pain to even accomplish simple functions. Looks like Sony heard me and they have introduced new remotes where they have kept the interface real simple. For more check this post on Engadget.
The adjoining interface looks simple, but is it really user friendly. No Idea until I start using it. This was released in the Japanese market. Will such a remote be user friendly in the Indian context. Do we have anything called the culture sensitive design?
The other product that I have come across from this post, is a Washing Machine. This cute looking product is branded Moon is from Indesit. It sure is simple and sexy, and the best part I can understand what to do with it instantly. Is it the same with you? Do you realize the role played by those small images? What do you think of the Moon.
Seeing these products, and the way they try to simplify the stuff. Do you have any products which are complex to use? Let me know, I will do my 2cents worth to see if I can come with a simplified design.
Related Posts:
Design Philosophy
Humanized Design: Charmr
Does Google Solve the Indic Keyboard
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Does Google solve the Indic Keyboard?
Ability to key in the Indian languages using the qwerty keyboard or any kind of other online keyboards is a big pain. Many people are trying to solve this issue for long time now. Though there are many solution in existence, none of them is simple enough or intuitive enough. Now Google has come up with a way to key in the vernacular text into the browser and search the web.
Most of the vernacular keyboards are not very useful in terms of usability. Many of them rely on phonetics, while those that have a visual keyboard are too cumbersome to use. I came across this post on the Google blog which introduces a Google gadget Indic on Screen Keyboards. This was developed at the Google Labs India.
On the Plate
Loop Holes
Wish List
Rendering in Firefox is not legible and has some glaring mistakes. It was perfect on IE7.
I see this as the first step in a great direction. Watch out for more developments in this area.
I am excited about this development. What do you folks feel on this new design approach?
Do drop by your thoughts.
Source
Go to India Web 2.0: Search Google in 11 Indian Languages
You Might Like
Humanized Design: Charmr
Registration and Usability
Design Philosophy
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Humanized Design: Charmr
I keep stressing in this blog the importance of product design with people in mind(not just users). Though I haven't taken up any project towards this end(the layout of this blog is bad, I know), I tried to present you some, the most recent one being dailydump.org.
There was an open letter posted by Amy Tenderich in april this year. In her letter she pleads Jobs to design a humane product for those suffering from diabetes.
"This is where the world needs your help, Steve. We’re people first and patients second. We’re children, we’re adults, we’re elderly. We’re women, we’re men. We’re athletes, we’re lovers.
If insulin pumps or continuous monitors had the form of an iPod Nano, people wouldn’t have to wonder why we wear our “pagers” to our own weddings, or puzzle over that strange bulge under our clothes. If these devices wouldn’t start suddenly and incessantly beeping, strangers wouldn’t lecture us to turn off our “cell phones” at the movie theater."
Every word in the letter highlights the troubles that diabetics undergo all their life. Yet there is no elegant solution. The above letter from Amy triggered a why not we take it up, in Dan from AdaptivePath, a company offering product experience strategy and design services.
Thus was born the charmr project. Though the design is still a concept it is amazing to think to think of what can be done when the people who have to use the product are kept in mind while designing, than the fantasies of the development team.
One obvious question that many of you might have is why a concept and not the product itself? Dan goes on to explain this over here.
"The reason is that while there could be some incremental changes to the pump/monitor system currently in place, those changes would make only a minor difference to diabetics. They wouldn’t address the range of issues we found in our research nor would they easily fit all the design principles we derived from the research. One might easily ask why it took Apple several years to design and develop the iPhone: because sometimes you have to wait for (or arrange) the technology and business opportunities to create a product that will disrupt the marketplace. Technology sometimes has to mature, and as many have rightly pointed out, the process for getting a medical device on the market takes much political and financial will."
Many a times the concept may need to wait for the implementation for various reasons like maturity of the technologies involved, the need for such a product, the socio-economic factors and so on. However, in my opinion that should not be used as an excuse from designing products which we can use, rather than we adapting ourselves to use them.
Diabetes is not the only problem that we face. There are hundreds of other issues that we face and the existing solutions are always wanting. What Dan and his team at Adaptive Path has shown is that, it is always possible to design products for the people.
What do you think? What are the areas in your life which can be improved by better designed products? Tell us at sodidi and our readers, we might as well start working on conceptualizing an idea, to make our lives better.
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Design Resources
This is my first post on design resources. Today I am posting a list of resources which I have come across over the last few days. From now on you will get more and more posts on how to approach design as and when I research a topic I will present my learnings over here.
For now we will go with a list of resources, I will keep updating the list, so keep tuned to this post. Currently I am not rating the links but will keep grading them as it gets updated.
A list Apart. (The best resource for people who make websites)
AlertBox (By Jakob Nielsen, a Usability expert)
AskTog (Interaction Solutions for the real world)
Humanized (A company which makes software for Humans!)
Tutorial Blog (One stop source for tutorials)
24 Ways (To Impress Your Friends)
5 Tips for faster loading websites
Optimizing Load Times
Principles of Beautiful Web Design
Komodo Media
Web Design Considerations
Web Design Group
Usability News
Usability First
[wHat nOt tO do]
Bad Designs
[tOols]
50 Online Accessibility and Usability Tools
Pingdom Tools
CrazyEgg
Browser Shots
Website Optimization
31 Free Online Tools
Design Review: Inasra
I wrote about Inasra the Search engine for hotels in India in this post. Here I will concentrate on the design and usability of the site. Fortunately for me, the site does not have huge number of links to go through. Unfortunately that leaves Inasra to face the music.
[dEsign]
As I have pointed in my earlier post they have got one of the most useful and simple homepage. It focuses on one thing Search!. One can search for hotels by city, between the dates of choice. One good thing about the site is that they set the back ground color for the site to white. Check out this post and the comments for more about what role back ground color plays.
The other thing which stands apart is the use of the technology to in a creative manner. The boxed highlighting is pleasant. Check out the results page for some cool Ajax implementation. Clicking in the check boxes filters the results almost instantly. Scroll down and click on view for more details about the hotels and the kinds of rooms available. Another cool feature is the ability to drag and drop the room into the booking panel to the right.
Have a look at the translucent confirm screen, isn't it cool. 
They accept pretty much all the credit cards and payment through many Indian Banks for Indians holding Accounts in those banks. I have one complaint as usual with resolution,they could have designed the results screen to fit in the full window at 1024*768, instead it overflows by a few pixels.
[uSability]
What it scores on design it fails over here. It is not that Inasra falls flat in this aspect, its only that there are lot of issues that they have to resolve before they become really useful.
i) First on usability count is inability to go back and correct the options I have given. If for some reason I want to book another room in the same hotel, extend the date etc, I need to go all over again, there is no back feature from the confirm screen or the payment screen.
ii) There is no option to save a booking mid way, quit , comeback and start midway.
iii) There is a navigation menu to hotels using the menu item in the navigation bar. However, the results of reaching a hotel through this menu and through the hotel search is not consistent. Though the site recommends using the search feature for the hotel, why do they provide this navigation? For example it is not possible to reach details of "Silver Sand Resorts Havelock" through Hotels->City route, but you can see the details if you go to the hotel using the search.
iv) The menu items are not consistent across. In the search results, I cannot see the "Hotels" in the menu, while after navigating to the "Hotels" page, the menu item reads "Hotel".
v) Even if I am logged, I can see a menu Item "Register" on navigating to the "Hotels" page.
[gLitches]
As with any site there are a few inconsistencies in the behavior of the site. 
On few pages hovering over the navigation bar items changes the back ground color, while at a few other pages it changes font!. Why is this?
The options available on booking panel of the hotel are not available on the booking panel from the main screen. Again the booking panel is not consistent for hotels depending on how one reaches the page.
Finally, however intuitive a site is, it always helps to have a useful list of FAQ's guiding the user on how to navigate the site, and answering the basic queries like how to cancel and booking, what happens to the rates during non peak seasons, how to go about if I want my hotel to be in the listing etc.
[tHe sUmmary]
The first time I saw Inasra, I was really impressed. However, after taking a deeper look at the design and usability, I would say it has a some way to go in fixing the usability issues. Once they do that I am sure they will be a force to reckon with both in the service they provide(which I have not tried) and also the usability of the site.
What's with Indian Web2.0 Startups Design
Ok, I know it's easy to criticize. However, my frustration at the increasing number of web2.0 companies from India with interfaces that are a far cry in basics of design makes me post this. I am disappointed to see this more and more. I agree your technology and your product are great but basic lack of courtesy to design and lack of usage perspective will hamper your growth and also lead to a very negative impression.
In this post I will discuss some of the basic mistakes and how these can be avoided. There is one site which has impressed me with there approach. Picsquare, I have pointed to them in one of my earlier posts on hungrybangalore.
[tHe hOme]
The days of dead pan html and spartan looks are gone, its the age of color and style. Check this screenshot from a site which comes up after I login.
If this is what I need to use to navigate, I will think twice before I proceed. Forget about the web2.0 looks, this site has got the ground basics wrong. The font size is too small. I doubt if the person who designed this page can read the menu right below my name. Remember, its not what technology you offer that makes your company great, it's what the consumer perceives. This kind of a design is not going to win any one for you.
[lOgin!!]
Oh! my god, I just hate the login screen, I hate to login to every site. This is not just Indian but global phenomena. I don't understand why they make login mandatory and design such useless interface. This particular page has a bug, once I submit the screen, it does not go to a new page which tells me that my account information is saved or some blah blah. It just stays on the same page with mandatory fields marked in red. Considering this is a site for buying and selling, will you be comfortable with doing business with them? Check out my earlier post on registration and usability.
[nAvigation]
The most important thing that one looks for when one visits a site is to go through it. I find it most difficult to maneuver through the sites and find what I want. This is something that most of these have got right to some extent. The only suggestion being make it more visible (distinct), so that some one who wants something from the site can find how to get to that easily without haggling around.
[fOnts]
This I find is the least cared about in all most all the sites. The font style changes from navigation menu, to content, to page header to page footer. There is no uniformity in the fonts selected nor in the font size. You have to realize that these are some design principles which have come over time. It's not a nice idea to break them unless you have a ground breaking stuff.
[wHat nExt]
Some of these sites offer a plugin/software for download. However, there is not a single page on how to install. Not even in FAQ's. I have never taken the pain to test some of the products just because there is no instruction how to use them and I don't have all the time in the world to figure their usage.
[wHo aRe yOu ]
This was the most surprising and bizarre. What do you do? It is essential to know what your company offers? And this should be apparent from the first view of your site. Not after scrolling down and under.
[iN sUmmary]
i.Don't break the basic design rules.
ii. Make it easy for user to use your site.
iii. Don't make me use a microscope to read your site.
I will review some of the sites in detail in the coming days, and see what they got right and where they can improve.
Registration and Usability
However, I have come across a site which has gladdened my heart consoling me that there are some really sensible people out there who are making the web a better place. I was trying to leave a comment on the FoundRead site, and when it asked for registration, I skipped it almost. But, thought better of it and decided to register.
The link takes me to this screen on PublicSquare a company which calls itself Painless Publishing for providing such services. I will review the offerings of PublicSquare later. Coming back to the registration screen. It had just the bare necessities of login name, mail id, and password in a simple layout. The register button is visible and not obscure as I have seen on some sites in the past, just a link or small almost invisible button.
The folks at PublicSquare have done a great job here. Do you know some sites with such cool usability features, some sites which have enhanced your experience, please feel free to drop by and point me to those.
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