We have the technology, now tell us how to use it

The need for usability in a high tech world ...

"Office workers waste up to a month a year trying to figure out how to use their computers properly because modern technology is so complicated, a new study warns.

Trying to get their heads round difficult programmes on the PC is costing firms both time and money, often because no-one has taught employees what to do.

The survey of 500 workers and 300 bosses by the training body City & Guilds found that workers spent 10 per cent of their time battling against computer programmes or getting to grips with phones, handheld devices and other gadgets, equating to a month a year.

Thirty-seven per cent say they are frustrated by not being able to handle the technology. About a third (32 per cent) of workers say they have failed to receive training from their company to teach them to use the technology in the office."   continued ...   (Via Scotsman)

Computer Overload.

The Beauty of Simplicity

A good review about the merrits of simplicity ...

"It is innovation's biggest paradox: We demand more and more from the stuff in our lives--more features, more function, more power--and yet we also increasingly demand that it be easy to use. And, in an Escher-like twist, the technology that's simplest to use is also, often, the most difficult to create.

Marissa Mayer lives with that conundrum every day. As Google's director of consumer Web products, she's responsible for the search site's look and feel. Mayer is a tall, blond 30-year-old with two Stanford degrees in computer science and an infectious laugh. She's also Google's high priestess of simplicity, defending the home page against all who would clutter it up. "I'm the gatekeeper," she says cheerfully. "I have to say no to a lot of people."

The technology that powers Google's search engine is, of course, anything but simple. In a fraction of a second, the software solves an equation of more than 500 million variables to rank 8 billion Web pages by importance. But the actual experience of those fancy algorithms is something that would satisfy a Shaker: a clean, white home page, typically featuring no more than 30 lean words; a cheery, six-character, primary-colored logo; and a capacious search box. It couldn't be friendlier or easier to use."   continued ...   (Via Fast Company)

Google Simplicity.

Nokia Usability Forum

A good usability resource from Nokia ...

"Resources from Nokia about design. Some interesting stuff in there, a lot of it pitched to developers.

“Usability articles. Usability articles illustrate concrete perspectives on usability in mobile application creation. They describe in brief the most interesting issues in wireless development with end user in mind. There are success cases as well as general guidance on how to handle usability issues in a cost-efficient manner in product development."   continued ...   (Via Small Surfaces)

Nokia Mobile.

Minimizing the annoyance of the mobile phone

Societal problems with using mobile phones ...

"Nearly one in three (30%) adults say the cell phone is the invention they most hate but cannot live without, according to the eighth annual Lemelson-MIT Invention Index study.

It is easy and fun to think of the great advances in telecommunications, computation, and entertainment that will mark the next few years. But while we may relish the thought of all those wonderful technologies and opportunities, let us also remember that these come at a cost. The cost is partially monetary, but more and more it is in human-measures: annoyance, irritation, and frustration. It is what makes us wish to throw away the technology even as we embrace it.

We are in real danger of a consumer backlash against annoying technologies. We already have seen the growth of mobile-phone free zones, of prohibition against phone use, camera use, camera phones, in all sort of public and private places. The mobile phone has been shown to be a dangerous distraction to the driver of an automobile, whether hands-free or not. If we do nothing to overcome these problems, then the benefits these technologies bring may very well be denied us because the social costs are simply too great."   continued ...   (Via jnd.org)

Mobile Phone.

Linux gets Usability Support

Linux focusing on usability ...

"The Better Desktop initiative from Novell is a new component of the openSUSE project that provides open source developers with usability testing data and resources they can use to improve the quality of the Linux desktop.

Novell has released primary desktop research, including video footage and analysis of usability tests (see link below). Instructions for constructing and operating a low-cost usability lab will also be provided.

This initiative means that open source developers will be able to see for themselves the types of desktop software designs that are succeeding with end users. As a result, open source developers will have the resources to build applications that better meet the needs and expectations of users, which may see a rise in the adoption of Linux on the desktop."   continued ...   (Via Usability News)

Linux Logo.

Crap Circles

A challenge to using circular diagrams ...

"Gardiner Morse has written an article challenging the over-use of circular diagrams by vendors and consulting firms. To quote:

"The circle below, from a global accounting firm's Web site, is used to illustrate the company's consulting services for owner-managed businesses. It shows the business life cycle "maturity phase" leading, inexplicably, into the "conception/ start-up phase." This company's clients should ask whether they really want to be guided in circles. (To be fair, the shortcomings of this example and those that follow are exaggerated by lack of narration; someone with a laser pointer could probably explain what the diagrams should show, even if they don’t.)"   continued ...   (Via Column Two)

Circular Diagram.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Happy Thanksgiving 2005.

Why Do We Love Rounded Corners?

Rounded corners work because they leave visual hints ...

"As interface and graphic designers, we border on obsessed with rounded corners. Web developers have gone to great lengths, through the creative use of CSS (and sometimes Javascript) to make the creation of rounded corners as painless as possible. The proposed CSS3 specification even includes properties for rounded corners (Firefox already supports it).

So why is there such a fascination with rounded corners? I would venture that our attraction to rounded corners goes beyond the aesthetic and speaks to something more.

On one level, I think we're attracted to things that appear to be organic in nature. Take the iPod for instance. While the industrial design of similar products clearly hints towards how the device came to be, Apple put a lot of effort into creating a device that feels more like it grew on a tree than assembled in a factory. They went to great pains to conceal the machine-like characteristics that would typically hold a device together (screws, etc.). The result is a smoother feel with very few edges or hard angles to be found. This "smoothness" not only speaks to usability but also fosters an emotional connection with the device. Some of our earliest memories are tied to objects and things that are far less than perfect and rife with right angles. Corners say "go away." At the risk of sounding hoaky: smoother, rounder surfaces say "hold me.""   continued ...   (Via basement.org)

Rounded Corners.

The Web is hot again

The popularization of Web 2.0 UI ...

"Five years after the dot-com bust we now find ourselves on the cusp of a second revolution: Web 2.0 (or so it's been dubbed) — the first version upgrade of the World Wide Web. Richer Web software is popping up daily and amazing us with an entirely new experience.

Interactive Web applications are being launched with such robust functionality that they're threatening the future of the common desktop application. Technologies like AJAX have gained widespread buzz in a short period of time, proving that the market is now ready for what was promised years ago.

This shift is towards a more fluid, helpful and innovative Internet. Take Zimbra, a new contender in webmail. It's like Microsoft Outlook on steroids. You can hover over an address in your e-mail message and a mini map instantly appears. Couple that kind of functionality with a Web-based drag-and-drop interface, and it's hard to tell if it's running on your desktop or through a browser."   continued ...   (Via Globetechnology)

Kayak.com.

Towards the Design of Effective Formative Test Reports

Developing a best practices guide for formative test reports (PDF) ...

"Many usability practitioners conduct most of their usability evaluations to improve a product during its design and development. We call these "formative" evaluations to distinguish them from "summative" (validation) usability tests at the end of development.

A standard for reporting summative usability test results has been adopted by international standards organizations. But that standard is not intended for the broader range of techniques and business contexts in formative work. This paper reports on a new industry
project to identify best practices in reports of formative usability evaluations.

The initial work focused on gathering examples of reports used in a variety of business contexts. We define elements in these reports and present some early guidelines on making design decisions for a formative report. These guidelines are based on considerations of the business context, the relationship between author and audience, the questions that the evaluation is trying to answer, and the techniques used in the evaluation."   continued ...   (Via JUS)

Sample Reports.

The Enterprise User Experience - Bridging the IT/Marketing Divide

GUI vs. UX ...

"At one time, the concept of the Graphic User Interface (GUI) held great promise in connecting marketing to technology, and there was much talk of the importance of user friendliness. Yet over time, the term GUI lost its meaning, devolving to technological window dressing—just an aesthetic veneer without much substance. Somehow, the user at the center of this concept began to vanish from the picture, in favor the graphics and the interface.

Thankfully, the ideas and practices of enterprise UX design are gaining mindshare, succeeding where the GUI paradigm failed, and creating a shared tech-marketing domain. Companies are beginning to realize that UX professionals bring positive solutions to the table. Today, we see savvy technologists and marketers starting to embrace the enterprise UX concept because both camps stand to gain much in doing so.

User experience is a deliberately broader concept than GUI. It may take some time for it to fully penetrate the product design and development world. But it’s the right term to help create an approach to product design and development that incorporates the way people really perceive design, use products, and make decisions."   continued ...   (Via UXmatters)

It's the UX not the GUI.

Online International Journal of Usability Studies

A new online journal with excellent articles ...

"Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Usability Studies.

This journal was born in response to a growing need in the community of usability practitioners and researchers. Have you ever you looked for the most recent findings of usability studies that you can learn from or wondered where to publish interesting results from your own usability studies? Until now, there was no available forum for usability practitioners and applied researchers to share and disseminate many of their findings and experiences that are of general interest to this community. To meet this need and to fill the gap between academic research and business case studies, the Journal of Usability Studies was born. This publication will be a peer-reviewed, on-line journal dedicated to promoting and enhancing the practice, research, and education of usability engineering."   continued ...   (Via JUS)

Journal of Usability Studies.

Usability Testing of Mobile Applications

Field testing for mobile devices may not be worthwile ...

"Usability testing a mobile application in the laboratory seems to be sufficient when studying user interface and navigation issues. The usability of a consumer application was tested in two environments: in a laboratory and in a field with a total of 40 test users. The same problems were found in both environments, differences occurred in the frequency of findings between the contexts. Results indicate that conducting a time-consuming field test may not be worthwhile when searching user interface flaws to improve user interaction. In spite of this, it is possible that field testing is worthwhile when combining usability tests with a field pilot or contextual study where user behavior is investigated in a natural context."   continued ...   (Via JUS / Anne Kaikkonen, et al)

Field Testing.

Usability for the Masses

The need for all designers to learn usability ...

"The biggest problem facing the usability field is how to scale up massively so that we can impact all the user interface designs in the world. How big is this challenge? As of November 2005, there are about 75 million websites on the Internet. There are also about 30 million intranets inside corporate firewalls. Thus, there are more than 100 million user interface designs, just in the online space.

Add several hundred thousand software applications, dozens of cell phone manufacturers, and thousands of assorted consumer electronics products, and we have even more UI design to cover, many with quite esoteric and unique requirements.

Granted, many of the websites are personal sites that are only intended for the owner's closest friends. These designs may be seen purely as a personal expression and not as user experiences in the traditional sense of third-party users trying to understand a design. Still, there are probably about 70 million professional user interface designs in the world that are intended to serve the customers of a business, government agency, or a non-profit organization. If these UIs do not have good usability, much money will be lost."   continued ...   (Via JUS / Jakob Nielsen)

Usability for the Masses.

Check User ID Button

A simple and good idea for checking to see if an ID is available ...

"We’ve all been there. You find a new cool site. You decide to register for their service. You enter your favorite user id, the password, your pet’s birth date, the name of your third grade teacher (the cute one that you had a crush on), and your favorite Easter egg color. You finally press Submit. Then you find out the user id is already taken. Arrgghh!

Digg.com bypasses the ugly post-submit depression by putting a “Check” button next to the user id. Enter the name. Press Check. Find out immediately if your favorite Id is available."   continued ...   (Via UIE Brain Sparks)

ID Check Button.

A myriad of ways to make users sign-in

How sign-in strategies work on various sites ...

"It’s amazing how many different ways web sites handle sign-in pages. The messaging of the interface, whether or not to sign up for an account, and the HTML elements used are just some of the details that change drastically from site to site. Just recently I was doing an interface review to see what the state of the art was, and I was simply boggled by the different approaches I saw.

I’m interested in how this plays with users. Do they want to sign up for a new business service, or do they want to simply check out this one time? While we haven’t tested this Yahoo feature specifically, our experience testing checkouts has suggested that people often shy away from “fringe benefits” like this, especially if those benefits are not explained fully. (and much moreso if they have a choice not to)"   continued ...   (Via UIE Brain Sparks)

Amazon Sign-In.

Weaving Usability and Cultures: Benefits of an accessible website - part 2: The business case

More on the business case for making a website accessible ...

"The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) states that service providers must not discriminate against disabled people. A website is regarded as a service and therefore falls under this law, and as such must be made accessible to everyone.

Some organisations are making accessibility improvements to their websites, but many are seemingly not making the accessibility adjustments. Disabled people don’t access their website, they say, so why should they care?

There are, however, two very good reasons as to why businesses should start taking these issues seriously:

- An accessible website will make you more money
- An accessible website will save you money"   continued ...   (Via uiGarden)

Web Accessibility.

The blooming of information architecture at Google: A close look at facets, tags & categories in Google Base

A good review of the new Google Base UI ...

"I just spent some time with GoogleBase and was amazed at just how deeply Google has embraced standard information architecture concepts and trends. We have categories, facets, tags. I kid you not. Google of the simple search box with a go button has come a long way indeed.

A rich browse experience: Search and browse is integrated. I like this. I searched for "prius". It gave me a flat list of results, and options to refine by several facets (or attributes as it refers to them) "price" "condition", "make", "vehicles", "color" etc. You can go back and forth between search and browsing. It also shows query previews (how many results are available for each attribute). In this case, these are not very useful. Since its different views of the same set of results, it shows "114" for all the facets. This defeats the purpose of query previews - whose goal is to help you decide what path to take depending on the number of results. (A better use would be to show previews for choosing paths within the facet)."   continued ...   (Via Rashmi Sinha)

Google Base Attribuites.

You'll Know It When You See It

An interesting new feature in the Office 12 UI ...

"An important element of the new user interface in Office 12 is a feature we call "Live Preview."

The basic idea behind Live Preview is simple: whenever you hover over a formatting option with your mouse cursor, Office shows you what your document would look like if you chose to apply that formatting. For example, say that you drop down the font picker in Word. As you hover over each choice in the font picker, your document updates to show you what it would look like if you chose that font. Traditionally, formatting can be a very repetitive process.

Live Preview works for more than just fonts, of course. Most objects in Office are hooked up to Live Preview so that you can "pick before you click." This includes borders, fills, rotation, bullets and numbering, outline styles, picture fine-tuning, textures, styles, slide designs, 3D effects, animations, transitions, and a bunch of other stuff. (Sounds too!) Even features that change an entire object, such as table or shape styles, are Live Preview-enabled. Beta 1 includes a lot of Live Preview, and we are continuing to work to hook more objects up for the final release."   continued ...   (Via Jensen Harris)

Live Preview.

Data—The Essence of a Digital Lifestyle

A good article about how systems are changing toward user participation ...

"I’ve been thinking a lot about metadata recently, but not from the standpoint of XML or programming or helping to organize and index data. My interest is in the future of content ownership, delivery, and value. I see a future for media that looks very different from the media of today. The germ of this idea actually came from my experiences with online movie rentals.

“Netflix has essentially got me. Why? … They’ve got my personal data, my history, my preferences, and my viewing plans for the future. … The value and differentiation is in the ownership of my personal data.”

“The killer digital applications of the future will gather, use, and leverage people’s data to satisfy needs that they don’t even realize they have."   continued ...   (Via UXmatters)

Netflix.

Why People Matter

A detailed article about the need for Universal Usability ...

"Saying that people are the focus of user experience is stating the obvious, but when we are deeply engaged in our own work as user experience designers, it can be difficult to constantly remember to keep people at the center of design. For most of us, it’s hard not to get caught up in the skills and techniques that the technologies we work with require and even harder not to want to use technology to solve problems. But as user experience designers, we need to keep our eye on people. Unless you are working on a participatory design project, your users are at least one step away and out of sight can easily become out of mind.

In this column, I’ll explore how people and technology fit together and how this intersection succeeds or fails. When the fit is bad, it is often because products—and their designers—have failed either to

- anticipate and design for the complexity of users’ tasks
- understand the range of differences in people who will use a product"   continued ...   (Via UXmatters)

Designing for Real People.

So the Necessary May Speak

Reducing visual design to the necessary minimum ...

"Though carefully structured organizational systems and well architected interactions are key components of effective interface designs, it is ultimately the presentation of an interface—layout, look and feel—that tells users what a product has to offer and how they can make use of it. As a result, creating usable and engaging interactive products is dependent on our ability, as designers, to communicate with our audience. The better at communicating we are, the easier it is for our audience to understand our messages and intentions and the easier it is for them to use and appreciate the products we design.

Interactive products, by their very nature, tend to be complicated. They allow us to create and control large amounts of information and enable many unique interactions. As a result, there’s a natural tendency for interface designs to over-communicate, or establish multiple forms of dialogue and vocabularies within a single application or interaction. Complicated concepts require more explanation, right? Not always."   continued ...   (Via UXmatters)

Minimum Necessary Visuals.

Personas, Goals, and Emotional Design

A nice expansion on Don Norman's "Emotional Design" ...

"When Don Norman’s most recent book, Emotional Design, hit the shelves in early 2004, it sent a ripple through the user experience world. Norman introduced the idea that product design should address three different levels of cognitive and emotional processing: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. This idea seemed like old news to some and a revelation to others in the UX community. In either case, Norman’s ideas, based on years of cognitive research, provide an articulated structure for modeling user responses to product and brand and a rational context for many intuitions long held by professional designers.

Using personas, goals, and scenarios provides one potential key to unlocking the power of visceral, behavioral, and reflective design, and bringing them together into a harmonious whole. While some of our best designers seem to understand and act upon the interrelationships between these aspects of design almost intuitively, consciously designing for all levels of human cognition and emotion offers tremendous potential for creating more satisfying and delightful user experiences."   continued ...   (Via UXmatters)

Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things



Check-out more books at Usernomics.

Accessibility Is Not Enough

Accessibility must be viewed in the context of making a site easier to use ...

"A strict focus on accessibility as a scorecard item doesn't help users with disabilities. To help these users accomplish critical tasks, you must adopt a usability perspective.

We did find that most portal products have poor out-of-the-box usability, so one can certainly fear the worst. And it's never wise to trust a vendor's sales staff in matters of user experience -- the only good advice here is to check for yourself.

Such a check is easy: Simply ask four or five of your disabled employees to spend an hour testing the product on whatever sample tasks are realistically represented in the available version. It's important that these employees use their own screen readers, screen magnifiers, keyguards, or mouse replacements, and any other assistive technology they might use during their daily work."   continued ...   (Via Alertbox)

Practical Accessibility.

Zen is not for value judgments

Simplicity may not be as obvious as first thought ...

"A blog called "Presentation Zen" has generated a lot of buzz for a couple of posts that smugly satisfy what an audience wants to believe: Bill Gates and Visual Complexity and Gates, Jobs, and the Zen Aesthetic. Readers feel righteous in the easy digs at Microsoft's busy PowerPoint slides, particularly when compared to Jobs' spare presentations.

And when I first saw those posts, I thought, "Yeah! Spareness! Simplicity! Whoo!" Bet then I wondered, "Um, isn't Bill Gates worth a gajillion dollars? Isn't Microsoft an exceedingly successful company? Should we maybe look at this a little differently?"

And I wonder: Maybe Microsoft is giving people what they want. Obviously, it's all about context. And Microsoft's contexts are very different from Apple's. Steve Jobs never really explains anything. He simply shows products. He pretty much just gives demos. Bill Gates, in the presentations critiqued by those posts, is trying to explain something... And explain something that contains a fair bit of complexity. And Bill's audience is likely quite different... Bill is trying to communicate to developers, who are wondering about the ramifications of Microsoft's decisions on their livelihood."   continued ...   (Via peterme)

Zen Simplicity.

Design for servicability and manufacturability

The need for servicability of computer hardware ...

"In a perfect world, a machine should be easy to maintain and service, even to a novice. This will never happen of course, but there are a few guidelines and case studies that will help you.

We'll use the original series of iMac (the fruit-colored ones) as an example of a machine that could have been built differently. While most people agree that it's a good machine when it works, it has a few quirks that make it frustrating when it fails.

A lot of the first machines produced had an unforeseen problem of the monitor's transformer overheating and failing. While this is the kind of thing that can happen to anyone, other aspects of the design made this a bit of a disaster for the owner.

The general design of the iMac is relatively difficult to service. Access to most of the electronics means disassembling a good portion of the chassis, not just the removal of one panel. Many parts are hidden under other parts, or connected in such a way that access is not obvious. This creates problems even for servicepeople who will otherwise willingly crack open a computer."   continued ...   (Via IDFuel)

Computer Parts.

Computers with a 'human' face

A human user interface design for computers ...

"For many years now, researchers have tried to make computers more user-friendly, sometimes with the use of avatars on screen trying to educate us. Results have never been really successful. But now, a researcher at Florida State University (FSU) is working to give computers a human 'face' and her computer-generated characters can be tailored to a specific audience. For example, she is using such agents to challenge young women's stereotypes about the engineering profession by employing non-stereotypical engineering 'mentors' like pseudo-women.

Here are some details about this FSU project.

"Up until now, the personal computer's potential to be a valuable teaching and learning tool has been stymied by its 'soulless' nature," said Amy L. Baylor, [an associate professor of instructional systems and director of FSU's Center for Research of Innovative Technologies for Learning (RITL).] "At RITL, we're using computers to simulate human beings in a controlled manner so we can investigate how they affect and persuade people."

Every day at RITL, researchers in the areas of instructional technology, human-computer interaction, communication, computer science and psychology work to develop innovative uses of technologies to support learning and performance."   continued ...   (Via ZDNet)

Animated Computer Instructor.

Find out what your customer really needs from your website

You need to know what the user needs to have good usability ...

"If there is one reason—more than any other—why a website fails, it is because it doesn’t understand its customers.

Thanks to everyone who recently completed the survey of web manager headings. Out of 50 headings, the number-one heading, with 17 percent of people voting for it, was:

“Find out what your customer really needs from your website”

Stating the obvious? If the obvious was obvious, everyone would be doing it. We live in a world of mirrors and opposites. What is clear is not clear, what is obvious is not obvious."   continued ...   (Via Gerry McGovern)

Department of Energy.