Usability of Stuff and Things

Conference sessions that rock usability

2009-06-26T05:46:00.000-07:00

I recently attended an industry conference on Rich Internet (RIA) technology that was billed as pertaining to the user experience (UX) folks, albeit loosely. While I attended the multi-day conference I was musing on what an ideal conference would be for people the work primarily in the usability/user experience/user centered design space.

To be fair, one of the primary criteria for attending this RIA conference was the proximity from where I work, while still getting some amount of useful knowledge. Budgets not being what they used to be, it has been increasingly difficult to make a case for travel to California or Florida; which are both popular conference destinations.

I’ve attended both UIE(1) and Nielsen/Norman(2) conferences for usability numerous times over the years, and while both Jakob Nielsen and Jared Spool are both engaging and popular speakers I’ve been to the big top and seen the show.

As a result I began thinking about a more user-generated curriculum by people who are not consultants but are embedded user experience people that not only solve problems on a daily basis but fight for usability resources, lab space and good user centered design in-house every day.

Believing that visualization is the first step toward action I’ve penned 10 conference sessions that would rock usability.

1. Selling Usability: How to get a budget and a staff in 12 easy slides

One of the largest issues that user experience folks have is actually selling usability within their organization.

Having attended many conferences, this question usually shows up in one of the Q&A sessions. Knowing that the questioner’s company has paid a boatload of money to send said person to the conference, the presenter points out this simple fact, says it’s a good thing, and then usually moves on.

What I would want is a way to make this more actionable.

I would envision this session as part work session and part presentation where the final deliverable is a set of PowerPoint slides you could take with you and use as a toolkit to furthering usability within your organization. PowerPoint has always been the coin of the realm in corporations.

Since every company is a bit different I would see a base set of slides with lots of metrics and quotes on how doing usability early saves money, and highlighting specific instances where well known companies saved money and how they did it.

As an interactive, user generated session; attendees would contribute slides and then speak to them as part of the group.

The end result would be an vast set of slides and talking points to further user centered design. This would be very interactive and very real, as well as providing a neat way to get introductions to people that feel your pain and fight the good fight.

2. Tools and Tricks to amaze and stun your friends
There are lots of ways to slice and dice the user experience and get information from your users.

This tools and techniques session highlights quick usability testing and methodology tricks to further usability by including users, stakeholders, and developers in the process in a fun and low risk way.

Two good examples that I personally picked up from Jared Spool’s podcasts are confidence indicators and 5-second tests.

The confidence indicator is simple way to gage how sure people are of what they are telling you. This is done in a non-judgmental way quite easily with poker chips. Simply put, you give a participant a set of 10 poker chips and ask them questions. The participants then indicate how sure they are of their answer by pushing some chips towards you. The more chips, the more confident they are of their answer.

Another example is 5-second tests(3) which is a simple usability test that helps you identify the most prominent elements of the user interface.

In this test you give a participant a quick look at a screen or printout and then take it away, after which you ask them questions about interacting with the page.

Quick hits like these are the allen keys and files in your toolbox. While they may never rise to the level of a hammer or saw, they have their place and are very useful. They are also easily explainable and low impact, meaning stakeholders won’t be threatened by it, hopefully opening the door to larger testing engagements.

This session would include 10 different methods tools and tricks with appropriate discussion leading to a lot of new stuff to add to the toolbox.

3. Rich Media, same as the old media?
One of my most recent struggles is how to effectively design and convey the user experience when the experience is not based on a static layout.

Screen design in the HTML world was, if not easy, it was well understood. The new crop of tools and interfaces such as Flash, Flex, Silverlight and AJAX change the playing filed and in many cased let developers to horrific things that look slick and finished.

Jakob Nielsen's “Flash: 99% Bad”(4) is a harbinger of what some designers and developers will do with a new tool that has lots of whiz-bang effects.

New media tools have their own visual language that makes effects very easy to apply and use.

UX people need to have an understanding of these tools, what they can and can’t do to be able to better illustrate the user experience.

It is difficult to recommend the best possible solution without knowing what your options are. With these new technologies it becomes easier for developers to produce slick, finished looking “prototypes” and as a result can sidestep all the knowledge that has been learned relating to user experience in the domain being developed in.

This session would highlight actionable techniques for illustrating dynamic media, and illustrate the UX functions and features within each of the target technologies.

4. Getting Published and the size of the rocks they throw
There is a lot of good work that goes on that unfortunately most of it does not make it out into the mainstream, making it difficult to advance the field.

This session would discuss and map a path of how to get published, the venues for publishing and the pros and cons to each publishing stream.

Also discusses is how to join new and interesting open source development projects(5) to help improve usability and raise your personal awareness level within the industry.

5. User Testing is about the user
Traditional user testing can be time consuming and a daunting task if you have never run tests before, but they don’t have to be.

This session takes attendees through the entire process for testing inside a corporate environment and outside in the public.

How many people do you really need to test with? How many tasks are too many? How can you get employees to participate in tests? When should I lead my users when they are stuck? These are just some of the questioned to be answered are each step in the process is outlined from facilitators that run tests on a daily basis.

Developing test scripts, determining the right participants, monitoring tests and keeping stakeholders in the loop, running tests and highlighting results successfully are all important touch points in the process.

Included in the session would be snippets from user tests (good and bad), highlighting techniques for facilitators and how to avoid pitfalls that can skew test results.

6. What’s YOUR problem?
Interaction design problems are mulled over and tested every day. For every problem there can be a series of comparable solutions.

Presented are multiple solutions to sets of common UI and information presentation problems in an interactive discussion and presentation format. Session participants would be requested to submit examples and work product that lead to their solutions and what they learned along the way.

This frank look at problems and solutions would lead to developing heuristics(6) and design patterns(7) that could be extrapolated solve larger layout and navigation problems.

7. Content, Search and other evil things
As intranets, extranets and general sites mature content is continually created, edited and sometimes replaced. Content owners both maintain and abandon their content as job responsibilities change and people move on from companies.

This session discusses how to manage content through its entire lifecycle and how to sunset old content and bubble up good content through content management, mining search and editorial review.

Content management, workflow and best practices are discussed with thoughtful examples from commercial software, homegrown, and open source content management applications; blogs, wikis and other user generated content sources.

8. Sharpening the Stick: Improving core competencies
Content Heuristics are well known but how can you present the application of heuristics in a meaningful, actionable and persuasive way?

How can you best facilitate card sorting(8) with a room full of type-A personalities or run tests across the globe?

When is the best time to use focus groups and who should you include in the process?

Do you use wire frames to illustrate user flow, and do they need to be more than doodles on napkins?

Heuristic evaluation, card sorting, focus groups and wire framing are all techniques used on a continual basis. This session discusses what you can do to make your techniques and results more effective, easier to produce and more persuasive to developers and stakeholders.

9. Content Governance and Style Guides & Frameworks, oh my
As organizations mature there are an ever-growing group of content providers including internal resources, third party vendors, integration groups and even interns.

Content governance(9) is a process where web content from diverse groups in a organization can be best harnessed for the betterment of visitors and to best use the available resources throughout an organization.

This session discusses how content governance plays a role in keeping the org on track, where, when, how and why to use style guides and frameworks and the problems and benefits to a structured environment.

10. Research and Resources: The truth is out there
Unless you work in a consultancy there’s a large chance that you are the only user experience person in the building or, if you are lucky, part of a small (maybe 2-3) handful of folks doing user centered design.

There are many resources from books, podcasts, websites, articles and even twitter friends(10) out there that can come to the rescue. This session highlights some of the best and provides a takeaway of resources so you can put together your own resource library and support group.

I hope you’ve enjoyed conference sessions that rock usability. As you see from the list there are many tool based sessions, research and solution based sessions but they all have a reoccurring theme of interaction between user centered practitioners to not only present ideas and solutions but the recharge the creative and analytical batteries within a common guild.

Hopefully it was interesting and thought provoking spurring a wealth of conference session to come to a location near you or me or simply on the Internet.

If you do plan of developing sessions in part or in whole please give me a shout out, and maybe even a free pass.

Bibliography:

1. User Interface Engineering (UIE)
Consulting firm and conferences headed by Jared M. Spool

2. NN/g : Nielsen Norman Group
Usability consulting, training & user experience group, Jakob Nielsen principle.

3. 5-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site's Content Pages
Christine Perfetti & UIE

4. Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: Flash: 99% Bad
Original Article on Flash

5. Design in the Open
Open source development projects

6. Usability Heuristics for Rich Internet Applications

7. Yahoo! Design pattern library

8. Card Sorting, a definitive guide

9. Defining a Model for Content Governance

10. Follow me on twitter

Designing the web experience for children.

2008-07-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

David Lumerman,
Lil’ Fingers Storybooks.

Small children offer a very specific challenge to experience designers because they use websites differently then pre-teens, teenagers and adults. In fact, usability research with children has often been considered either too difficult to carry out with unruly subjects, or not necessary for an audience that is satisfied with gratuitous animations and funny noises[1].

Children five and under explore the web through guided discovery, looking for large visual cues like clickable maps and bright colorful graphics. They will click around looking for fun and interesting things to happen when they move their mouse. This is different than their older siblings who seek out and identify with cool looking graphics. Kids are keenly aware of their age and know what is designed for them, and what is designed for their younger siblings[2].

The “sense of scent” [3] popularized by Jared Spool , where users will follow visual cues to get to their goal like little breadcrumbs, manifests itself differently in young children. Where adults skim text for key words or ideas that match the expectation of what they are looking for, young children without developed reading and writing skills will gravitate towards pictures, icons, colors and graphics to build mental models of the world around them.

Color and graphics becomes a much more important to designing the experience. This can be seen when children from an early age identify with familiar icons and associate them with complex words or ideas. What child cannot identify the golden arches of McDonalds (red and yellow letter M), the script Coca-Cola logo (red letter C) or the graphic on Superman’s chest (red and yellow letter S)? All of these pose strong iconography and primary colors.

Studies with kids done by Microsoft[1] indicate designing icons meaningful to kids, and even styling the cursor to be more kid friendly to indicate the tasks to be performed and provides specific visual cues which to adults, would be gratuitous. Examples of such cursors would be graphically stylized magnifier glasses indicating zoom functions and paintbrush icons.

Children, especially young children, love and identify with characters. They can identify and derive comfort from them, and from an educational standpoint characters aid young children in the learning process[4]. As much as adults detest “Clippy” from the Microsoft suite of products, young kids love these types of characters. The enjoy interacting with them, and they in turn help them perform tasks.

Along with color and iconography, interaction points need to be findable by small hands. Fitts’ law[5] indicates that the larger and closer the target area, the easer it is for a user to navigate to it. This is especially true for curious children who may not have the dexterity and fine motor control of their older sibilings. For this reason larger more obvious target areas make for better clicking.

Buttons that look like buttons produce better results in all age groups, but take on a different meaning for youngsters who rely more heavily on icons and do not have a full understanding of general internet conventions that are learned by repetition and experience when using web sites habitually.

Studies by Jakob Nielsen[2] found that “children are incapable of overcoming many usability problems, this combined with kids' lack of patience in the face of complexity, results in many [children] simply leaving websites”.

Underlined blue links that take you from page to page, left navigation to traverse a site’s taxonomy, clicking logos to go back “home”, and advertising banners that take you “away” to a new site are not easily understood by young children, and as a result cannot be used as effective navigational tools.

In fact, banner ads pose a particular problem because children do not see these as separate from the experience, but as part of the experience. As a result, they are more apt to click on banner ads.

Another item to consider with young children is a shortened attention span. This means that not only should activities be fast loading and easily accessible but should be short in duration, and if possible be savable or recoverable to the point where the youngster last lost interest. This is mostly for the adult’s sanity to avoid replaying the first few activity sections over and over again.

Because of this limited attention span, instructions need to be short and memorable. Adult users don’t read long on-screen text item, children in contrast, may not understand or remember them, so short and sweet increases task completion.

Sound and music is also something that distinguishes this group from older users. Small children are generally delighted when their movements cause beeps, bangs and snaps. Their parents however, not so much.

Because of these limitations many websites are designed with co-discovery in mind where the heavy lifting, such as navigation and activity selection, is done by someone old enough to easily circumnavigate these pitfalls, leaving the activity horseplay to the kids.

Author

David Lumerman has a graduate degree in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) from Rensselaer Polytechnic, and for the past 10 years has developed Lil’ Fingers Storybooks (www.lil-fingers.com), a online computer storybook and activity site designed for young children.

References

(1) Hanna, L., Risden, K., Czerwinski, M., Alexander, K. The Role of Usability Research in Designing Children’s Computer Products. 1998. Microsoft Corporation. Online: http://research.microsoft.com/~marycz/druin98.htm

(2) Nielsen, J., Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children. 4/2002. Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox. Online: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/children.html

(3) Spool, J., Designing for the Scent of Information. 11/2004. User Interface Engineering. Online: http://www.uie.com/reports/scent_of_information/

(4) Blowers, H., Bryan, R. Weaving a Library Web: Guide to Developing Children’s Websites. American Library Associations. 5/2004; pp 71-73

(5) Fitts’ Law. Wikipedia. Online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts_law

The usability of Twitter

2008-01-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

Twitter is a social networking site that allows users to broadcast small snippets of text to the twitter universe and your own small subset of this universe for friends and lurkers to read your posts. Posts are presented in chronological order with the newest posts on top and older posts fading off the page.

Twitter is crack presented to the blogosphere. But what makes it so addictive has a lot to do with good usability. Presented below is what twitter does right for the user and why it matters.

1. Immediate satisfaction
Twitter updates live every four minutes and hitting the refresh gives you new content immediately.

Posting is also as simple, usually showing up within seconds of posting, which then gets appended to your “recent” list.

2. Positive Identification
It’s not enough that text from friends and strangers parade across your screen, but there are photos associated with these text posts. Seeing the photos makes you want to read the text. It is no surprise that pretty young girls who post quirky interesting snippets have lots of followers. arielwaldman and kitta are followed partially because they have pretty faces and partially because of their interesting prose.

On my twitter (dlumer) I have numerous friends that have an associated photo and a few that don’t. I find the ones that have photos more interesting to read, even though what they type may not support this tendency. People like that human connection. They gravitate towards it.

3. Low cost of action
Twitter lets you collect friends easily. Simply by clicking on their icon or name you can “follow” them simply by clicking a follow button. There is no long process. It is very easy; making is easy to collect lots of friends or pseudo-friends. These friends can reciprocate just as easily and follow you.

Once the two-way communication is going, you can easily post back and forth in an ongoing dialog, like a party line that nobody hangs up on.

4. My Network, not your network
While you can surf the public timeline, the power of twitter is in the local network that appears as all your and your friends’ latest entries with the icons of people you specifically follow. This is the important “web 2.0” part, where the user is looking a collection of posts they assemble, not one based on groups like a mailing list. Each person’s twitter is unique to himself or herself, only containing the people you choose to follow – or “listen to”. If someone posts too much or turns out not to your liking, you can simply stop following them.

5. Context is king
Along with your specific view is the idea of context of the text. It is not enough to know a friend has posted, but it helps to know when, and sometimes how. Twitter has both, showing the messages with how long ago they posted and what type of device (web, txt message, applet) delivered the message.

From a systems perspective, the time requirement is satisfied by simply time stamping each entry. But from the user’s perspective it is much more important to know how long ago from this point in time a message was posted.

Approximate times are even better, because they are concepts easily assimilated. Knowing that a message was posted “about 3 hours ago” is infinitely more usable than knowing a message was posted at 4:34pm on January 8th. In the first instance the user must do a mental calculation for not only the date and time posted, but also the current time as well, to get to the same place as “about 3 hours ago”. If the cognitive load is greater than the information gained, the user generally disregards the mental calculation.

There are a couple of instances where Twitter falls down however as they try and balance the ease of use and information overload. The below presented information is not as much cut-and-dried criticism, as problems or opportunities for further refinement.

1. If a tree falls in the forest...
One of the largest holes in twitter is the inability to point messages to people who do not follow you. There are many instances where you follow someone, and read a post where the poster has asked a specific question to the group and you respond to that post – but the original poster never sees it because the don’t follow you.

Understandably there are good reasons to not allow just anyone to post to anywhere. You need only look in your email box’s spam filter for hundreds of reasons. The problem I see however is the lack of feedback that the message will never be seen. While I have no hard data to confirm this, the anecdotal data I have is based on peoples various posts, when they realize that they are missing out on posts and begin following people who have responded to them.

Additionally, the system does not have an in system way to “poke” a user, letting them know you are responding to them.

2. My message is bigger!
Twitter is designed for short bursts of message content. This message content may be a bit on the small side for many users. Many a time you get posts broken into 2 or 3 messages to get the whole thought out. This may be the extreme example, but I personally would love about 20 more characters most of the time.

To Twitter’s credit however they dynamically show you how many characters you have left in your message, and even visually change the display when you are about to run out of space. This is a tremendous step up from instant messenger’s “your post is too big so you are out of luck” message.

As you can see, overall twitter is a great assemblage of micro-blogging and social networking that allows people to easily stay in touch with others, and isn’t maintaining the human connection with computers what it’s all about?

Usability of Social Networks (LinkedIN)

2007-08-09T06:21:00.000-07:00

The cornerstone of user experience is the trade off between what you are required to do and what you get for doing it. In the case of social networks, what you get can be significant, so much so that the user is willing to go through multiple steps to optimize the experience.

LinkedIN
One such network is LinkedIN. LinkedIN, for those that do not know is a social network to build and maintain professional contacts. The idea is simple. I know people, you know people, and these people know people, forming a network of associations.

LinkedIN is a good example of a social network web application. Here are some highlights (and a couple of dings):

GOOD: Low barrier to Entry
New people can be added to the system easily with only entering a couple of pieces of information. This allows the user base to grow and develop without full profiles.

This is generally one area where software development gets it wrong most of the time, looking at each user as a record, and each record should be as complete as possible, this makes the linkages of data easier for the programmer.

Unfortunately this creates a high barrier to entry where most potential contacts would bounce off and not be included in the network.

I recently began using this service, and I have a few people with only one contact (me) and only info about the associated company.

Making it easy to have incomplete records makes it easy to exploit these new semi-users in the future.

GOOD: Keeps the user informed about other contacts
LinkedIN also has a nice feature to show what your other contacts are up to. If a contact added a new connection, or recommends someone then it shows on your control panel, keeping you informed.

GOOD: System Status
There is a status area showing how complete your profile is. This allows you to take the next step in the process, making the record more complete. This makes the programmers happy and enhances the overall network. It also helps convert semi-users to habitual users by indoctrinating them slowly into the site.

GOOD: Graceful Security
The application will lock the user out after a pre-determined period of time. This has become standard for secure applications. What is not standard is doing it gracefully.

Many applications will time-out forcing the user to re-enter credentials and then either reset their session to the login point or take them to where they were last, losing their edits. The LinkedIN system is smart enough to retain your edits, log you in and then complete the process. Very sweet.

BAD: Editing Previously Entered Information is Difficult
While some of the entries have [edit] links, many do not. In fact this is an instance where an edit link is detrimental to the user.

The edit link next to only the current contact (and not other contacts) makes the other contacts appear in-editable.

Other contacts are viewed in their completeness with edit links, but this is below the fold(you need to scroll to get there). Because of how the layout appears to have footer information (an ad to link out to your public profile on your personal website) giving the impression that there is no more information below that point.

By changing the [edit] link to link to lower on the page, they could inform the user that these items are easily editable.

BAD: Tab Woes
The labels on tabs in the application can be a problem. While most are straight forward, the ones for the profile are confusing. Similar names do very different things. "Edit my Profile" is simple, and allows the user to edit the profile. The "Edit my Public Profile" gives the user the impression that they can have two distinct profiles, one for the public and one for friends/colleagues. This is not the case, this option simply allows the user to show and hide profile sections.

It would be better to call it something different, possibly profile preferences.

BAD: Profile Differences
Related to the tab woes is the way the profiles are displayed for your personal contacts and for you viewing your contacts.

The interface tabs change depending on who's details you are viewing. Keeping this consistent would allow the user to seamless jump between the two.

While not a big deal, it does add to some jumping about to see things like recommendations.

Social Networks in General
Social networking is akin to a video game where the user hunts for the prizes and adds them to his bag of goodies and continues to forage. LinkedIn propagates this by showing your contacts and your contacts contacts putting you in a virtual death match of adding to your network.

Social networks are the new version of the social club or local pub where you can keep in contact with others, if only virtually.

How easy is it to print?

2007-07-20T08:38:00.001-07:00

This article is for those of you who have been hardened on word processors for what seems like your entire life.

To you, the idea of having trouble printing is nonsense. Printing is one of the core functions on a computer. In fact, when you first got your Commodore 64 one of the only things it could do was print, so when I say that printing is hard, you should find it hard to believe. But it is.

Last evening I spent about 45 minutes with my father trying to guide him to print a document from Microsoft Excel. Now, my father is not a dumb man, he may be a bit on the technology light side, but in general he can navigate around pretty well. But, when he needed to print his document so columns were not being cut off he was lost.

Step 1: Hidden Options

Starting from the beginning, Microsoft has decided to hide options at random from menus. So, to print, you can’t simply select “print”, first you need to expand the menu to show all the menu options. Not ideal, but definitely doable.

Step 2: The print menu
You might think this is where our story begins and ends, but on the general print menu there is no option to change the print orientation. This is odd, since most pages are set up portrait orientation, but most spreadsheets are landscape orientation.

Step 3: Properties
The properties option contains our orientation menu, along with a host of other options, most of which would confuse my poor father. The problem here is there is no preview to see if your data fits on the page. And, there is no easy way to get to the place to see the data (the previous screen), so you need to click ‘ok’, then preview to see the result.

Step 4: Clicking preview
If the preview is not to your liking, there is a handy “setup” link, which, you would think, would lead the user back to the complication whence you came. But alas, is brings you to a different ‘setup’ menu.

Step 5: Send the file to me and I’ll fix it.
In then end, my father was not able to print his spreadsheet in its current format for many reasons. Some of which were technical and some because he did not have the knowledge of Excel to make the modifications necessary to fix it.

While many of us have reached the point of Excel wizardry in reformatting screens to our liking, I would suspect there are just as many who are confused and end up taping together multiple print outs unnecessarily. To this, I say the failure is in the system. The system should be smart enough to know the orientation of the document and be able to change (or suggest to change) the orientation to our needs. The system should also make it simple for the user to find commands, and present the most used options in a single location without the need to navigate several screens. Additionally, the system should make it easy to navigation to a single representation (one view) of user options and make it easy to go back and modify them without the need to guess or start over.

And the user... well, the user should learn how to use Excel.

Recognition in young children

2007-07-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

At the heart of advertising is rote memorization. In the advertising world they call it ‘branding’.

Branding is the process by which name, logo, slogan, or design scheme becomes associated with a product or service. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to the product and serves to create associations and expectations around it (from Wikipedia).

Through these associations a company wishes you to make one choice over a competitors choice. A side affect of these brands is the snippets of information about the products that get stuck in the brain. It could be as simple as a logo, like in the classic Coca-Cola logo or the iconography of the Pepsi Cola logo, it could even be the colors like the red and yellow of a McDonalds logo, or it could even be the jingle associated with the product like the famous B-O-L-O-G-N-A, which brings me to the interesting snippet of this discussion.

If I were to speak to any child that grew up in the 70’s how to spell ‘bologna’, every one of them would get it right because of the mark of Oscar Meyer’s advertising has made on our consciousness. Today’s children do not know how to spell bologna.

But what they lack in bologna skills they more than make up with a myriad of other products, which is what led me to thinking on this subject. There is a product I was introduced to called “PROMPTZ” which utilizes product imagery to focus young children to learn letters, words and sounds though cognitive mapping these associations for active learning.

Cognitive maps are a method used to structure and store spatial knowledge, allowing the "mind's eye" to visualize images in order to reduce cognitive load. This is where it gets interesting, because to a 4 year old, it is much easier to remember Eeyore than to remember that what sound an ‘e’ makes, and then they can get on to remembering who all the Powerpuff girls are.

This mapping is how many user interfaces work today. A designer or usability person develops an interface based on something familiar. Excel is designed like a checkbook, and PowerPoint designed like slides in a slide carousel. It is actually these links to the familiar, which increases our initial adoption of functions and features within software. Mental mapping puts things in a familiar environment in our minds so it can be cataloged and understood. Once these are present in our minds it is easier to expand this base of knowledge to less familiar territories, to learn new skills, but keeping the basic framework of the familiar to fall back on.

Elevator Usability

2007-07-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

At first glance you might think that elevators are pretty usable form of conveyance. There are however many circumstances where the usability of an elevator may be in question.

The use case is simple.

The user wishing to go up (or down) pushes a button to indicate to the system that a passenger is waiting. Based on the other passengers waiting on various floors the elevator eventually arrives to retrieve the passenger.
The doors open and existing passengers get out, the new passenger gets in to the appropriate elevator (if there are multiple elevator cars).
The passenger depresses the button corresponding to the floor of his or her choice.
The elevator stops at all floors corresponding to buttons that are pressed between the current location and the final destination.
When the passenger arrives at the destination requested they exit the elevator.

If an elevator was actually as simple as it seems there would not be ten pages of results in google on elevator etiquette.

Apparently this is a real problem for some people. My favorite is a site called elevatorrules.com, which contains written rules and comments on how to use the elevator. These include requesting passengers who are going up or down a single floor to take the stairs.

The simple decisions necessary to determine if you should enter an elevator become complex based on the affordances (things to make using something easier) built around the elevator and what you find before entering the elevator.

In simple terms, if it’s full, you don’t get in. If people are getting out, you let them before entering the conveyance. It is surprising to observe how many people get this part wrong and stand directly in front of the elevator when the doors open. Unfortunately for the people leaving the elevator the person looking to enter has given little thought to the onslaught of people exiting. This Moe can either act as a bowling pin and get knocked aside by the exiting passengers or as the bowling ball (which is more common) trying to get into the elevator before passengers leave.

On the elevator there are visual cues to the floor you are going to. These are usually indicated a lit up number, or in the newer displays, an 8x10 video display combined with an auditory message of the floor arrived at, and sometimes the direction you are traveling. All of these are designed to facilitate the entrance and egress process.

There is no part of the use case that has more problems that the simple decision of choosing to go up or to go down. The decision is simple, but the visual indicators are the area where design liberties are taken, and as such may not be the most usable.

One of the most often seen indicators is the lit up arrow, which combines two visual indicators, the first of direction, and the second of selection. By using two methods of indication, recognition is easier for riders, and usable for colorblind and the visually impaired.

The least usable versions seen are the ones developed in the 70’s and designed to be hip and sleek. These utilize only a single light and two colored bulbs - one white, and one red. Unfortunately, color alone is not a good indicator of direction, even if these indicators are for heaven (white) and hell (red). These indicators become even less usable as time goes by when the frosted glass panes used to cover the bulbs are not regularly cleaned, making it all look grey. This forces users to guess as to the direction of the conveyance, a process the would-be passenger is doing standing right in front of the elevator asking, “is this going up?” to people who are already annoyed that you are standing in front of the elevator while they are trying to get out.

In fact, even Superman had problems with this as parodied in the 1978 “Superman the Movie” as Clark Kent trying to get to the lobby stood right in front of the doors to the ire of the passengers.

Even the buttons in an elevator are fraught with indecision when the standard ‘L’ or ‘1’ buttons are replaced with an ‘M’ which may or may not be where you are headed.

Common user errors in an elevator happen when passengers push the wrong button, or get off (or not get off) on the correct floor. These are usually followed by a sheepish look by the offending passenger, telegraphing, “What, it wasn’t me who pushed ‘7’, it was some other guy who got out at ‘4’.” Errors can also due to mechanical problems. Burned out lights behind buttons deprive the user of the visual cue that the system is aware that you have initiated action, leaving the user to press buttons multiple times.

Modern developers have actually looked at improving the time-honored elevator system to improve efficiency by placing a panel outside of the elevator to indicate the floor the passenger wishes to go to before the elevator arrives. When the user enters the elevator, it knows where to go. This is a remarkable system for habitual users, but for visitors it is a new learning experience. Many a time I have observed delivery people walking into these elevators only to find there are no buttons to press, and then being at a loss as to what to do.

It is surprising that these developers have not tried adding a cancel button and directional buttons next to each floor button, because as we all know, sometimes you might just want to change your mind.

There are times when inefficiency can actually be more efficient.

5 Sins of Cross Platform Development

2007-06-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

Recently I had the opportunity to try out the newest version of Full Tilt Poker's Macintosh client, having been an avid user of the windows client using the PC Desktop software Parallels for a long time.

While Parallels is a fantastic application it is still not "native" Mac, so I was really excited to use this new software, which got me to thinking about what makes for a good cross platform/cross browser (if browser based) port.

I've put together some observations from a usability perspective that can make the transition seamless and improve the user experience:

Use the same user interface between platforms
The first thing that struck me about the UI of Full Tilt's client was the attention to detail in making the interface the same. The size, placement of elements, sounds, and icons are identical to its PC brother.

By making things the same there is no learning curve. People can pick up with either version of the application and know what to do and how to do it. Users take all their learning and simply apply it, making the experience seamless.

This is an area where development can go astray, by not paying attention to small details, or by choosing to take advantage of platform specific features.

This is one of the reasons that people complain about Microsoft's use of browser specific technology such as Microsoft's Active-X controller, which is not supported in other browsers, providing a poor user experience for users of other browsers.

By using browser specific technology the user experience is not uniform, causing issues for the user.

Use the same options and option placement between platforms
Similarly, options and shortcuts that are only offered on one platform confuse the habitual user, and may lead to abandonment of the application on a platform.

This is another instance where the Full Tilt software does a great job. All the options and their placement was the same from one client to another, making the experience seamless.

Some applications are core to getting work done, with these types of applications there is little option for alternative. The Full Tilt software falls into the 'optional' category, where the user can make a choice. By keeping all the options the same, impediments to remaining with the same company's software are removed.

The Blogger software is an instance where options (for editing stories) are different between the Mac and PC platforms. On the PC the feature set is more robust. Options such as adding URL links, and toggling between 'Compose' and 'edit HTML' are absent on the Mac. The spelling option, while included on the menu bar, does not work using the Safari browser.

These inconsistencies give me the opportunity to re-evaluate what platform to work on, and even whether to switch applications to one more platform consistent.

Make user settings transferable
The ability to modify settings for display are actions included in most applications. Making it easy to re-setup a new, or upgraded platform makes users happy.

Habitual use application rarely have their settings adjusted all at once. When a user sets up an application they modify their settings to their own circumstances, and over time refine them.

This impetus for this refinement usually comes from external sources, such as reading tips/tricks articles, or conversations with friends or colleagues. These refinements become part of the 'default' user view and how to change them are forgotten.

When platforms are upgraded or users change systems these settings are reset to the defaults, leaving the user to recreate the settings.

An easy way to transfer these settings benefits the user experience and makes the user more productive.

Maintain platform parity
Microsoft is one of the biggest offenders to lack of platform parity. While the purpose of this article is not designed to bash Microsoft, you need only ask any mac user about windows based Microsoft products to receive an ear full.

While MS Word is the product most often mentioned, it is probably Windows Media Player that is the most troublesome because new videos are not backwards compatible with older version of the software. This all stems from digital rights management additions to the software, but the results are the same for the user. Mac users cannot view these videos, there has been no update to the player for the Mac.

The problem was magnified when Apple released a new PC that could not run the plug-in application Flip4Mac that allowed videos in Windows Media Player format to run within a browser, so for a time users of the shiny new MacBook pro could not play any Windows Media formatted movies within the browser.

Give users an easy way to go back
The last sin is the right of the user to give up and go back to where they were - to undo. For some applications this is a one way ticket.

Quicken is one such application that the file format (within the same version of the product) is different based on the platform, making it very difficult to move between platforms.

Sometimes it hurts less to not be on the cutting edge, and user choose to downgrade only to find out that this is not a possible option, leaving them in application purgatory. Minimally the user should be notified if the upgrade is a one-way trip, but the best approach is to allow a user to downgrade without penalty.

There are lots of reasons for breaking these rules in software development. Most often is it an issue of time or money that trump them. In response, it is important to remember Newton's law of motion, 'for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction'. These reactions come from the user who may suffer in silence, but may vote with their feet.

10 tips for Office Evacuation Usability

2007-05-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

Just yesterday our office in Manhattan performed a full building (all 7 flights) evacuation and I took that opportunity to review fellow co-workers as we exited the building and organized in our pre-planned meeting spot.

Previous to this evacuation our local fire marshal explained how to exit the building, utilizing the stairs, staying to one side to let firemen up and such, and to group ourselves to keep an accurate headcount. All of which seems perfectly reasonable in abstract. From this I have produced 10 usability tips.

Tip 1: Stay to the right
While it was stressed in our evacuation meeting there were still some people who insisted they were better than the rest and walked down the left side. While they were few and far between it's better to practice safe habits before the actual event, so stay to right.

Tip 2: Know where you are
When egressing the building there are very few indicators of what floor you are on, these indicators are on the backs of the doors about head height. Unfortunately these doors are open and there are heads in the way of seeing where you are. It would be much better to have large day-glow numbers on the landings of the floor, preferably 4 foot wide so they are easily visible.

Tip 3: Don't trip
Even though this was just a drill there was one poor soul who tripped down a few stairs. Luckily he caught himself on the handrail and was un-injured but it's a word to the wise to always use the handrails. This not only keeps you nice and tight to the right, but it helps keep you from injury. Reflective tape on the steps would also help.

Tip 4: Know how to help
Building on tip #3 raises the possibility of someone getting injured. This is one item that is not generally covered. If someone is injured, and you need to leave them behind it would be a really good idea to know where this person is to send help to. The big numbers from Tip #2 would be a big help. If you need to get someone out it would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the fireman's carry. This is something you learn as part of boy scouts doing first aid. There are many ways to do it, so knowing how will keep you from injury if you need to do it.

Tip 5: Don't clog the exits
Get away from the building. One of the reasons our fire marshal has set up meeting spots away from the building is to avoid congestion at the exits. Unfortunately, people flock like penguins seeking protection and as a result now block these meeting area entrances. If you are a leader move your people from the entrances.

Tip 6: Keep track of everyone
One of the items we tried when leaving was taking down a set of people in smaller groups to keep track of those on the floor and in the building. This single person approach does not work. I would suggest having a line leader and a sheep herder. The line leader goes first and leads the group down, while the sheep herder knows how many people are in front of him (in the group) and acts as a backstop for when other groups filter in from other floors.

Tip 7: Stay together
While we egressed there were some folks that though they were too cool for school and decided to make their way somewhere else. This is not only a problem for the line leader (and sheep Herder) but it prevents the overall persons in charge from getting an accurate count of people in the building. While it is better to know how many people have left I would maintain it's more important to know that everyone in your group got out. Following the sheep herder model will help get the small groups out.

Tip 8: Use a new exit
Another helpful scout tip is to know two exits from any location and know of any crossover floors (floors that have access to multiple staircases). If you do a building evacuation test, tell your folks to find a new staircase than the one they use, or better yet, post someone in front of the most popular one and say, "this exit is blocked by fire, go find another one", forcing them to think.

Crossover floors would also be a great thing to stencil to the wall of the evacuation stairs.

Tip 9: Visible means safe
For drills and where possible for evacuations you should train the persons in charge to wear their special hats/shirts etc. If you are a fire warden, wear the fire warden hat. This will make it easier for people to find you. When choosing a line leader, choose someone with a colorful shirt, or dress, anything out of the ordinary to jog your memory in a time of crisis.

Tip 10: Recap Afterwards
Like any project it pays to get together the next day and re-cap how you think it went to see if in the future you can do anything better. Drills should be treated as close to the real thing as possible, if people make a game or joke out if it they won't know what to do when a situation occurs.

The 10 minutes may lead to better and safer evacuations.

Do you know how to use a urinal?

2007-05-21T17:33:00.001-07:00

The usability of urinals was never really very high on my list of topics. In fact I never thought about it very much to begin with until I saw the attached sign.

A urinal is one of those devices that you learn to use at a very early age. It only contains two areas of concern – The input and the output.

If you have ever seen older urinals one of the first things you notice is that they go from floor to mid chest, this was done, I suppose, to make it perfectly clear as to the intended input and to minimize backsplash, making clean up easier.

The newer urinals are more compact and leave tile space below, like in our example. If the urinal was not as ubiquitous one might challenge this design change as folly, inviting input other than desired. But since the utilization of urinal technology would have begun at an early age, this error should not be commonplace (unless the participant happens to be very drunk).

This situation has similarities to young people today pick up using the computer, while these skills may prove difficult to the older generation.

Computer use has become part of the culture and as such, the young are exposed to computers as part of fun and education at a very early age. It is not treated as a new and separate entity. This fact alone will lead to new and interesting computer interaction in the future. As base of knowledge with each subsequent generation becomes greater and greater it will finally become matter of fact knowledge, not a skill to be learned.

But I digress to the reason for writing on this topic.

What would make someone post such a sign to indicate the proper use?

One possibility is to stress the importance of flushing after each use. Another possibility may be that the users of this bathroom may be used to the newer, automatic flushing toilets. But if this were the case, how many times would a user need to utilize the bathroom before realizing that there was no flush sound accompanying by the completion of the act?

The simple sign shows just how much information you can convey with a single word and proper placement. “FLUSH” doesn’t just indicate the action, but says, “Hey, we live here to, so clean up after yourself, we’ll be watching”. Unless of course the author of the sign just figured it out himself, and wanted to let others know how it worked.

Usability of Nintendo Wii

2007-05-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Nintendo Wii is a groundbreaking concept in gaming. While other systems have expanded into higher resolution graphics the Nintendo Wii’s graphic level hasn’t changed. Much like the user-centric nature of the Apple computer line, Nintendo has developed a gaming system with the user in mind.

Much of the press of the Wii has been focused on its motion controller, which in itself is a unique extension of gaming. This however is not a new concept in gaming. Video golf has been out for a while, in fact, my 6 year old has a little golf game that has a club and a sensor tee to detect motion. My other son has a fighting game with “power gloves” that allow him to punch bad guys as a teen titan or marvel superhero.

The unique nature of the Wii comes from the application of generic motion controllers. But beyond the generic motion controllers that can be used for boxing, bowling, shooting and swinging is the understanding of how to explain it to the user so they can master the various motions necessary to perform the complicated gaming motions in an easy and fun way. The Wii provides step-by-step instructions on how to do complicated tasks through the veil of micro-games until the users have a proficiency in the game. From proficiency the user can then move on to mastery.

The Wii also takes personalization to a new level in gaming with avatars that can be customized to look like users. This profile is then built up over time as the user plays under their persona. Statistics in the Wii family of games are saved under your profile and the system keeps track of how well you are doing over time and presents it to the user after completed games. This persona can also be downloaded into the controller and taken to a friend’s house where all the data is users to play in against others.

With a unique sense of self and realistic motion is it any wonder the Nintendo Wii is still the toughest system to acquire over seven months after its initial release? If you design for the user, users respond by design.

Usability of High Heel Shoes

2007-05-16T06:42:00.001-07:00

“High Heel shoes” is a topic you might consider strange for a usability article but as I see it, it is not unlike a content management application, which has two sets of users – internal and external. In the creation of content the internal user is responsible for developing content. This content is then consumed the external user, or reader.

The usability of high heels is similar, and has both an internal and the external user. The internal user, the wearer in question, is concerned with projecting a desired impression or look. This look may vary in complexity ranging from achieving a fashion style, generating romantic interest, or simply appearing taller. There are many use cases for wearing high heel shoes; comfort is generally not one of them. Most of the subjects I have encountered will remove them at their first opportunity.

The look achieved is primarily the result of the extension of the feet to a position between 100 and 120 degrees. While angles greater than 120 degrees have been observed, this is outside of the scope of this article.

Extending the foot has the desired effect of artificially tightening the calf muscles of the wearer, allowing these muscles to take on a more rounded, solid appearance. Other muscles in the user’s posterior also take on added definition, adding to the overall effect. Since the wearer’s center of gravity is affected it gives the wearer the appearance of standing up straighter as well as adding to the wearer’s overall height.

As with many software packages customization of the user interface can add to the overall presentation and its effectiveness. A Pavlovian response can be obtained by adjustment to the height, decoration and presentation of the shoe. As my informal user tests have shown an open-toed presentation in a black or red color scheme adds to the overall user response.

Usability of Joost

2007-05-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the fine folks at Connected Internet I was able to play with a beta of Joost.

Joost is a video player application that streams on demand video directly to your computer and has a host of associated add to enhance the service including channel guide, search, video controls and interactive chat functionality.

The service itself is impressive; the streaming was of high quality with minimal service interruptions. The selection of content is good, especially given their new-ness, and the integration of services is clean and truly integrated. Having used other media services before I would cringe at clicking any of the buttons for fear they would launch an external window, but to my amazement all the features tested were integrated in to the display.

In order for software, or any system of that matter, to do something new the user must pass the gulf of execution, which in simple terms is the user must bring their level of knowledge up the level needed to use a product, or the product needs to bring its level down to the user. Icons are a common area where the user knowledge and product knowledge sometimes miss each other.

A clean interface where icons have become part of a user’s understanding such as a stop sign or play button are easy, other icons to represent more difficult concepts usually confuse users. Relating to Joost, there are several icons that are difficult for the user to decipher, because they are unique to the application. The hide all widgets icon is one of them. One of the ways Joost bridges this gap is to provide rollover text, so in time the user brings their level of understanding up to the product level.

Some icons however contain harder concepts, and as such require additional help. This is the case with the MyJoost and MyChannels options on either side of the player. For these the icons have been married to actual text.

One of the more interesting concepts in Joost is the chat functionality. In this I think Joost may have missed the mark. It is difficult to have a collective experience when everyone is not seeing the same thing at the same time, and I think they will find this function will get little actual use.

A better function may be more akin to Twitter, the microblogging service. Since the user controls the real-time why not let users peg comments to different parts of the stream, like a user commentary. This would allow for an interactive experience while avoiding the real-time viewing problems.

Integration with the stream is one of the nicest features of Joost, controls are presented in an overlay of the content, so users can multitask for shows or videos while they are watching. For this reason I understand why Joost would want their player to appear full screen when launched. This helps with the overall immersive experience; it does however limit a user’s ability to multitask outside of the product.

Overall Joost has provided a very user centric application. Now it’s time to go watch Action! With Jay Mohr (a great comic and frequent guest on Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez), just one of the shows available on the service.

Check Joost out yourself. If you need an invite, post a comment and I’ll send you one.

The Usability of Office Cubicles

2007-05-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs in a corporate environment where occupants of a cubicle revert to pre-adolescently in regards to movement and sound. In this state the owner believes that since there are walls, parties on other sides of the walls cannot see nor hear the cubicle owner.

Cubicles give the owner the illusion of privacy, very much like good usability practices can give the illusion on speed and robustness where none exists. In application development if you include user prompts throughout the process the user remains informed, lessening the anxiety of not knowing what is going on. Using this illusion you “trick” the user into believing that a process is shorter than it actually is.

More recent academic studies have noted the disadvantages of the cubicle. While reducing the amount of noise and distractions in the office environment, the cubicle has reduced amount of person-to-person communication among office workers. While the removal of distraction is indicative of a straight through work process the lack of collaboration brings with it a stagnation of work processes. It is difficult to improve a process if there are no catalysts for improvement.

Cubicles have taken many shapes and sizes over the years and in many corporate environments the size and shape of a cubicle is directly related to your level in the organization with higher walls and even doors giving the illusion of an “office”. In some corporations cubicles that have collaborative team areas where there are no walls have been seen as a demotion for the occupants. In reality, these collaborative areas provide flexibility and a catalyst for creativity while providing an impromptu meeting space.

Usability of Parking Spaces

2007-05-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

Most people don’t think a great deal about parking spaces except when they need one, and I’m positive that nobody thinks about how and why parking spaces work. I was one of them until I noticed when the affordances that designate how a parking space works breaks down.

Included is a photo of just such a breakdown. This is a commuter parking lot for the Long Island Rail Road, where the parking lot is over half full with the most desirable spots close to where the train entrances are filled. The spots you see however are not filled, and they are in a desirable location.

Before continuing, try and decipher why the spots are empty.

Parking has rules. You follow these rules and your car is safely tucked away for the day. If you break the rules, the car is ticketed or towed. Along with the basic stated rules such as “head in parking only” that are posted in the lot there less stated rules drivers learn, such as parking is allowed between lines. These lines enforce the direction and spacing of the lot. They are also meant to insure that there is adequate spacing between the cars for effective egress and entry.

Like most usability rules, you only notice them when they are broken, such as when a car parks too close (or over) the lines, or in this case where there are no lines at all.

What is this blog about

2007-01-01T14:16:00.000-08:00

The usability of stuff and things is collection of thoughts based on many years of design and user centric thinking.

Through the blog I hope to relate how sometimes generic things can be thought of in terms of how a user looks at it.

I welcome comments to the blog and the things it presents. I also welcome other subjects to look at in the blog, although before beginning the blog I started with a list of possible future blog subjects, some light hearted and and some application/hardware based and some just a little bizare.

View my latest post.

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