Post Category: User Experience
24 Dec, 2008 In late 2007 I wrote my first blog post about what I called the user experience economy. That post described the necessity of providing exceptional customer service and noted the growth of the UX Fund which, over one year’s time, saw an increase of 39.37%—outperforming all of the major stock indexes.
In 2009, businesses will live and die by the level of customer service—designing memorable and positive user experiences—that they are able to provide. The competition for customers’ attention and loyalty will be fierce, and simply cutting prices and expenses is not going to be enough to thrive or even survive during a global economic crisis.
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12 Dec, 2008 I recently participated in a team building exercise where teams were responsible for designing and building sculptures out of canned goods. After the structures are built and judged, the canned goods are donated to shelters and food banks to feed the hungry.
During the brainstorming process when our team was determining what to build, several ideas were presented—including mosaics, user interfaces, corporate logos, sculptures of food and immersive physical environments. The ambiguity and complexity of each idea varied, but I noticed an interesting trend: many of the less abstract ideas were dismissed by members of the group as “too easy.” This got me thinking, what’s wrong with easy?
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27 Aug, 2008 We human beings choose to decorate ourselves in a variety of manners—fashion, cosmetics, tattoos, piercings, surgery, etc.—to express ourselves and communicate unspoken signals to each other. Non-verbal cues are sent via our interface choices to everyone that we encounter on a daily basis. What messages are you trying to send through your own personal user interface?
Here are some examples of human UI patterns that we encounter, and the subtext that they silently communicate.
The Business Man
The conservative haircut, the dull necktie and his subtle frown clearly communicate that he’s all business. He’s not very approachable, but most likely fairly dependable. Intrepid reader, he is the human incarnation of the spread sheet.
The Entertainer
An acquired taste—he’s clearly trying extremely hard to amuse and entertain. He spent a fortune attending clown school and yearns to be the center of attention (a life caster perhaps?). Simultaneously friendly and annoying, the clown UI is not something most people can spend much time with.
It’s Complicated
This interface is enigmatic, complicated and intriguing. There is an intimidation factor, yet an underlying and attractive charm; a frustrating puzzle that keeps people returning in hopes of discovering a solution. If a person is open to it, an experiential interface that encourages discovery and requires time to figure out can be fun.
The Soldier
There is nothing ambiguous about this interface. It’s clear and completely direct; nothing is implicit. Depending on a person’s perspective, this interface can communicate security or menace. The soldier combines precision and discipline with the ability to understand and complete his directives. He is the embodiment of the command line.
The Best Software is Anthropomorphic
Just like people, software user interfaces can and should personify human attributes (no, I’m not talking about Clippy!). The best systems communicate to users via text, interaction and imagery to express the personality of the application. These are the applications that people become emotionally attached to because they remind us of what it means to be human.
16 May, 2008 I have dug up some examples (which weren’t hard to find) of instances where a website’s information architect a.) never existed b.) went on strike or c.) just plain sucked at their job.
An IA Graveyard is a collection of content that, for some reason, would not fit into the existing architecture of a website, often resulting in confusion and a lack of findability for the end user. A lack of proper planning, dramatic changes to an organization’s infrastructure, flat out laziness or a combination of all three often lead to these data dumping grounds.
“Quick Links”
So someone wrote an “important” article that doesn’t fit into any of the content areas defined by the site’s architecture… Why not just add the title or topic of the new article to a list of Quick Links? Typically consisting of a laundry list of topics and titles that a user must sift through, these lists quickly get out of hand and offer no help to a user trying desperately to find information on your website. The ironically labeled “Find it Now” feature of the Little League website is a prime example of a list of links that grew out of control.
If you’ve resorted to building a handy list of “Quick Links” on your website, it’s time to consider a few things (especially number one):
- Is this content really necessary?
- Does the content fit into or duplicate any existing content buckets; can it be modified to work into the existing architecture?
- Is it time to modify or redesign the site architecture?
IfAQ – Infrequently Asked Questions
At some point people forgot what the “F” in FAQ stood for. FAQs have transitioned from a useful Q&A repository into a wasteland of unorganized and often irrelevant content. My advice: avoid setting aside an FAQ section in the site’s architecture entirely. Design the architecture and craft the content in such a way that it will address the topics that are of primary concern to your users. Kevin Kelly agrees:
And of course, your FAQ does not need to be in the form of a Q&A at all. You can cover the same ground by writing it in prose, or essay form, or even a story.
Doing this requires that you do your homework; understand the topics your users are primarily interested in and glean a solid understanding of how they would like to search for and find that information. If, after doing your homework and researching your audience, the content on your website still hasn’t answered your users’ questions, make it easy for them to contact you directly to get a personal answer.
Don’t be a Lazy IA!
Speak with users and site stakeholder to ensure that the site is well-planned to accommodate necessary content. Push back when stakeholders start creating content that doesn’t have a home within the site’s structure. Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions, especially: is this content really adding value for the user? If the content isn’t valuable for the user or meeting the overall business goals, it doesn’t belong on the website. Stop that IA graveyard before it gets out of control and makes you look bad.
7 Apr, 2008 I’ve been using Google Calendar Sync for about a month now, and after releasing a patch recently, it appears to be working like a charm.
I am chained to my Outlook calendar at work—many of you can relate; I have also been using Google Calendar since it was released to keep track of personal appointments, tasks and deadlines. The problem, of course, was that these two calendars had communication issues. I downloaded and used SyncMyCal to manually get the two systems communicating, but there were bugs (the toolbar would mysteriously vanish forcing me to reinstall), and worst of all, I had to remember to manually initiate the calendar sync anytime I booked a new meeting.
Fortunately, for those of you as lazy as me, Google released their own tool that automatically syncs an Outlook calendar with a Google calendar. Users may sync both ways, or one way (I only sync Outlook up to Google) at timed intervals. This is a wonderful way for me to be able to access my Outlook appointments from anywhere (in the event that I am sans Blackberry), and more importantly share my schedule with people outside of work.
Now that this synchronization has become effortless, I anticipate moving even more data into my Google calendar in order to use it as a hub of all family, personal and professional activity and deadlines. I am already automatically pulling in concert recommendations from Last.fm as well as weather forecasts. And all Google asks in return is to present me with relevant text advertisements… and my eternal soul.
25 Mar, 2008 A couple weeks ago, I noticed Google experimenting with a new user interface pattern in their search results: another search input field. The search within a search raises some questions from both usability and marketing points of view. Is this unexpected UI pattern beneficial for end-users; does it help users more easily discover what they’re looking for; and what will be the effect on content owners whose sites Google is searching?
Search Within a Search User Experience Issues
When it comes to using an online search engine, Google has conditioned nearly every Internet user on what to expect. Empty input field, submit, page with results ordered by relevance and some unobtrusive advertisements. Not very complicated, and it gets the job done. Over the past few years, Google has experimented with adding new features to the search results page including suggested search refinement terms, image and video results (viewable within the results page), maps, stock quotes and more. For the most part, these features have enhanced the results page and user experience, unobtrusively providing users of the search engine with valuable disambiguation and helping them discover relevant data.
The latest enhancement, another search entry form, (which is nothing more than the “site:” advanced operator that Google has employed for years), may cause some confusion among less experienced users. The presence of multiple search entry fields on the same page (who’s to say they will stop at two?) is bound to challenge those of us who don’t sit in front of a computer most of the day. I’ll be very interested to learn more about usability test results of this feature among novice users.
Implications for Businesses
The potential UX issues are minor compared to what the search within search results means for businesses. Google is wisely attempting to get users to spend more time on Google search results pages, looking at ads that earn Google money. The down side for businesses is users are spending less time on their sites, looking at their products and clicking on their advertisements.
For example, consider this use case:
Clearly, this is good for Google and bad for Best Buy, and other businesses that make money selling products or online advertising. Fortunately, Google honors requests to remove businesses from the search within search feature. I am a little surprised that they’ve taken an opt out rather than an opt in approach.
What do you think? Will the new feature stick? Does the user benefit outweigh the downside for online retailers?