Archive for the ‘Usability’ Category
Usability of the iDisk Web Interface
I’ve received an email from a reader, Bogdan, a couple of days ago, where he pointed out a usability issue he constantly faces. It’s an interesting problem and it’s to do with the file hosting service iDisk, which is part of Apple’s MobileMe services.
iDisk allows you to share files with your friends or colleagues by placing them in a public folder and sharing a link to it. That link points to a web interface to iDisk where you can download the shared files. The problem is, it’s not that easy to figure out exactly how to download them. Bogdan told me that people constantly ask about how to download the files — even those experienced with technology.
Interface Features
I know you may be getting tired of me always using Apple as an example, but please bear with me for this post. I’ve recently been thinking about how Apple markets their products, and this somewhat ties in to my yesterday’s post on the Nokia N97.
I think what Apple is doing is actually very clever. They’re creating and marketing something that I’ll call ‘interface features’. These are the various interface elements that help you interact with the product, be it a keyboard, trackpad, touchscreen, mouse or a scroll wheel. With their regular product updates they not only change the looks of their products, they also refresh one or two interface elements and market them as new features. Let me illustrate.
It’s the User Experience, Stupid
Nokia has just announced their new phone, the N97. It’s a very capable phone that looks like a direct answer to Apple’s iPhone. If you just look at the feature list, it blows the iPhone away. Here’s the key ones:
- 3.5 inch, 640×360 resistive touch screen
- QWERTY slide-out keyboard
- 3G, WiFi and GPS
- 32 GB storage space
- 5 megapixel camera
It also has a nice design and looks pretty sleek. Here’s a promotional video of it:
However — all those features won’t mean anything if Nokia can’t deliver a great user experience. The iPhone isn’t eating away so fast on the mobile phone market-share because of its features. Indeed, the iPhone has, and always had, less features than many other smart-phones. No, the iPhone is so popular because of one thing it excels at: user experience.
In UI Design, the “Obvious” Solution isn’t Necessarily the Best Solution
One of the nice things about the Mac OS X operating system is the attention and the little touches that may seem illogical at first but then make complete sense when you think about them.
One of these things is the scrollbar arrows. OS X scrollbars have two arrow buttons, up and down, just like Windows — but the difference is that they’re both located at the bottom. The up and down arrows are stuck together at the bottom of the scrollbar, like this:
Why is it so? Isn’t it more logical to put the up arrow at the top, and down arrow at the bottom? Sure, that would seem to be the most straightforward solution — however, think about how you use those controls.
The Pitfall of Adding Keyboard Shortcuts to Web Apps
I’ve recently discovered a few keyboard shortcuts in Google Docs, Google’s office suite of applications. But unfortunately, I’ve stumbled onto them by accident while using a shortcut on my OS X operating system. When I tried to hide the browser window using the “Command + H” key combination, something unexpected happened. The “Find and Replace” window popped up inside the app:
This is problematic because I still want to use my OS X command, but now it’s been overridden by Google. I think web application developers should be careful to check for at least the main window manipulation controls in the popular operating systems like Windows and OS X to make sure their keyboard shortcuts don’t block them.
Is Your App Responsive?
You’ve built your software or website that performs its function well. You’ve fashioned it with a usable interface that is logical and easy to figure out. You’ve polished the aesthetic so it is enjoyable and satisfying to use. That’s it, you’re done — right? Not quite… because there is one more element you should consider. Responsiveness. How responsive is your interface and your app?
How People Really Use the iPhone
Create with Context did some research recently into how people use the iPhone, with the sample including both experienced and novice users. They’ve released their presentation slides which I found very interesting because they have a bunch of insights that you can apply in your own interface design, not just for the iPhone. Here’s a list of their main findings:
- Take advantage of learned behaviors.
“Oh, this works just like the calendar” - Avoid interaction inconsistencies.
“This is weird, cancel is usually over there” - Provide clear conceptual link across widgets.
“This button must be related to that box, they’re next to each other” - Put space between action widgets.
“Oh man, I didn’t mean to send that SMS!” - Plan for accidental overswiping.
“I keep accidentally changing to a different screen” - Don’t rely exclusively on multi-touch.
“It’s hard to do this while I’m holding something in the other hand” - Provide visual feedback for taps.
“Did I hit that button? I’m not sure” - Provide interaction affordances.
“It’s obvious that you’re supposed to swipe left-and-right”
Wikipedia — Time for a Redesign?
Wikipedia is a fantastic resource and I’m sure many of you use it all the time — and probably even contribute — but I think it’s lacking terribly in one area: design. I think Wikipedia is a badly designed website. Sure, it may have worked fine when it was just starting out, but for a site of its magnitude today the design and usability are really at a much lower level than they should be.
Here’s what a typical Wikipedia page looks like:
Let me highlight some of the things I dislike about the current design:
Should Arrows be Placed Before Link Text or After?
Sometimes we’d like to use an arrow character or icon together with the link text to make it look nicer and attract users’ attention. These are little arrows we see often by links such as “Read more…” at the end of blog post summaries or “Learn more” for products and services. The two variations look something like this:
Now, the question is, should these arrows go before the link text, or after? Let’s examine each one:
Does Your Website Suffer From These 7 Usability Mistakes?
I can safely say that usability these days on the Web is much better than it was several years ago. The Web is growing up and designers are learning and discovering optimal ways of doing things, as well as optimizing and re-working their current sites to make them better and better.
Yet there are still many sites today that make basic mistakes that have a very negative impact on usability and visitor loyalty. Sometimes it’s easier to say what you shouldn’t do instead of do, so here are my 7 usability issues to avoid when working on your websites: