Top 10 Least Usable Everyday Items

From a recent User Vision survey, the top 10 "least usable items"were as follows:

1. Video Recorders
2. Child car seats
3. Digital TV systems
4. Digital cameras
5. Washing machines/dishwashers
6. Tin-openers
7. Packaging
8. Central heating systems
9. Handheld computers
10. Non-disposable nappies


User Vision is in the UK, and some of these names aren't what we call that item here. "Tin openers" would be called "can openers"...but I'm not sure what "non-disposable nappies" are...can someone fill me in?

I find it strange that they called "packaging" an "item", when it really is...well, packaging...that items come in. Note also that the survey used a list of 40 items and had 500 respondents identify their "top five" most difficult to use items. It would be interesting to see if the results were similar if they asked people to name items rather than selecting from a relatively small list.

Usability Guidelines Recommendation

"Through 'usability engineering' and these Guidelines, we have tested and redesigned our own site to reflect a citizen-centered approach. I see these Guidelines as a wonderful resource for improving the communication capabilities of HHS, as well as all government agencies. I recommend that these Guidelines be used by all who deliver information and services to the American public."
– Tommy G. Thompson
Secretary of Health and Human Services
June 2003

Related Items:
Usability.gov gets some press, and quietly releases new version of guidelines

Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines

If you're a blogger...think about taking the survey.

[Via Mena at Six Apart]

Your web site might be a pain in the neck if...(with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy)

If your home page has four navigation bars, and "investor relations" is in two of them...your web site might be a pain in the neck.

If mousing over your main navigation bar causes content and colors to change in a totally different section of the page...your web site might (literally) be a pain in the neck.

If your global corporation's home page has seven main navigation sections and two of them are called 'Tools' and 'Information'...your web site might be a pain in the neck. (You've gotta love the "Customer Information" and "Hub of Excellence" pages under the "Information" section, not to mention the "Good Morning" greeting I'm seeing at a little past midnight!)

If your home page has a prominent "hints" link...your web site might be a pain in the neck.

"Our site is organized to help you quickly find the information you need with a minimum of “clicks”. In addition to the links on each page, you can use our drop down menus to find information sorted by product name, medical condition, even by Abbott division."
(Abbott Laboratories - Hints)

This post

intentionally contains only ten words including the title.

Blogger's doing Usability Testing

Send your blogging friends here if they live near Mountain View, California.

Welcoming 3D to the blog world

DeeDee DeMulling ("3D") has a blog. DeeDee is a usability/UCD/product design consultant in the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis / St. Paul).

Product Experience

Logo Trends 2005
Graphic Design USA - LogoLounge.com’s Third Annual Visual Trends Report

"Trends are not an accusation of some widespread lack of original thinking. Instead, they are a sign of design evolution in our ever-shrinking world."

Ten Years of Alertbox - Thanks Jakob

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox is 10 years old.

Jakob's Alertbox was one of, if not THE first usability column I started reading after taking a 5-day GUI design (UCD) class from Susan Weinschenck around June 1996 (she's now at HFI). I was designing web sites and had to keep asking Susan about how UCD concepts (or the design guidelines presented) would apply to a web user interface (WUI). Susan was very helpful (having consulted on some web projects). She left us with a list of "other resources" which included useit.com...and so I found Jakob.

In those days, the Alertbox was very informative, discussing web design issues I was dealing with on a daily basis...and I read it religiously every week and learned a great deal. Reading the Alertbox lead to more reading, and more learning from other experts in the field.

As the web/ecommerce thing "boomed", Jakob's public persona moved from mentor to "guru". He formed NNG, wrote lots of books that sold in huge numbers, and the Alertbox seemed to become reduced to a marketing vehicle: a way to sell research reports, books, and training. Meanwhile, Jakob was being interviewed by every tech publication imaginable, along with newspapers and traditional media. Jakob was on CNN TV news one night. Jakob became the poster boy for web usability. This earned him the ire of many practitioners and web designers...yet raised the awareness of usability nonetheless.

Jakob should get a lot of credit for the attention he's brought to usability issues and practitioners trying to address usability issues. Of course, I'm sure, Jakob's made a pretty penny along the way, and good for him...he's also happy to claim credit for improvements in web usability. Of course he's done his share of the work on that, but there are also tens of thousands of other practitioners out there spreading the "gospel" and doing the work.

I can't say I know Jakob well, but I have traded email with him a few times, chatted with him at conferences, and found him to be a decent fellow. While his public persona might come off as an egotistical, critical know-it-all, I like to remind myself and others that this is just his public face...probably not his real personality. My blog readers don't know the "real" me either...not that I become some Hyde to my everyday Jekyll once I hit Blogger...it's just that people only see bits and pieces of me through the pinhole which is my blog. So I try to cut Jakob some slack, and acknowledge that he's done me (personally) a lot of good not only by offering advice and opinions, but by being the visible, seemingly "know-it-all" guru of usability.

I don't read the Alertbox regularly anymore, but stay aware of what Jakob's talking about. Even if *I* don't learn much, or disagree with him, the fact is many people *read* Jakob's stuff, so I want to be aware of what he's talking about.

In his 10 year anniversary Alertbox article, Jakob said (emphasis mine):
"When I conducted my first user tests of websites and intranets in 1994, I was probably the only person in the world with this esoteric interest. Web people didn't care about usability, and usability people didn't care about the Web. After years of incessantly promoting user research findings for websites and intranets, the situation has changed: thousands of people now work on online usability."

Jakob helped educate me about usability, and ended up helping me convert from a "web person who cared about usability" to a "usability practitioner who cared about the Web." Now I'm helping to convert others. I feel like saying "the Alertbox is dead, long live the Alertbox!"

Thanks Jakob!

Das Keyboard
Am I being overly-critical if I say this sounds like a totally stupid idea?

Source: [New York Times: A Keyboard That Lets the Supremely Confident Show Disdain for Qwerty]

Yahoo plucks Amazon.com design guru

CNET News.com reports:
"Internet giant Yahoo has named Larry Tesler, a veteran design engineer at Amazon.com, to lead efforts in shaping its consumer experience.

Tesler, 60, will be vice president of Yahoo's user experience and design group, reporting to Geoff Ralston, the company's chief product officer. He will also be a research fellow in Yahoo's Research Lab, focusing on 'human-computer interaction.'

Tesler helped craft Amazon's shopping experience over the last three-plus years as a vice president for the Web retail behemoth. He has also held positions at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, and at Apple Computer, where he worked for 17 years as chief scientist and vice president of engineering, among other roles.

At PARC, Tesler pioneered computing techniques such as 'cut and paste' that have become standard to graphical user interfaces.

'Larry has the ability to draw on his extensive knowledge of both computer science and user-centered design to help define and drive product strategy and innovation at Yahoo,' Ralston said in a statement."

Dvorak: "Kill Outlook Express Today"

John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine does a good scorch-job on Outlook Express, focusing on a number of usability issues in an article called "Kill Outlook Express Today".

"I can tell you this much. If Microsoft persists in using this old code as the free e-mail program in Longhorn, I'm switching to Linux. It would indicate that the company really does not care squat about its customers." [While not fixing OE might indicate some lack of concern for its users, he's clearly exaggerating here. A switch to Linux could clearly be a potential frying-pan-to-fire move as well.]

"And, mind you, this is Outlook Express 6! Microsoft has gone through six iterations of this code and still hasn't fixed this, even with their usability labs and usability experts? Incredible."

Inquiring usability minds want to know if MS consulted with or listened to their usability experts when it came to OE. MS has lots of capable UX folks.

Clearly a free, scaled down version of a commercial product shouldn't be expected to have all the same features as a full commercial product (e.g. you could argue this about the spell checker and color coding features), but issues like inconsistent menu bars and modal action buttons should be caught in usability testing and fixed. A good quality, "lite" version of a product, with fewer features should be thought of as a good sales tool for the full-fledged product (Outlook 2003 in this case). If Outlook Express' quality is poor, what user would want to fork over the cash for it's "big brother"?

Payphones of the World

An interesting survey of different pay phone designs.

Here's a crude looking example from Armenia

And here's a humorous looking one from Turkey.

Note the web site itself isn't the most usable. I had some problems trying to navigate using the maps and found the text links more reliable.

New Sun.com Design

Congratulations to the Sun.com team.

Sun.com: A fresh new look has some nice before and after screenshots.

Band-Aid Design Evolution

The Journal Gazette has a nice story on the history of the Band-Aid and it's evolution:

Inventor stuck to design goals with earliest Band-Aid

How to say "hi" in 15 different countries

The Business of Touch from Aquent uses Flash (sometimes effectively, and sometimes gratuitously) to demonstrate the cultural differences in business greetings (e.g. shaking hands) in 15 different countries. The use of Flash helps show the action (e.g. a bowing motion). In some cases, the design uses animation to distraction - in the case of the China example where colored patches move and shake - obscuring the action of the illustrated actors. Another drawback of using Flash is you can't link to an individual example (i.e. "page"). The content is pretty interesting, although they could've done a better job of citing sources or linking to additional information.

It's intended as a marketing piece to get you to hire Aquent designers...and should be considered from that standpoint.

Dumb Email of the Day

I received an email today that just made me laugh because of how ridiculously written it was. It went a bit like this (details omitted to keep the source anonymous):

"I work with [Company name] a [blah blah] company that is looking for a [Job Title 1] and a [Job Title 2]. I was hoping to network with you and would appreciate any referrals. Perhaps you might be looking for a new opportunity?

[More about the Company]

"As we continue to grow, we are looking for professionals to help take us to the next level.

[Job Description 1]
[Job Description 2]

"For more information, visit www.Company.com/ and www.Company.com/company/careers

[More about the Company]

"To apply, reply to this email or send your resume to opportunities@Company.com.

"For unwanted future emails reply with out in the subject line

[Company name]
[Address]
[City, St, Zip]"

What really struck me was the line "I was hoping to network with you"...from a stranger, who, as far as I know, got my email address off a web site somewhere. What's more, this person who wants to "network" with me didn't even bother with the courtesy of signing their name to the email. Did they think I wanted to "network" with their faceless company? The jobs were very related to my field of work, but I wouldn't even consider for a moment refering anyone I know to a company that communicates this way. If they recruit in a selfish, semi-anonymous way using tactics similar to those espoused by spammers, who would want to actually work for them?

Here's a better way to go about it: "Hi, my name is John Doe, I work for SomeCompany. I noticed you are a member of the Usability Professionals Association (or whatever other group's site you got my name from), and we are looking for talented professionals in this field. I thought you might be interested in our open positions or know someone else who might be interested." Then tell me a bit about the jobs, with a link to your company's web site for more about what the company does. Feel free to tell me why this is going to be an exciting place to work in those roles. The more open you are, the more people might be interested. Include an email address and a phone number. Better yet, include the hiring manager's contact info (not just the HR person's who doesn't really know squat about the job).

...Another funny item is the last line of the email: "For unwanted future emails reply with out in the subject line" What this really states is "if you'd like unwanted future emails, reply with the word "out" in the subject line." All I can say is "Sure, sign me up for more of those 'unwanted future emails,' would you please?"

New Mobile Device Interaction Techniques?

In a press release from F-Origin entitled "F-Origin Announces Radical User Interface Technologies That Make Using Mobile Devices Easy and Intuitive"

"HaptiTouch, a touch screen system with tactile feedback, brings the simplicity of human touch to mobile devices, effectively removing the need for keypads, stylus, and other pen-like input devices. Through HaptiTouch software, users' interactions may be complemented with various tactile responses, producing a mechanical feedback sensation from the familiar key as well as audible effects when desired."

"Book UI is an innovative menu paging system that allows easy-to-understand book-like indexing while moving through items and categories by simple finger movements on the viewing display. Book UI allows the user to move from one menu page to another in the same manner a page on a book is turned. Once the desired item is found, the user presses on the item to select it."

"Iris, a motion-based viewing technology, views large content on small displays by tilting the device without repurposing the content. Iris software allows the user to navigate and pan across a viewing page, zooming and presenting the content vertically or horizontally depending on the orientation of the device in the user's hand."

Iris seems the most ambitious to me and the most likely to not work in mobile contexts. There's a visualization of how Iris might work on the F-origin site.

Innovation in Electronic Dictionaries

An example of trying to extend the usefulness of a tool by thinking about the user (and in this case, the word's) context:

"Rather than just looking at a single word that has been selected in a text, it analyzes the whole sentence in which the word appears, making use of extended linguistic and lexical data to arrive at precisely the meaning and the translation that will fit the given context."

Design Quote of the Day

"While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, another is busy making mistakes and becoming superior."
- Henry C. Link

This quotes makes me think about how, often in business, user-centered design (UCD) is used to help us learn from our mistakes. Companies or teams who hesitate (or fail to identify and understand their mistakes) remain inferior when compared with teams iteratively designing, testing, and redesigning... UCD helps build superior products and companies - by learning from mistakes, usability practitioners create competitive advantage.