Results tagged “usability” from karlo.org

(This is an extended version of an email I wrote to one of the local tech mailing lists here in New York, in response to a developer's question. It seemed generally useful enough that I'm reposting it here.)

A very common design problem in web services project these days is the issue of user search. Most web services now involve pools of data that are far too large to be entirely "browseable", even if we're only talking about finding another user on the service. Very quickly you start to see a specification develop of increasing complexity, involving boolean ("AND/OR") concepts, keywords, and all kinds of other demands targeted at extremely precise results tailored very exactly to the knowledge domain or data set. What's the best way to go about building this user experience?

Back when I was at MIT, we used to call the standard Leatherman tools a "nerdtool" -- like a Swiss Army knife on steroids, they included pliers, knives, several screwdrivers, and a bunch of other components that you might or might not know what you were supposed to do with them. All-in, those things weighed at least a pound, didn't really fit in your pocket, and wearing one on your belt was the style equivalent of wearing two blackberries in holsters these days. (Some of you will think that's uncool, some will think it's cool, and that's exactly why the comparison is apt.) Even carrying one in your bag was somewhat of a commitment in the name of MacGuyver.

I still follow knife and tool design because it's a very interesting intersection of mechanical design, ergonomics and aesthetic design. Out of the various objects you're likely to find someone carrying every day (watch, eyeglasses, wallet, keys, etc.) it's one of the few where there is a great deal of attention paid to the functionality of the design, because it matters. In contrast, watches and glasses these days are almost solely about fashion, because the core functionality has become a commodity.

Portland, OR-based Leatherman has two new designs coming in May 2009, under the "Freestyle" moniker. These are 4.5 oz, stripped down multi-tools based on the popular Skeletool design that have been immensely popular as a replacement for the old nerdkits. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like they include basic screwdrivers, but having both a good knife and good set of pliers in a compact, light package is still better than trying to get things done with your bare hands in lots of situations. I'm going to have to try to get to a store and look at one of these firsthand when they arrive in May.

(By the way, since this post begs the question: my regular pocketknife is a very small (1.25" blade) Buck knife that has a skeletal steel frame and bottle cap opener built in. It's small enough to fit in my pocket with my wallet and cheap enough that if I ever brought it to the airport by mistake it wouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, it's no longer sold - it's been replaced by the Buck Transport, which in all honestly looks like a plastic piece of junk to me.)

A week ago I posted about trying to jump completely over from client-based email to only using Gmail's web interface. In particular, this was prompted by the recent availability of offline mail reading for that interface, which made it unnecessary to have Thunderbird downloading copies of all my email so I could work on reading and answering messages when not connected to the net.

Now that's the kind of conversion rate I wish I could achieve more often. Based on a Google Website Optimizer run on one of my sites from January 14th to today, February 3rd. And the best part is that the aggregate percentage has been rising steadily over the past week, which means that the current effective conversion rate may be 5 to 10% higher than this.

My first experiences with email were all server-side applications. Bulletin boards, Compuserve and dialup Internet, then the Athena Unix terminals of my years at MIT. At the time, it made sense - modems were slow, downloading messages took time, and there weren't attachments.

In the interim, I've been a die-hard user of desktop email clients. At my old finance job, I regularly received 100-150 emails a day, which sounds like a lot until you realize that if you're working on 10-12 projects or pitches, that's only 10 emails between team members per day. (Bankers tend to use CC: reflexively, but you are expected to be up to speed on all the threads even if you're not the direct recipient.) I was an Outlook power user by day and a Mozilla Thunderbird wonk by night, plus I carried (and still carry) a Blackberry that gets checked compulsively. (The dog, mind you, gets jealous about how much attention the berry gets.)

Even when not connected to the net, I want access to my email - it's not just a communications tool, it's also a major database of filed information I need when working. But with the addition of offline Gmail access via Google Gears last week, the final issue tying me to desktop clients has been resolved - I can now read and write emails on flights and away from wifi using Gmail.

For the next week, I'm going to try using Gmail's web interface exclusively when at my computer, a MacBook. I've removed Thunderbird from my application dock so I don't open it by mistake, and I've installed Google Notifier in my menu bar so I can see when a new message has arrived. There's a printout of the cheat sheet for Google Mail keyboard shortcuts and I'm going to to my best to force myself to use them so I can get up the learning curve faster. And I'm going to see how using a web-only interface to my email box works out.

I'll admit I'm skeptical... I have a hard time seeing how a web-based app can outperform a "sovereign" application like Thunderbird or Outlook. (Although I was never really happy with the keyboard shortcut support in Thunderbird, relative to Outlook.) But there are a lot of obvious benefits as well, including the ability to get the same interface wherever I can access a web browser. I'll post in a week how it's been, and whether I'll be able to remove Thunderbird from my MacBook permanently.

I'm a huge fan of using patterns when designing web services, especially when it comes to user interaction and non-core tasks. There's a number of reasons why:

1. You can focus on what differentiates your service, rather than re-designing what others have already worked out through trial and error
   
2. Users are happier with interaction flows they expect -- and generally, they expect what they've seen before when using other products
3. If you're working with a team, they'll generally understand and build a known pattern faster  and more correctly than a totally new design, even if the new one might be marginally better
   

Sometimes though, using patterns can get you into trouble even if they do fit the immediate requirements. As part of building IsAlternateSideParkingInEffect.com, I utilized a very standard pattern for validating new users -- sending an email to a user with a unique token, then requiring that they provide the token from the email to the system in order to fully activate their subscription.

Frankly, it worked well -- too well. Only about 50% of users would complete the validation (and I assume that the number of spurious submissions is well below half.) For a service where the risk of a faked registration is almost nothing, the pattern was costing me way too many users in the process of guarding against them. The guards were protecting the front gate, but they were eating all of the villagers' food.

I've since changed the process to an "opt-out" model - when a user submits their email to the site, they are immediately "activated", but every message they receive from then on has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Making this relatively simply change from the established pattern immediately doubled the yield rate of subscribed users per unique visitor to the web site. It was simply a case where the "best practice" pattern didn't fit with the realities of a very specific service design, and acknowledging that reality.

The Vitality Glowcap, recently released and available on Amazon starting at $30 is just a great example of design and technology applied to a longstanding, everyday problem: making sure folks take their medicine. They have both the simple, self-contained "glow" model, which bugs you every 24 hours to take the pill (and is reset when you unscrew it off the bottle to get the medicine) and a more complex version that connects via the internet to keep track of your usage, a testament to the design truism that giving users lots of options is often worse than giving them none. Both units have almost zero user interface or configuration requirements. Vitality is a new startup by David Rose, who used to head Ambient Devices.

Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience.

-- John Gruber on iPhone Application Design.

In a world where services are moving online, and people aren't so much buying your software as choosing to use your service, I'd argue this applies to not just the iPhone but almost any "non-sovereign application" -- pretty much anything short of a word processor, web browser, or spreadsheet program.

As someone who loves to drive (and travel) but doesn't own a car, I rent a lot of cars -- I've probably rented for between 25 to 30 days from Avis this year so far. I do like them as a company in terms of their service execution -- the cars are ready for me when I arrive, I don't have to wait for them, and the prices are usually reasonable, if not rock bottom. But their web site drives me absolutely bonkers, it's so badly designed.

First of all, to login, you have to use your "AVIS Wizard Number" -- a randomly assigned alphanumeric mishmash with absolutely no relation to anything else. Mine is something like 1MQD32Z. All of the airlines and credit card companies have discovered the concept of a "user name" some time ago. Not AVIS. They've got their wizard numbers, and well, fuck you if you don't like it.
 
Worse, rather than using some kind of rational system for locations, AVIS uses whatever their internal coding is for locations. So midtown Manhattan? That's "M1H", you silly bastard. Why don't you know that? If you do manage to login and enter a date and a time for a rental, then search for a location, the system isn't smart enough to say, not show locations that _aren't open_ on the days you want to rent a car. (See the above graphic, which came about three screens after I had entered my target date and chosen a location.) Nor will it always tell you what times that location is actually open, so you might adjust your reservation. I guess that's a company secret or something.

Finally, to add insult to injury, if you do follow the directions in the error message and click on the "Modify >>" hyperlink to change your reservation, you'll probably end up right back at this page. That's because the new search form will have that "M1H" location filled in, so even if you enter your city and state again, it will ignore that and put you right back to the same location on the next try.

Now, if you don't mind. I'm going to have a stiff drink and try reserving a car again, for the tenth time.

"I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing. So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist? So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated."

Bill Gates, "Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame" via SAI

Encountering Uusability debacles like this are why I've stopped wasting my time even bothering to try Microsoft operating systems (and why I even try to avoid using MS Office on my MacBook.) If I find it frustrating, with a C.S. degree from MIT, how the hell is any regular person supposed to enjoy using the platform? At the least, MSFT needs to consider splitting Windows into two products - a wonky, swiss knife platform meant for business users with sysadmins, and a super reliable, simplified product for "normal" consumer users.

When you switch over to using a Mac, you realize the amount of time you spent fighting the platform in Windows (and/or simply not getting what you want) is absolutely appalling.

Forms are one of the tougher problems in web usability and something I've been thinking about lately. Here's a short list of some of the better resources I've found; some of them are older but the findings still apply. I'd have to assume users have gotten a little better at using forms over the past couple of years, but it also depends on how web-savvy the target audience is.

Getting a paper towel shouldn't require a numbered list...

I guess the idea of this is to reduce usage (it doesn't work - the machine doesn't dispense a long enough sheet on the first try, so you end up just repeating the procedure) but all it really does is add one extra tidbit of annoyance and cognitive load to everyone who ever uses it. There are definitely designs out there that do manage to do so, with less obstruction of the user. A good example of one design goal completely dominating the larger purpose of a device.