Archive for the ‘usability’ Category

How UX can get anything they want

I’m a fan of the unconventional view that most people, most of the time, worry about the wrong things.

When it comes to the world of UX, designers, usability engineers, and the rest, they tend to complain about how little power they have, but spend little time doing skill development in how to gain influence and power.  The average designer or IA would be better served by going to a sales conference and learning sales and pitching skills, than going to yet another design event. They’re already good at design, but they’re probably not very good at pitching design ideas to non-designers.

One fallacy in how designers and HCI experts are trained is the lack of recognition that most of their careers will be spent working with people who know almost nothing about design or HCI. They are set up to be marginalized and kept in the corner of organizations, since they’re never shown that their success hinges not just on expertise, but the ability to translate that expertise into terms the people who they work with, and for, can understand. The biggest skill gap the UX world has are advocates, translators, and persuaders, people who are not afraid to sell and convince others on the value of their work.

Last year at UI14 I met Alastair Simpson, a UX manager who, in a former life, worked in sales.  I asked him to blog about how to apply his sales background to the challenges of working in UX, and finally he did.

Here’s an excerpt:

Each time I visit a conference I hear the same problems faced by UX professionals.  Not the never ending search for a perfect interface, the perfect user flow, or a usability test that passes without incident.  Most commonly it is “If I could only get the budget, my CEO just doesn’t listen to me in meetings, they seem to switch off and just don’t understand my point of view”.  In the majority of cases this is probably your problem, not theirs.  Successfully pitching your ideas and making your managers, and their managers buy into the UX problems on your site is essential in getting sign off for your projects.

Read the full post here.

I don’t think UX, or anyone, ever gets everything they want. But if you know how to sell, build trust, and choose wisely, you can often get any one thing that you want. And having the courage to do this is how respect, power and influence are earned.

Also see:

TurboTax Design FAIL

I’m so hopeful when I install the new version of something. Everyone is. An upgrade, the payment of cash for the new version, is an extremely hopefully act. I imagine they’ve fixed some things, made some nice improvements, and most of all, have taken into account the things I did with the old version.

And thinking like a designer, the best time to make me feel I chose wisely in upgrading, instead of buying a competing product, is in the first few minutes of use, known in the lingo as the OOBE (out of box experience).

So here it is, in 2010, that Intuit TurboTax fails me again.

As an aside, Yes, I know, I have not be failed by TurboTax in the same way the folks in Haiti have been failed by the universe at large. I won’t lose a limb or a family member or even, with the recession in mind, a job. I know. But still there is a corporation and a business and teams of engineers behind this thing and it’s mystifying.

Back to the story: one thing I’d expect TurboTax to know is to notice I already had TurboTax and used it last year. You know, a returning customer. I’d just assume it would notice last year’s return sitting there and bring it into the new version for me. I was wrong.

The opening screen shows no evidence I’ve ever used the product before. It’s just a mostly blank, empty, sad little screen.

I wondered, for a moment, if this new install somehow deleted all of my old tax returns? This would be quite disappointing. I mean, if TurboTax can’t find other TurboTax returns, it should be safe to assume no one can and that they’re disappeared from the universe forever.

Ever hopeful, I press on. I click on the “Find a Tax File” link, in the lower right, and get this File Open Dialog.

To my sadness, there’s yet another blank screen. Blank Screens are bad. It says “you are on your own – good luck”.

Why is this blank? Simple. The little filter box at the bottom. It is set to default to look for 2009 tax returns only. And since I just installed, it’s improbable there could be anything here with this setting. My previous year returns, despite being in this folder, despite this being the first time I’ve ever used the 2009 version, do not show.

Eventually I figure it out, flip the filter, and alas my old return is there. Sigh of Relief.

But when I click on it, ha ha, the Turbo Tax programmers have another curve ball for me. This is apparently the wrong way to load my old returns.

Let me translate. What this dialog really says is this:

We, the programmers were too lazy, or are too poorly managed, to implement a good solution. Namely, to make the software, at least for the first 5 minutes, follow the natural flow of what returning users will do in this sequence of screens (e.g. start by loading last years file), or doing what’s smart for ourselves, and acknowledge you are a returning customer and reward you for it in some way. Instead we have put up a obnoxious clinical, poorly written dialog that, in the first paragraph, suggests you are completely hosed, only to explain in the second paragraph you are merely partially hosed. Fundamentally, this dialog is a testament to the fact we resolved this bug as fixed by simply putting up a sign, sweeping your lousy experience with our work under the virtual rug.

This product has been around for 15 years. What a shame. I suppose it doesn’t say much for the quality of its competitors. Perhaps this is the best there is.

Now I know the programmers themselves might not be to blame – but whoever prioritizes bugs, makes feature decisions, or decides which part of the user experience gets invested in, and which don’t, certainly is.

I hope you’ll forward this to any Intuit employees, or friends of Intuit employees, or friends of friends of neighbors of Intuit employees ex-girlfriend’s cousins, who might know anyone on the TurboTax team who hopefully, when they see this missive, will hang their head in shame? and perhaps promise to get some low hanging but very tasty fruit like this right next time?

Thanks.

When visualizations go wrong, part 2

Here’s part 2 of my continuing series of visualizations gone wrong (part 1 was about a viz on web browser market share).

The idea of metaphor is a good one. It’s one of the oldest communication tools we have. It’s clever and wise to use something people understand to help explain something they don’t.

There’s even a good argument to be made that much of all learning is done through some kind of metaphor.

But using any metaphor at all, or a well known one from a context that is unknown or feared in another, doesn’t help. It’s bad news all around if you choose an obscure, complex unfondly remembered one such as the Periodic table, as these folks did.

They replaced the elements with, ironically enough, visualization methods.

The Perioidic table itself is just plain weird. Is it any wonder so few people understand, or care to understand, chemistry? I’ve had people explain to me why it’s organized the way it is, and there is a logic to it, but it must be one of the least visually elegant and hardest to learn or memorize tables I know of.

The fact that this thing was made, or at least promoted, by a site called Visual Literacy challenges the limits of oxymorons.

And if that weren’t enough, there’s more. Mouse over any of the elements and you get the visual wonderment that is the unexpected pop-up window:

One of the fundamental questions of all visualizations is this: How is this better than a flat, two or three column alphabetical list?

It’s surprisingly rare that in any expected kind of usage any visualization performs better on any task, from ease of discovery, to ease of use, to retention, that a flat alphabetical list.

In this case, a list of all methods, with a description and a picture, all appearing in the same table, on the same page, requiring no magic mouse-overs or comprehension of high school chemistry would be a big and easy win.

Of course, some people have tried to make improved versions of the periodic table, but going circular, as we talked about last time, has its problems.

Also see this version designed for kids (PDF) – has some advantages over the others.

Today is World Usability Day

Today marks the third annual World Usability Day. There are many events taking place online and more in various cities around the world, possibly near you.

My favorite event is the Alarm clock rally: You have to guess how hard to use each alarm clock is.

In years past I did tons of free usability reviews of websites and things, but I’m sitting this year out.

What every movie review website needs

I can’t tell you how many times, even in notable magazines, I’ve read movie reviews that spoil the movie. It’s the most criminal, careless thing a critic can do: steal the narrative potency of someone else’s work. Even if it’s the worst movie in the world, a decent critic can tear it apart without spoiling the film.

So the other day on netflix I saw this – a spoiler warning:

On every review any user can flag reviews for spoilers.

Thank you Netflix.

  • By Scott Berkun on April 8th, 2008
  • 6 Comments »
  • Software/Web development

Wordpress 2.5: Review

Last week I upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress. I’m a huge Wordpress fan, I love what these guys do, and I was psyched to see what they’d done this time around.

Total time: 9 minutes. This was end to end, from downloading their software, to reading instructions, to the moment I was able to make my first post. And this included an extra 2 minutes where FileZilla imploded and I had to start over.

Summary: Thumbs up. Go get it. Most of the changes are for the positive, the UI is cleaner, my top gripes (text-editor and thumbnails) have been fixed, and there are some new minor features. Top complaints are UI fit and finish, there are some gotchas that should have been caught.

Kudos:

  • Text editor is much improved: less buggy, fewer perf issues, and better media support. People spend 80% of their time in WP here so happy to see investments to core use here.
  • Site wide search instead of just blog posts – obvious win.
  • The UI visuals shows some style love – in many places, like the comments view, the style choices make it easier to scan long lists. Other nice touches include a flag next to the comments tab when there are new unmoderated comments.

  • Many under the hood improvements that I don’t fully understand or expect to use but feel good about anyway.
  • Automatic plugin updates. Nice, though this broke for a few plugins I had. Expect the kinks will be fixed by plugin authors from here on out.
  • The install is just a few steps and takes minutes with no special skills required.

Complaints:

  • Leap of faith upgrade. Doing hand copying of files is very 1980s. I read the instructions ten times to make sure I had it right, and even then I had the willies while waiting for both the files to be copied, and to see the new dashboard working. The intermediary UI didn’t calm my fears at all. Say what you will about Windows or Mac software, but great relief comes from pushing an “install” button, and watching one little progress bar while the software does all the work. Instead in WP there’s a useless page offering no clue how long it will take, and given my hand-copying of files, no way of knowing if I’d screwed something up. To be fair it did take about 20 seconds, but they were the most stressful I’d had all day.

  • Admin redesign. This felt not quite finished. It’s definitely improved but has 1 step back for every three forward. It’s a space heavy design, with several levels of hierarchy floating in dreamy soft blues and whites. If it’s really a dashboard it should be more software app like than a webpage, but it feels more like the later. The core problem is 4 levels of UI, with varying left right dominance, creates a visual ping pong (left, right, left). Plus there are mismatches of prioritization: The Write a new post button, the most used button on the page, is off the right, while the text “Right now” gets prime real estate on the left.

  • Tab confusion. The UI rules for tab are simple, peers share the same tabs so people know what is on the same level as what. But there are three orphaned tabs all the way on the right that turn out to be peers to the stuff on the left. No idea why they’d do this. Similar problems on the top with a dashboard tab all the way left, and three orphans on the right (Help/Logout/Forums)

  • Settings confusion. Much of the UI in wordpress is config related, but is there really a need for three different hierarchies for Manage, Settings, and Plugins? Some of the UI in each can be compressed (e.g. Privacy has one option and doesn’t deserve it’s own page). Even after a week of use I find it hard to remember which top level category to go to for what.
  • My everyday tasks are still hard to optimize . This is my top gripe. I’m a very basic, vanilla user. I post 2 or 3 times a week, text and link heavy, with images and thumbnails in most posts. That’s it. No media streaming, no dashboard customization, no multi-users or anything whiz bang at all. Yet I still find it clunky to add images, check links, preview and review, and worse, despite having done it 5000 times there’s no efficiency path. No shortcut keys or tricks to make my routine faster.

Nitpicks:

  • The Comments listing should default to showing unmoderated comments. That’s the primary view people with moderation on need to see when going to the comments page.
  • On the home dashboard page, first page people see, the word dashboard appears 3 times, all on the leftmost column. The second one is highlighted to indicate it’s active, so the third one isn’t necessary. If people don’t notice the red highlight means it’s active then change the highlight, don’t add another instance of the word.
  • Moving the category field to the bottom of the post page is a huge pain. Most people use categories so they hit this set of checkboxes for every post. The current layout forces two scrolls: one to get down there, and a second to scroll the list of categories. This UI should be in the critical path of the UI design for the post page.
  • The add media UI is overkill. First, clicking on that tiny little image button takes over the whole screen. Blam – I thought I’d broken something. It’s a jarring, horrible transition. Going modal is ok, but don’t hit me over the head. There are other issues with the flow in this UI: not sure what use cases it is designed for, but everything seems to require lots of steps (And what does Crunching mean? Downloading seems more accurate).

    .

Even with my complaints, I strongly recommend Wordpress. If you want to give it a spin, you can use their free, hosted, blogging service at wordpress.org. If you’re thinking of upgrading or switching check out this handy guide: How to update wordpress with minimal downtime.

« Older Entries |

Scott's Bestselling Books
  • Confessions of a
    Public Speaker
  • Provocative and funny secrets from a veteran speaker, you'll laugh as you learn.
  • Buy now at Amazon Book Details
  • The Myths of Innovation
  • The classic bestseller on how amazing lessons from the past can help you innovate today.
  • Buy now at Amazon Book Details
  • Making Things Happen
  • The classic and bestselling handbook for any project leader, packed with tactics and stories.
  • Buy now at Amazon Book Details
Photos from Recent Events (view flickr stream)

You're reading Scott Berkun, All rights reserved unless noted. You can subscribe here Blog RSS Comments (RSS)