At war with the soda machine
Working here has made me infinitely more aware of usability in everyday things. Some days I think my hubby’s ready to throw his shoe at me if I say “that’s just not usable” one more time. We had one such encounter over the weekend when we stopped to get a soda from a conveniently located machine. (I apologize for the bad resolution – there’s only so much you can do with an iPhone in a shadowy hallway.)
Take a close look … if you put your coins in that machine, where would you instinctively want to push to deploy your soda? The big shiny button picturing the actual bottle of soda, right?
But no! There are still old-style buttons on the side that have to be selected for purchase.
It’s a small detail, but considering that soda companies are now using both functionalities, it made me pause before I actually made my purchase – it wasn’t automatic. If I had put my money in, pushed the button and gotten my soda, I would have thought nothing of this interaction. I wouldn’t have growled and said “this is bad usability.” My husband wouldn’t have rolled his eyes. And so on.
But the fact that the machine didn’t do what I thought it should at first glance made me feel like maybe I was doing something wrong, or maybe I was too old to understand these new-fangled machines, or maybe even the machine was broken. But none of those were true. And in the end, it just made feel like I should have bought a Coke.
I deleted my Twitter account!
I accidentally deleted my Twitter account last week. Yes, yes, I know—that’s like accidentally driving one’s car off the road or misplacing one’s pants. So how did I do it? Glad you asked.
Like many folks, I manage more than one Twitter account. For example, I have my personal Twitter account, a business account for Tuitive, and then a couple extra accounts related to some side projects. I mistakenly thought I was logged in as one of these extra accounts when I made my way to Twitter’s account deactivation screen, as shown here:
Notice anything telling in the above screenshot? I didn’t either, and that’s the problem! While this screen does a great job of describing the dire, irreversible nature of deactivating a Twitter account, there is no indication anywhere as towhich account I am logged into and about to deactivate. I assumed incorrectly and pushed the button.
I was pretty shocked when I realized I had deactivated my personal Twitter account. To add insult to injury, Twitter would not let me create a new account using my previous username or email address, meaning it wasn’t really deleted. It was just caught in some sort of Twitter purgatory, stuck between the world of the active account and that of the deleted damned.
Fortunately after a few days of pleading-via-email, Twitter support had mercy on me and restored my account. (It came with a polite admonition, however, that this was a one-time favor.)
So, happy ending. Crisis averted. Problem solved. But what a waste of time and energy, both on my part and that of Charles at Twitter support. Here’s a super simple usability tweak to the HTML on the Twitter account deactivation screen that I’m sure would have prevented this issue from happening in the first place:
The best part is, in the time it has taken for you to read this, a Twitter developer could have implemented this and perhaps prevented another careless fool like me from making a similar mistake.
Like many usability tweaks, simple changes have huge impacts that can prevent a lot of heartache. And we all know that an ounce of prevention is worth pounds of tech support.
The public speaker’s user experience
As those of you on our e-mailing list know, Tuitive is embarking on a campaign to become sought-after public speakers. While presenting in front of a large group scares the daylights out of most people, for some reason our motley crew is really excited by the chance to get out and share our expertise with the world.
So in order to prepare for this adventure, we’ve each been developing presentations on our area of expertise as they relate to Tuitive’s core mission – then giving the presentations to each other. I spoke at my high school graduation and I’ve taught dozens of courses all over this lovely country, but this little group made me more nervous than most. Something about the fact that they all know my strengths and weaknesses, I’m sure.
I’d worked diligently on my presentation (with the thrilling title “Your Client’s User Experience”), including talking extensively to Jon (our boss), digging up relatable stories, writing notes, rewriting notes, rehearsing, and even learning Prezi (new-fangled presentation software for those unfamiliar). I put several weeks into it. But no matter how much thought I put into it, no matter how many hours, I was still bored by the damned thing. And that boredom came across when I presented to the Tuitive team.
We have a policy of being brutally honest with each other about our performances. Not cruel, mind you, but honest. Our philosophy is (1) it’s better to hear it from a teammate than go out in the world looking like an idiot, and (2) what each of us does in the name of Tuitive reflects on us all. So they let me have it: it felt rushed, there wasn’t enough audience involvement, there weren’t enough images, and so on. They were all 100% right. And I could have handed everyone a list before I even turned on the projector telling them exactly the same things.
My disinterest in my presentation came through. It’s not that I didn’t believe what I was saying, but it all seemed so elementary and common sense – like something you could find easily in 20 different business self-help books at Border’s. It didn’t feel useful and therefore I had no passion for it.
A couple months back, however, I had given a presentation to the team that I waspassionate about: grammar. No laughing – I love grammar. Perhaps it’s because it’s been hammered into me since I was old enough to talk, but I have a passion for it, and it makes me absolutely insane to hear the English language butchered regularly.
You might assume that a presentation on grammar would be far more boring to the audience than one about creating a positive client experience, right? But no, the team really liked the grammar presentation – we spent well over 2 hours going through it and discussing it, and it’s definitely changed everyone’s writing and speaking styles. Although we still have the same technical skill sets we had before the grammar lesson, we all now sound more intelligent and competent in our writing and speech.
So why did this presentation have more impact than the one about client experience? Because I was able to put myself into it. I’m passionate about educating others on this subject. (I’m passionate about client experience, too, just not about educating everyone on the subject!) My enthusiasm was infectious, the audience got involved, they remembered what they’d been taught.
The irony of the poor user experience I’d created for the attendees of my presentation on improving client user experience was not lost on me. So I’m keeping that client user experience presentation, working on improving its content, getting the audience more involved, slowing down, and finding my passion for educating on that subject as well. But for the moment, the grammar presentation is out front with me, ready to educate the world about the difference between “that” and “who.”
Viva usability
After spending a few days in Las Vegas recently, I began to notice that Las Vegas is built to overwhelm your senses, but not to allow you to actually accomplish anything meaningful. With this shocking realization I came up with 10 Las Vegas strategies that you should NOT use on a website.
- Impossible navigation – Take some water and a GPS with you and I will see you in 2 days.
- Overabundance of useless content – There is so much to see, but none of it really matters.
- Noise – It is too loud to talk. Let’s leave or go towards the loudest thing we can find.
- High cost of simple decisions – Bottled water should not cost $5.
- Misdirection – You could win a car… but you won’t.
- Lies – Free isn’t even free in Las Vegas
- Bigger is better – TVs, cars, casinos, European landmarks, 70 oz. cocktails.
- Shock and Awe – They have canals filled with water … inside a shopping mall … inside a casino.
- Elvis and pirate ships – This is self-explanatory.
- Shotgun marketing – When you target everyone, you hit no one.
These rules are certainly not enough to ensure a positive user experience, but they are a great place to start.
Until next time, keep it usable Internets… and the house ALWAYS wins.
What requirements?
I’m sure you’ll all be excited when I reveal that my husband gave me a humidifier for Christmas. It’s not a sexy gift, but I was genuinely happy to get it (my static-laden cats were happier than me– in theory, at least). The humidifier is lovely – tall and thin, and fits subtly into any room. It keeps the upper floor of our house nicely humidified (to the cats’ delight), and only goes through a tank of water per day. Despite all these wonderful features, I discovered a huge usability flaw the first time I went to fill the tank.
It has a lovely handle on top, as you can see:
But when I removed the tank to fill it, my user experience became a lot less delightful. The bottom handle is actually the lid to the opening for filling:
When I remove the lid to fill the tank, where do I grip it? Instead of a convenient handle to hold while I fill the tank, I’m left with a few less-than-ideal options. I can hold it by the water-delivery stem, and pray that it won’t get wet and slip – or become overly stressed by the weight and snap off. I can set it in the bathtub to fill, resulting in a great deal of overspray (to the cats’ dismay). Or I can hold it by the lip of the opening (which is kind of sharp). I generally opt for the later, resulting in less mess than option 2 and less danger than option 1. (That’s not entirely true – I generally opt to have my husband fill it, but that really is how he holds the tank.)
Perhaps the humidifier’s designers believed all their users would set this tall tank in kitchen sinks to fill. Nice idea, but I’d have to carry the tank downstairs every day to fill it. And like most consumers, I’m inherently lazy; an extra trip down the stairs every day isn’t appealing. That leaves me to choose between a deep bathtub and a shallow bathroom sink.
Grumble.
So aside from being irritated daily, what can I take away from this humidifier lesson? Requirements.
If a project team doesn’t fully flesh out requirements in the early stages of a project, and doesn’t keep revisiting requirements as the project progresses, that team will end up with an unfillable humidifier.
Or an unusable website.
When starting a project, it’s imperative to take the time to fully consider requirements. Most project teams are eager to get a project rolling – to jump right in and start seeing results. That’s great; we all love results. More importantly, though, we love successful results. Without fully identifying the objectives, scope, and end users, any project’s risk of failing to meet the project’s goals skyrockets. The impact of missed requirements can be huge, and that impact only increases as the project moves through its lifecycle.
That’s why it’s key to hold a team kickoff meeting. To document objectives, scope, personas, and site architecture. To review every deliverable with the team. And to test the product with end users. Because without knowing requirements, how can any project team accurately build any product for anyone?
Vinyl record sales are up 15%. Here’s why.
In the pristine digital world that we live in, how is it possible that some would prefer their music on vinyl records? Chris Stevens of CNet puts it nicely.
“It’s likely that the tactile joy of owning a physical object that represents your attachment to a band is infinitely more enjoyable than entering a credit card number into iTunes. Not to mention the fun of manipulating turntable technology to play vinyl, that sense of physical control of the medium.”
From an NPR bit last week:
“It’s always been more personal, so much more tangible than a CD. The size, the look, the gatefold, you get to watch it go around, you know what I mean. It’s, what’s the word,. . . interactive.”
For some, it seems, it’s not about just listening to music—it’s about engaging with your music and experiencing music on more than just an audible level. For them, music should involve all of the senses, not just that of hearing.
Could it be that technology, no matter how advanced, will only succeed if it solves our complex emotional needs rather than just our technical needs?
What other fun or meaningful experiences has technology “relieved” us of?
