Archive for the ‘User Experience’ Category
When good credit cards go bad
Every few years, I go through the tedious ritual of contacting all the companies that have my credit card number on file, and providing them with a new expiration date for the card. You see, the credit card issuers somehow think it makes everyone safer if a card is only good for say 3-5 years. […]
Filed under: User Experience | Closed
Protecting users from themselves
Once in a while, I attend an online meeting using tools like WebEx or GoToMeeting. What always surprises me is how little thought the presenter or moderator puts into what other people can see on their screen. Instead of just sharing the window where the presentation or demo is taking place, they usually have their […]
Filed under: Design, User Experience | Closed
Let’s assume for a moment that you’re working on a product that has some bad design elements. Say, for instance, that the original developers forgot to add a few features, like a way for the user to rename or delete pages they’ve made. You know the right solution is to add these buttons where people […]
Filed under: Design, Usability, User Experience | Closed
While trying to schedule an event online, I noticed something funny. There’s an optional feature to have the website remind you before the event, which I sometimes use for a 5 or 10 minute heads-up. But as I was scrolling through the choices, I noticed they switch arbitrarily between measures. After “9 hours,” “10 hours,” […]
Filed under: Design, Usability, User Experience | Closed
Mismatched graphics
I’ve been using a particular bill payment site for over a year, but something has always bothered me about the confirmation screen. I finally figured out the problem: the graphics don’t make sense. In particular, they’re using a diamond-shaped image to indicate a successful payment. But people are trained to associate this with a warning […]
Filed under: Design, User Experience | Closed
If customers have to register for your site before they can complete certain transactions, asking for less information is usually a good thing. So when I signed up for a new account on an e-commerce site a few days ago, I was pleased to see that all they asked for was my email address and […]
Filed under: Design, User Experience | Closed
I know I complain about salesforce.com a lot. Although it’s a solid product, I really wish they would pay more attention to some of the more mundane tasks, like adding and deleting users. My latest grievance: if you create a new user and the user has started using the site, you can never delete that […]
Filed under: Design, Usability, User Experience | Closed
In my experience, people are pretty careless by nature. Unless the stakes are really high, we’re not very good at double-checking things or spotting mistakes. Given this harsh reality, I’m amazed at how many people fail to take advantage of possibly the best error-prevention tool around: the copy and paste feature. Case in point: I […]
Filed under: User Experience | Closed
Guided testing for phone menus
When I think about the types of communication systems that companies use, it seems like phone menus are much more error-prone than email, websites, and other channels. This really isn’t that surprising. You can easily test the functionality of email and web forms by sending an email message, or navigating to and submitting the forms […]
Filed under: Testing, User Experience | Closed
Thinking inside the box
No matter how easy it might be to get a product out of the box, it’s usually a nightmare to get it back in there later. For products that are designed to be carried around, like mobile phones, this probably doesn’t matter: you just stash them in a bag or your pocket and off you […]
Filed under: Design, User Experience | Closed
MicroExperience 
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