When design hurts

There's a great deal of truth in the age-old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Unfortunately for me, today I decided to fix something that was absolutely not broken. I've used a password managing application for years now, eWallet from IliumSoft. I've loved it for several really good reasons - it's cheap, it's simple, and it does the job incredibly well. In fact I probably use the app thirty or forty times a day, it's that useful for me.


Basically, what it does is ask you for one password, then displays categories of all your passwords and other information. Once you've entered that password you have access to all your key data. There were very few frills, and nothing really got in the way of what it did.


Today I found the Android version, and found if I upgraded from version 6 to version 7 (for a very reasonable price) I could sync between the two. So, with that age-old saying echoing in my head I paid the price and upgraded.


The first problem I hit is what appears to be at least one large-scale bug - the application hangs temporarily for 5-6 seconds, every 15 seconds or so. This makes moving through it pretty painful at best. This may be something to do with my own setup of course, so I can't absolutely guarantee it's a bug, but since every other app is running fine on my Windows machine I think it's probably a safe bet.

* UPDATE: Having spoken to the company support it turns out to be an incompatibility issue with the fingerprint software installed on my machine - who's fault that is remains to be seen, but disabling part of the fingerprint software did stop the problem, for now.


But it's the second problem that really hurts - and I do mean hurt.


Years ago I tested a complex software application that had been re-engineered from a much simpler previous version. When users started to interact with it, I witnessed some strange behaviour. They would furrow their brows, move in to the screen, squint their eyes, and in general look as if they were experiencing pain. When I asked them about this, painful was a word that came out several times - the new system was painful to learn, as it had thrown out their previous understanding and seemed to be almost maliciously breaking the rules they'd previously worked by.


I've seen it many times since of course, but today I feel their pain. 


The previous version had a clear, clean three-zone approach - a top menu/icon bar, a left category panel, and a right content panel for the card.


In it's place, the new version has five zones - a top toolbar/ribbon (that expands and contracts and changes as you move), a left category zone (with a bottom toolbar and options), a right content panel for the card, a lower panel for the card details, and another panel below that for card notes. 


Where the previous version was clean in terms of design, this version has mirrored reflections on headings (which doesn't appear to be optional), sizable drag-bars on every zone and region and at times a dizzying array of customisation options on-screen.


What should be simple tasks have become confusing, with some UX faux pas included. For example, the notes panel is editable at any time, just click and type, whereas the card panel isn't, and only becomes editable on a double click. The details panel isn't editable at all, and won't respond to a double click even though it's showing fields, the same as the card panel.


When you do get into a card you can change all the fields - but there is no Save button. It appears that the only way you can save your changes is to click on a completely different card, and then return to the first card to check it changed. 

I fell foul of another problem the first few times I tried to edit a card. I clicked on the card to change a password, only to see a list of fields but no password field. Confused I went back, tried again, and then a third and fourth time, completely thrown out as to why I wasn't seeing the password field (see below):

Before you edit...

During edit...

It took me a few attempts to realise that a ribbon of options was being displayed over the fields I needed - the key fields you'd want to access almost every time. Click into the card and the ribbon disappears, but that's pretty counter-intuitive - click where you don't want to go, to the hide the thing you didn't want in the first place, so you can see the field you need, and then click on it again. Why they didn't scroll the fields down below the ribbon confuses the hell out of me.


I could go on and on, there are options for field names that just seem to make no sense, the entire process of synchronisation to Android is confusing, and I managed to get stuck in the template editing function and unable to get back out.


Next time I really REALLY have to remember - if it ain't broke....

Being better, by being worse

A team led by Simon Robinson from Swansea University in the UK is working on a way to make GPS technology worse.

Well, not exactly worse, but less precise. Basically, they are aiming to add exploration back into the possibility for how you get from A to B. 

Let's say your in a strange city, and you want to get to a famous landmark. A current GPS tool will take you there directly by the shortest or fastest route - but that might bypass that beautiful (but slower) route along the river, and a dozen little cafes that you'd otherwise never forget.

Their approach is intriguing. They are working on a tool that doesn't give you turn-by-turn directions, but instead shows you the direction to head for. You might for example wave your mobile around, and it will buzz in the direction you need to head - but the path you take is up to you.

It's an interesting idea, and one that has some potential for exploration in a web environment. Large applications are in many ways like a large city - they are stuffed with interesting content, but finding your way too it isn't always that simple. Search engines and shortcuts are the equivalent of a GPS, taking you directly to your goal but often by-passing interesting content along the way. Is there scope for a happy medium, pointing you in the direction of your goal but letting you explore your way towards it?


I believe there is, and I believe it could work in a very similar fashion. Set your goal, and have the site provide you with a rough direction. The closer you get, the more that 'direction' narrows, until you reach your goal.


For example, imagine hitting a site selling books. You search for a particular book, and the site offers you a choice - jump straight to it, or explore your way there. If you choose explore, the site offers you highlights on certain navigation options, narrowing these down as you get closer. So you get to find your book, but also get to explore a little along the information pathways that lead to it.


It's a great idea, and one I'd love to play with given the chance.

The cost of poor usability

You have the choice of two ways of doing things. You can do it right, or you can do it wrong, pay the cost, then redo it the right way. Which do you choose?


It's a no-brainer, but it's amazing how often businesses choose the first path.


A few months back, I saw a great website turn into a poor one (in my opinion, at least). I regularly go to the movies, and my local cinema is a Greater Union. I had the page for that cinema bookmarked, and it showed in a great simple layout a list of the movies currently playing. The times would appear next to each, and you could easily book. A description of the movie appeared on the left, with a small image which linked to a trailer if you wanted to see more. Simple, easy, quick to use.


But then the site changed and merged with the Event Cinemas brand.


Initially this completely broke the local pages. For nearly two weeks I was unable to access the local cinema page, and kept seeing error messages whether I tried the direct link or navigated from the home page. I kept waiting for someone to wake up and realise it was broken, but when that didn't happen I eventually emailed them. Sure enough, it seemed that they didn't have a clue, and shortly afterwards the page was fixed - but how many sales were lost during that time? Two weeks with this cinema (and who knows how many others) completely lost in the site?


When the page finally did get fixed, it was far harder to read. More content, a more confusing layout, and less space for the key information I wanted. For the first time in my life I drove off and rocked up at the cinema to buy tickets for a movie that wasn't even playing yet - because the 'future date' hadn't been clear on the page when I looked at the time.


This week, I received an email from the event Cinema people. It said:


"We’ve listened to your feedback via our website, on Twitter & Facebook and in our cinemas and have been working on a brand new homepage and session times finder.

Both pages have been completely redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up to make finding movie times and buying tickets easier and quicker than anywhere else.

No other Australian cinema chain will have a homepage or session times finder as innovative, simple to use and fast as ours, and it’s all thanks to all the great input you’ve given us."

Reading between the lines, it seems obvious that people complained - and not just one or two. They changed the site, they made it 'cooler' but also more painful to use, and people bitched. Sales suffered, somebody kicked somebody else, and they responded with a new design.

Personally, I'm still seeing little improvement. From the home page it isn't easy to see what's on at my local cinema, unless I know what movie I want to see. The local cinema pages don't seem to have changed at all.

But that's not the point. The point is, UX should have headed all of this off at the pass. If a design is tested with the audience then you know it'll work. 

I don't know if the Event cinema guys undertook a good level of testing, or even any testing at all, but from what I'm seeing and experiencing I seriously doubt it.

And I can only just wonder at the money that must have cost them. 

The death of ebooks

Many years ago, when Gameboys (version 1) were just coming onto the market, I had a vision.

I could foresee that one day we'd all have these small devices with a nice screen, on which we could read books, newspapers and even perhaps watch movies. I even went as far as contacting an invention company to discuss options for creating prototypes.

Needless to say my prototype never eventuated and I know far greater minds than mine had already foreseen such devices and were busily working on them. Now with the Kindle, the iPad and numerous other ereaders, that future is pretty much here.

A few years back, when ebooks first started to become commercially available, I wrote an article on what I saw as a misalignment between ebook price and the customer perceived value, and how it was damaging sales. Unfortunately, I'm writing on many of the same points today.


First of all, I have to say that I'm a big fan of ebooks. I absolutely love the benefit of being able to carry a book with me even when I'm in a suit and travelling light, and I love the idea of having a library of books at hand. Whilst I don't believe print will ever die, I do believe ebooks are going to eat progressively larger slices of prints tasty lunch.

But - and this is a big but - there are some real value proposition issues to overcome.

Let's take a print book. I'm a sci-fi fan, so I buy the latest book in a store, for let's say $30. I read it, enjoy, and then I have several options. I can of course stick it on my shelf and keep it, but I can choose to sell it on eBay, sell it to a store, or trade it in. Equally, I can lend it to family and friends, I can give it to charity, and I can re gift it if I'm feeling particularly tight.

If I do decide to keep it, then I have a tangible benefit from doing so. My bookcase looks better, it's cover winks at me each morning to remind me that it's bought and paid for, and it helps me feel better about my collection.

Now, I appreciate that all of these are relatively minor benefits. If I sell the book I may only make $5 or $10 from the sale, and the inflation to my bookcase ego is marginal at best - but these are all real, tangible benefits.

With an ebook, my options are currently very limited. I can't resell it, and in most cases it is almost impossible to lend it out or hand it on, unless I also want to hand out my credit card details. I can't give it to charity or sit and admire it feeling all smug. In fact, it's usually the case that you read, and then delete.

The truth is, ebooks are inherently less valuable to me, as a consumer. And yet, in most cases you pay the same or similar price for an ebook, despite the fact that there are no printing or physical distribution costs involved. One ebook can be sold a million times with only minimal transaction costs involved, and yet it seems many ebooks are still being priced at close to printed book costs.


And once you've considered cost, you then have the experience issues to deal with.

If I want a printed book, I can walk into any local bookstore, and get what I want. I can go online, search for the book, buy it and receive it within a few days.

With ebooks, you have a minefield to walk through first. 

It starts with the technology - pick an ereader, device or program, but choose wisely - many only support a limited set of ebook formats. Once you have something to read on, you then need to find online providers who sell ebooks - and whilst this has become easier, finding good current ebooks on those sites can be problematic at best.

And even when you do find the book you want in ebook form, you may quickly come up against regional issues. Today I found two books by an author I love, and tried to buy them. Enticed to Ereader.com by a 5% off voucher I searched, found the books, selected them, added to them to the cart, went into the checkout, created an account, entered my credit card details, paid - 

and then saw an error message stating that there was a regional limitation on the books. Remove both of them and I could then happily proceed through the checkout empty handed, the site said...

For ebooks to really succeed, we need to get round these problems, and fast. We need a simple, clean user experience, from hunting to reading. And we need it at a fair and reasonable price.
 

Weak links and social leakage

This weekend I was reading a very interesting article in NewScientist about social networks and weak ties - those we know, but not as well as our inner circle of friends. A few interesting facts about weak ties: 

1. A significant proportion of us get our jobs from weak tie relationships
   (American Journal of Sociology, Vol 78, P1360)
2. Studies have shown that weak ties provide benefits to our health and happiness
3. Social networking tools have allowed the number of weak ties we maintain to explode - from a few dozen into the hundreds.
4. Cognitive capacity to manage weak ties and stronger social relationships may be limited to far less than the number of ties we can easily form
   (How Many Friends Does One Person Need?, Robin Dunbar)

So, weak ties are definitely useful to us, and are becoming easier and easier to build. Many of us are taking this to extremes, with Facebook and LinkedIn allowing us to build networks of hundreds, which in turn connect us within a degree or two to thousands.

But I'm not entirely convinced that weak ties are well supported on current social networking sites. On most we can have a public and private profile, and our contacts get to see the private one - but we don't yet seem to have Public, Private and 'Weak ties'. If I post photos to my profile for my family to see, then business contacts get to see them too.

More importantly though, there is the problem of social leakage. Yes, I know that sounds icky, but hear me out.

Social leakage is where you share information with your network, unaware of the fact that someone in your network is connected to someone you have explicitly excluded.

Recently I've had two cases of social leakage come to my attention. The first was a woman who discovered that a friend of hers was also friends with a friend of her ex husband. She was made uncomfortably aware of this when she discovered her ex husband had been looking at photos of her on a night out.

In another case, the daughter of a couple is friends with a school girl who is also friends with the boyfriend of the husband's ex wife. This allowed the ex wife and boyfriend to view photos of their family on a day out, and to read comments that were - in this context - embarrassing. 

As the number of weak ties we create grows, this problem is only going to get worse. You don't know who the friends of your weak ties friends will be, and as of right now we don't have tools sophisticated enough to deal with the potential social fallout. 

This is something we need to concentrate on, and soon.

NCSoft, Guild Wars and poor user experience

It always amazes me how businesses on the web can make such basic mistakes.

Take a store, an old-fashioned shop selling products - let's say, a computer game shop. It has nice display setups with all the latest games on display, lots of choices, and prices shown on each. You can make your choice, take your pick and pay for it.

If, by any chance, you have a problem or need to ask a question, there's a member of staff there somewhere. If you're lucky they're right there, if you're not then it might take you a few moments to hunt one down - but either way, you can find out what you need and make your choice, and take your game home within minutes.

This week I've been trying to purchase a copy of a game called Guild Wars, from the NCSoft website. I know the game can (in theory) be purchased from stores, but since it's pretty old it rarely puts in an appearance, so I decided to go straight to the people who make it and buy it from them.

A quick web hunt found their site, and allowed me to get started. There was a shop, which quickly showed me the game I wanted. I could click Buy, and I was away. I had to create an account - which always annoys the hell out of me - but apart from that, I reached the pay point within minutes. 

That's the point where it went wrong. 


I entered my credit card details, the site thought for a moment or two, then told me that it couldn't complete my purchase at this time. Specifically, it said "We're sorry, but we are unable to accept your order at this time. Please try again later or tomorrow. If you continue to have problems, you may wish to visit one of our retail partners."


Hmm, I thought. Maybe their website was having some kind of an issue. So, I tried again, only to get the same result. I tried a different card, just in case it was a credit card issue, but again saw the same message. Okay, I reasoned, it must be their site.

So I left it a day, then tried again. Again, the same message. I left it one more day, just in case, and again the same message. Right, so definitely the site going wrong, then.


Part of the problem here was the message. 'We are unable to accept your order at this time". What does that mean? Am I trying at the wrong time of day? From the wrong country? With the wrong card? 

Finally, I figured I'd contact them and let them know that their site was broken. And here's where the old fashioned shop wins out every time...


Of course, the site has no link to contact us - only to 'Support'. Click into the support area, and immediately you see a link telling you how to get in touch with support - which is good. But click on the link, and the first thing it offers you is a link to go back to the previous page. The second thing it tells you is that you need to register to get a support account. The third thing it tells you is that you need to complete an 'Ask a question' form - which, when you view it, asks for your username, question, product, department, your NCSoft account, game account (which I don't yet have) and operating system - all of which are mandatory.

Now, imagine you walk into a store, pick up a product, and go to pay. Only nobody will talk to you or take your money. The staff there completely ignore you, and point rudely to a sign instead. The sign says: 

"If you want to buy from our store or talk to our staff, then please complete this application form for an account to become a customer. Then, complete this second application form for an account to be a person-we-will-communicate-with. Then, wait a day or two, and one of our friendly staff will call you back. Maybe"

You'd probably walk straight out the door. Which is (in a virtual sense at least) exactly what I had to do, too. Well done, NCSoft!

Facebook - am I the only one who struggles?

It's time to admit the ugly truth. I just don't get Facebook. And with the rumour that Google Me is on the way to be the anti-Facebook, I'm finally feeling brave enough to say it!


I've been a Facebook user for some time now, maybe a year or two. In that time I've collected connections with a fair few friends, my children, and even some of their friends. I've managed to update my profile and upload photos, I've commented on other people's photos, and I've sent messages back and forth.


All of which makes me sound like a regular user of Facebook, right? Except, I've also managed to send one personal message to a wider audience by mistake, leave personal notes on a wall when I didn't mean to, and lose comments I'd made and be unable to find them.


I've had requests to take part in surveys, that I've abandoned due to applications wanting to install and requests to invite all of my friends to take part too. I appear to be following one person (a recruiter) who posts regular (and painful) updates on everything except their bowel movements - and can't for the life of me figure out how to stop receiving them.


I think for the most part it's a visual thing. Looking at the Facebook interface I see options everywhere, and order just doesn't seem to fall out of that chaos - at least for me.


I'm very interested in what Google might be up to with Google Me. Wave was more of a ripple, and Buzz little more than a whisper. Maybe Google Me will roar...





 

Virgin Mobile doesn't want my money...

UPDATE: Since writing this blog and posting about it on Twitter, Virgin Mobile have kindly contacted me and resolved my problem. Apparently, they do want my money after all..!



Recently I made a change of carrier, switching from Virgin Mobile to Telstra.

There were various reasons for this, ranging from poor reception at my house to some previous billing issues and poor customer support, although to be fair to Virgin Mobile the main reason was getting hold of a new HTC Desire from the local Telstra shop. Part of the switch involved paying my last bill and a couple of hundred extra dollars to close out my Virgin Mobile account.

Everything has gone relatively smoothly, but I've hit a small snag; it appears that Virgin Mobile doesn't want my money. Not only that, apparently they don't want to know about it, either...

It started just after I bought the Desire. I had just received a bill from Virgin, and thanks to their new 'we'll charge you more for a paper bill' policy it arrived online. So a few days after I'd switched I logged onto to the VM site, to pay that bill. When I tried to log in (using my pin and phone number) it rejected me, saying that these details were incorrect. I tried again, but quickly realised what had happened - since I'd ported my number to Telstra and in effect closed my account, I no longer had an account to log in to. Ah.

But I figured this wouldn't go on for long - now that the account was closed, Virgin would realise this and send me a final bill.

It arrived this morning. And, you guessed it, it's a virtual bill - which I can access, as soon as I go online and log into my account. Which, as you probably recall, I no longer have.

Hmm.

I tried again, just in case they'd reactivated the login to let me see the bill, but got the same result. Nope, I no longer exist. Okay. So, I thought maybe I'd respond to the email, and tell support I couldn't log in to SEE the bill, let alone pay it. But, as you'll probably have guessed if you've been through anything similar, it was a classic 'no-reply' address. 

With the mission impossible theme now running through my head I returned to the site, and selected the support option. Did I already have an account, it asked? Yes, I said. Okay, the site replies, log in. Great. So I tried saying no. It offered to let me 'create one' - not exactly the help I needed.

Giving up, I tried the contact us option. Sure enough there's an email link - which once again asks me to log into my non-existent account to email support about the non-existent bill I'd not like to pay.

As far as Virgin is concerned, I don't exist - and they have no interest in letting me pay the bill that my non-existent self has to pay. Apparently.

There's a 1300 number to ring, so I'll give that a shot - but on past experience, I'm foreseeing around an hour of waiting and a big headache.

If only these companies realised how difficult they are making it on their customers to actually hand over the cash they want to pay..!!!

Software running rings around us

I've had two less than fun experiences this week in terrible, horrendous user experience - mostly related to software, but also very closely tied in with horrible customer support.

The first was with Sony, in regards to a problem I've had on a brand new (and top of the line) laptop.

Case 1: Sony and the never ending update
The Sony Vaio Z I've been playing with the last few weeks is turning out to be a wonderful machine, and I'm loving it. But this week, I hit a small snag.

A piece of software called Vaio Update ran, and told me that there were several pieces of software needing updating. I hate bloatware along with the best of us, but for my sins I let it run, and they all updated. The dreaded 'you must now reboot' message came up, I killed my apps and rebooted, and the world was fine. 

For a minute or two, that is, until the update software ran again - and promptly told me that two of the updates needed to run again.

To cut a long story short, this ran a number of times before I twigged that it was updating the same two versions of the same two programs continuously, in a little vicious circle. It would download them, attempt to install them, give me errors that they were already installed, force a reboot, run, and then tell me they still needed updating.

From a software user experience point of view, there were two killer problems. First the program automatically ran on reboot, beginning the cycle over again, and second (and more importantly) it forced a reboot with no choice after it failed - despite the fact that nothing had even been installed. No buttons to cancel, no X to close the dialog, even force closing the popup causes windows problems.


I contacted Sony about this, and received the standard first line of support response - basically an automated email telling me to run the update - completely missing the point that it was the update itself that was going wrong.

It took several other emails and even a PDF of screen shots to get across that this wasn't a user error - and now several days have disappeared without a further word. Nice customer service.


Case 2: NewScientist and the unusable user name
I love reading NewScientist, and recently decided to subscribe. I did that, and then once it was paid for went onto their site to register, so I could read the online content.


The site asked me for my subscriber number and surname, then asked me to enter a username, password and email address.


When I entered a username I use for sites such as this, the site gave me an error, telling me the username was already in use - at which point I remembered I'd registered it previously. However when I went to log in, it told me the username had been cancelled. Ah.


So I created a new username, entered my email address, and tried again. This time, it told me that the email address I'd entered was connected to 'another' username, so I couldn't use it. Ah, indeed.


So, I tried using a different email address. This time I received a dire warning that this was a different email address to the one registered against my subscription, and that I should not proceed.


Catch 22 again - I couldn't use the username I wanted to, I couldn't revive or use the one I already had, I couldn't use the email address I normally use, and I couldn't use a new one without risking 'something' going wrong... And all I wanted to do was to read some content online...


I contacted NewScientist support, and explained what was going wrong. I told them that the original registration was still there, and could they maybe just attach it to my subscription, or remove it so I could re-register from scratch.


Again, the human element extended the terrible user experience. Again, I receive an email that is insulting in it's response and lack of match to my request for help. It simply tells me how to go online and register, with no attempt to even register the problems I'd listed.


To their credit within 24 hours of my response to this I had a second more personal response - although the words "We will contact the UK and see if we can get it set up at our end" were not exactly brimming with confidence...


Case 3: Google Adsense and Schrodinger's Cat
Ding ding, round three.


This week I finally got around to playing with the Google settings for my site, and needed to create an Adsense account to get a particular function working. I have Adwords and Gmail and several other Google functions, so loaded up the Adsense page and logged in.


It told me I didn't currently have an Adsense account, and asked me if I wanted to create one. I said yes, and away we went filling out forms for a page or two. All good so far.


Near the end of the process it asked if I had a Google account, and when I said yes it asked if I wanted to use that account for Adsense. Sure, I say, and enter my login details. It's at this point that the wheels well and truly fall off the cart.


This email address already has an Adsense account, the page tells me, and therefore I can't use it. 


So, yet again we have a nice software led vicious circle - I don't have an Adsense account and therefore need to create one, but can't create one because I already have one. Like Schrodinger's











User Experience is so often written off as a nice-to-have, or as an almost irrelevant layer on top of the 'key' technology and content, the true cost - in terms of lost business and reputation alone - can be huge. If only these (and other) companies measured that cost, they may do more to pick up and respond to their emails.

Does that webpage taste good?

I was busily reading NewScientist this week,catching up on a few issues I haven't had time to read in a while, when two articles in particular caught my eye.


The first was on teams who are playing with touch-screens to provide tactile feedback - basically, to make surfaces feel 'real' (Touchscreens touch back, 24th April).

One team was using vibrations to elicit feelings of hard surfaces, to trick the brain into feeling like the finger was moving onto and off a button. Another was using different vibration settings to transmit a sense of different surfaces, such as smooth, soft, rough, etc.

You can see another story relating to similar research on the BBC website.


As I read this, it struck me that this is a new dimension to interface design that is not yet being explored. In games and some well designed touch-screen apps the vibrate control is used to good effect, but generally at quite a macro level. For example in many shooting games, the vibrate is used to denote a hit, when a bullet lands on your player or something nearby blows up. This is quite an engaging approach that emotively connects us to the screen and the action.


But that's working at a macro level, connecting your entire character to an exterior event. Imagine being able to use your finger to 'feel' your way around a darkened room, feeling for where the door is - and touching the wet, slippery walls as you go. Or on a more practical level, imagine using a touch-screen virtual keyboard, that actually feels like it's projecting out of the glass.




The second article that fired my imagination was on the senses, a review of the book See What I'm Saying: The extraordinary powers of our five senses, by Lawrence D. Rosenblum and W.W. Norton. 

What I got from this brief review of the book was that there is a vastly more complex interrelationship between our senses than we'd normally think. For example:

1. Site and sound are closely interlinked; we effectively lip-read when we still understand people talking in a noisy room.
2. A group of blind mountain bikers navigate by clicking their tongues and listening to the reflected sounds, just like bats (and Johnny English, though his never seemed to work quite right).
3. Smells affect our perceptions of what we see and hear, even scents we cannot consciously detect shade our attitudes, judgements and behaviours.
4. Eating in the dark makes food taste bland.

This made me think, how often do we design to use these inter-relationships effectively? If sounds, scents and touch all impact on perceptions of what we see, then how many interfaces make the most of this?

In the book review, NewScientist explained that the relationship between colour, light and intensity are currently well understood by chefs, and used in top restaurants around the world. Excellent restaurants do make great use of light, texture and sound to bring the flavour of their food to the pinnacle they aim for - so shouldn't we do the same in design?

HTC Desire: Usability review

There are plenty of reviews for the HTC Desire out there, so this blog is going to focus on one area relatively close to my heart – user experience.

First though, a bit of background.

I’ve been looking for a new phone for a while now, and a way to replace my iPod Touch. Whilst the iPhone was the most immediate and obvious candidate, I avoided that choice for several reasons – not least of which was a desire not to simply follow the crowd. I also have to say I’ve been somewhat concerned of late over Apples approach to controlling content, usage and directions for its platforms.

So, I was looking for something else. My primary requirements were a good strong business phone (though server/corporate mail weren’t big issues for me personally), that could handle good music playing with the ability to watch a movie every now and then. I wanted an app market to ensure I could expand it a little, but apart from that I was relatively open to the options.

When I read reviews of the HTC Desire, I felt personally that this phone was going to hit all the marks. It had a good screen, music/video playing abilities, access to the Android marketplace, and initial reviews stated it was a well designed phone. When I finally got a chance to see one in action, I decided to buy and give it a shot.

I’ve had the phone for a little over two weeks now, and this review is going to focus on the user experience rather than the overall features of the device (which are covered more than adequately in other reviews here and here).

I’ve broken the review down into core areas as they apply to my own usage: moving around the phone, calling, entertainment, bells and whistles.

Moving around

Moving around the phone is actually one of the easiest experiences I’ve found on a phone in a long time. The Desire has seven home screens, which can be populated with any combination of shortcuts you wish to use – programs, content links or quick dials. A swipe moves you back and forth between them, and a pinch drops them as icons into a single screen so you can hop instantly between them.

There’s a Home hard button at the base of the phone, which returns you to the central home screen from anywhere, at any time. There’s also a Back key, which moves you back through any application or content page, one step at a time. This is extremely intuitive for moving within applications, for example backing out of menus/popups. There’s also a Menu hard button, which opens context-sensitive menus from most applications. This is slightly less intuitive (since you’re generally looking on-screen for your visual cues) but still works well.

Swiping up or down scrolls content, and this can move quite quickly and continues for a good length of time. This means that scrolling your programs takes generally just one downward swipe to scroll the entire list – negating the need to swipe again and again and again to keep it moving. There’s a central scroll button too, but this is slower and in my opinion a little less rewarding to use.

In general, this makes for an extremely fast and smooth method for moving into and out of applications on the phone. Everything can be reached within one or two clicks/swipes.

It doesn’t always work entirely smoothly though. At times you find yourself within an application, and pressing the Back button returns you to the Home screen, rather than moving back one screen within the application itself. This is a touch frustrating at times, particularly when navigating the calendar. Overall though, this is a minor gripe and doesn’t happen frequently enough to cause major pain.

SCORE: 9/10

Calling

The basic interface for making and receiving calls on the HTC Desire is good. A soft key appears on-screen for all home screens, that launches a dialler with a numeric pad. Type the first few numbers or the numbers corresponding to a name, and a shortlist of options appear. Click one and it rings. Or you can enter the number and it dials.

But all is not quite as rosy as it was with the general navigation – there’s a few gotcha’s here, waiting to catch you out.

The first issue I’ve found relates to contacts with multiple numbers. Many of my contacts have mobile, work and home number, which is not exactly out of the blue. The Desire allows you to create and store multiple fields of data for each contact, so this in itself isn’t an issue, until you try and dial.

The name appears in the matched list with one of the numbers showing, but not the others. Touch the contact and it will dial this number. Touch and hold, and it provides a context sensitive option allowing you to view or edit the contact, etc. Sliding left and right doesn’t work, this gets registered as a touch and starts dialling.

This meant it might automatically dial someone’s mobile, but wouldn’t give you the option of ringing them at work. For the first week I was reduced to going to People (instead of the phone dialler), finding and viewing the contact, and then selecting to manually dial their number from that screen – a complete pain.

It took me quite some time to realise that you needed to use the touch scroll button to move left or right through the different numbers – a far from intuitive option, since your finger is already on the touch screen scrolling through the matched numbers.

The second problem took me almost as long to solve, and I’m still not convinced I have it.

On most phones you can add a contact to a speed dial – though to be fair, this isn’t always easy to find (Sony Ericsson, you know I’m looking at you!)

I know there are speed dial options on the HTC Desire as pressing and holding 1 in the dialler launches a call to voicemail, but for the life of me I can’t find how to assign one. I’ve managed to find a way round this, by dropping shortcuts to common numbers on one of the home screens I’ve kept aside just for this purpose – but it’s not ideal.

SCORE: 7/10

Entertainment

One of the things I loved about my iPod was that it took complete control, and helped me manage my content.

But that’s also one of the things I disliked about it too. Whilst helping you out is one thing, barring you from using your own things goes a little too far.

The HTC Desire makes it extremely simple to place content onto your phone. With games there is the Android market, which offers a nice (though not exactly overwhelming) level of games to trial and download. Some of those I’ve tried so far are of a great level, and easily good enough to keep me busy when I fancy a challenge. Downloading and managing them is easy to do, and similar in approach to the iTunes store.

With music, photos and videos, the phone appears on your PC as an extra drive. You simply drag/drop the files you want onto the phone. Whilst this lacks the benefit of an automatic sync, it does provide all the freedom you could want in terms of what you copy and what format they use.

Playing music and reviewing photos are both pretty simple affairs, and all of the controls and options you’d expect are there. The same is also true for playing movies, although for some bizarre reason movies appear beneath the Photos application – if I hadn’t read that in a review, I’m not entirely sure I’d have found them.

Overall, the entertainment experience is a positive one.

 SCORE: 9/10

Bells and whistles

I use this category to describe features the device offers that go above and beyond what you might expect; the little touches that help push a useful device into an irreplaceable one.

This is a category where the HTC Desire is beginning to shine – at least based on my own experience.

When the phone rings, pick it up and the tune slowly fades out. If you have a ringtone set and you walk into a meeting, place the phone face down and it automatically switches to vibrate only mode.

Switch the phone on, and if it’s a cloudy day you’ll see clouds slowly move across the screen. Receive new emails or messages, and you’ll see notification appear at the top of the screen. Click and drag down, and a notification area appears telling you everything you’ve missed. Clear that, and they all disappear.

Type on the keyboard, and the phone will pick up the keys it thinks you meant to press, rather than those you actually hit. Nine times out of ten it guesses the right words, which is an excellent tool on a touch phone.

SCORE: 9/10

Overall, this is a phone that’s definitely worth checking out for user experience.

It’s not a complete winner, though. There are definitely some rough edges that are a little too hard to remove or can’t be taken off at all, and the phone makes hard work of a couple of basics that shouldn’t need it. But taken as a whole, it’s a great example of moving user experience forward without simply copying the competition.

Usability and movie piracy

A few weeks back I received a circular 'joke' email, with a top ten list.

In this case, it was the top ten reasons why pirated movies are better than legal copies. I read it, thought it was funny and pretty close to the bone, deleted it, and moved on.

Last night I hired a movie from my local store, sat down to watch it, and found myself thinking of that email again.

Let's start with a basic rule of usability though. Imagine this. Imagine a website that charges you for a service. You pay to join, and then you can watch movies. I want you to imagine that this is what happens to you:

1.  You decide to join, as you want to watch this movie. You pay your money over.
2. Once you've done this, the site shows you a message, which tells you how wrong it would have been of you NOT to pay. Okay, well, you paid, so you ignore that. This goes on for a minute or two, and you can't get round it.
3. Following this you see another message, telling you that it's illegal to not pay for this website if you want to watch the movie. Again, you can't skip this. 
4. Next, the site shows you a series of ads for OTHER websites. These go on for even longer, and again you can't skip or change what's shown to you. You just have to wait it out. Again.
5. Now you're shown a long ad for a new type of media player, which is supposedly superior to the media player you're using on this site (and therefore completely irrelevant, but hey). And yes, you guessed it, you can't skip it. Several more minutes drag by.
6. Finally, after what seems like an eternity and no control over the process, you get to see the start menu, and can watch the movie you wanted to see.
7. At the end of the movie, you see - yet again - a message telling you that it's illegal to not pay to watch this movie on this website, in your country. You can't skip this or go back to the home page. But that's not the worst part - oh no.... the worst part is, this is followed by another message, explaining that if you happen to be Spanish and living in Spain, it would also be illegal. Which is followed by another, saying if you happened to live in France, it would still be illegal. And on, and on, and on.... For long, long minutes you're stuck, your browser won't respond and you can do nothing but watch a seamingly endless stream of foreign messages scroll across your screen, each one giving you plenty of time to get angry over your lack of control.
8. Finally, after all this, you discover something. You discover that if you'd decided not to pay for this website, then you could have skipped all of those messages in a heartbeat. 

The question is, how would that make you feel?


The answer is pretty obvious; if that happened to us on the web we'd rebel. We'd refuse to pay, since the experience as a paying customer would suck big time in comparison to getting it for free.




It's not a direct analogue, of course, and I'm certainly not advocating piracy - I believe strongly in digital rights. But the point here is, look at the user experience we're offering to the paying customer, as opposed to the person who decides to take the pirate route. In effect these companies are penalising us for making the right choice, by treating us as sheep who can be penned up and forced through indoctrination time and time again, despite the fact that we made the right choice in the first place. Whereas those who don't get to pick a streamlined experience for themselves.


There is always a cost to poor user experience, and this case it's entirely possible that the cost is an increase in use of pirated material.

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Blended families and usability

Okay, so they don't normally go well together in a sentence. But stick with me.

I'm in a blended family - two single parents with kids get together, they fall in love, and they get hitched. Two halves get beautifully blended together. Right?

Well, sometimes. In reality it can be more of a chunky family, with some parts wonderfully pureed, and other lumps stubbornly refusing to meet in the middle. There have been good days and bad days, and in thinking it over and trying to make things work, I (as a usability consultant) inevitably ended up applying my usability knowledge to the problem. And that's the subject of this blog entry - the top five usability rules that worked, when applied to blended families.

So, here they are:

1. Set the strategic direction
When you design an interface or product, the golden rule is to set a strategic direction. You need to know what you want from it, where it's going, who it's going to satisfy. A new web service can't possibly satisfy everyone and it can't be all things to all people; so you need a strategy. You define where you want to be 12 months from now, how your product is going to work, how it is going to look.

The same thing is true of a blended family. You sit down (as a couple, not as a family) and you set a strategy for what you want. How your family is going to work, how it is going to look. In effect, you paint a picture of how things will look 12, 24 months from now. Once you know that you both agree on where you're going, you can get there without fighting about the goal - and you can measure how you're going along the way.

2. Communicate the design
Interface communication is a core component of usability. A usable system communicates to the user, telling them what can be done, how it can be done and what shouldn't be done. In effect, it tells the user everything they should need to know to use it.

Again, this is true of a family. We sat down as a family and created a family charter - a rule book of how things would work. Different families grow up with different rules and expectations, and when you throw them together this can cause huge issues. So we worked it all out, documented it and printed it out. It means the family has a clear communication tool on what can be done, what can't be done, and what the consequences are.

3. Provide clear feedback
Another usability rule is to provide clear feedback. You should tell the user where they are, where they came from, where they can go, and what is happening right now. If something goes wrong, the system should tell them why it went wrong, how to correct it and what their options are. This should be individual and unique to the user, not generic in nature.

In a blended family, this means communication one-on-one. We decided to hold regular feedback sessions with the children, to let them know where they stand and how they are going. They get feedback on what they're doing right, and anything they might be doing wrong. If they are doing something wrong, they are shown how they can correct that and what their options might be. Solutions are tailored to the child, and aren't generic in nature.

4. Poll the audience
Whilst individual feedback and observation provides invaluable insight, you need to know what all of the user audience needs and how they feel in order to succeed. Successful products and sites poll their users regularly in various forms, or study their behaviours en mass (through analytics tools) to understand how they might need to change. It's often key that information taken from these sources changes the strategy overall; what you set out to do at the start is not always what everyone needs, and you have to be flexible.

With the family the same is true - what children won't say individually, they are often brave enough to tackle en Mass. We decided to hold regular tribal councils (as dumb as that sounds!) and to give everyone a chance to speak. This has almost always turned up tweaks and changes to the overall direction, and helps you to measure how close you're getting to success.

5. Test, test and test again
Usability testing is a vital component of design. If you design and launch, then you're taking a huge risk. You're likely to face increased costs and effort in tweaking and changing later on, and at worst you can face total disaster if you completely missed the mark. You need to be able to test out ideas and design in a safe environment, without risking that complete failure. If it works, you keep it, if it fails there's no harm done.

Again, I found this to be true with families. As parents a blended family offers plenty of fertile ground for argument and issues to arise, particularly when it comes to treatment of the children. You have a tendency to want to avoid problems, so you keep quiet and hold on to your grudges until they boil over. That sensitivity makes it hard to raise big subjects without causing more conflict. It's the same as making major changes to a website without testing it first - if you throw the statement/idea out there and the audience hate it, it's kind of difficult to withdraw and undo the damage afterwards.

In our family we came up with the idea of the sandbox - basically a play area for ideas, a test bed. It's a simple idea that has proved extremely useful, basically a place where ideas and issues can be aired freely, without them being seen as 'going live'. If the idea floats then it can be brought into the family, if it doesn't then it can be dismantled before it even hits the stormy seas.

Testing can also be brought into family meetings/councils, again it's a safe test bed to trial the ideas on a wider basis without fully launching them.



Blended families are hard work, there's no doubt. They're also incredibly rewarding if you can make them work. I hope these points prove useful for someone out there..!