PUBLIC MARKS from amyrussell with tag usability

This past weekend I was up on Howell Mountain in Napa, tasting the ultra tasty wines there and taking in the gorgeous views. On the way back to SF, we stopped at a Shell gas station. It took me a good 20 minutes to gas up. Why? Lousy user experience. Let me explain.

My cell is on East Coast time, my body on Central Time, and the conference on Pacific Time, so I just caught the tail end of this press gaggle. Interesting the questions you get from the mainstream journalists versus the technical bloggers. Bruce said a lot, even in the short time I was there, but here are the highlights:

My colleagues Matt Nolker and Shalom Sandalow have put together a nice little webinar entitled "This Won’t Hurt a Bit": Designing the Invisible Interface.. For those of us writing Web 2.0 applications, there are some key insights here, such as: "interacting with the software is not the primary goal or responsibility of the user." So when you use those nifty Ajax widgets, think about whether you are placing a usability burden on the user or are using the power of Ajax to make the interface disappear.

Adam Greenfield of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program gave a great keynote presentation at DUX07 on ubiquitous computing -- embedded devices that are wirelessly networked, imperceptible, mobile and post-gui. Devices that are not perceived as computers by the people who use them, but rather as a facet of their lives.

Data visualization was touched upon a number of times throughout the DUX07 conference. In David Pescovitz’ keynote address on Monday, he mentioned that since the 1980s we’ve seen three waves of technology: PC Computing, communicating, and sensing.

Too often, the overarching requirement we hear from clients is that the product must be simple to use. As designers, we nod our heads and agree that yes indeed, simplicity is a worthy goal for this project, without ever defining what is meant by simplicity.

In designing user interfaces, it's often the tiny details that can drive your users batty or earn their loyalty. Case in point: Apple's latest iTunes update. iTunes 7.4.2 received plenty of attention for wiping out the black market in iPhone ringtones. I was more interested, however, in a couple of subtle but long-overdue improvements in the iPod syncing interface:

Too often, usability testing is judged to be a “nice-to-have,” but dispensable within the time and budget constraints of a full design and development project.

Wireframes are a valuable tool in designing a site or application. They enable us to communicate both the layout and page content to fellow team members and business stakeholders and get their signoff. They’re essential because they force viewers to focus on the content, not the visual design, which means preliminary design meetings won’t get sidetracked into discussions on colors and fonts.

The growing partnership between user-centered design practices and the array of agile methodologies faces an impasse when it comes to usability testing. In a traditional waterfall approach, a formal usability assessment generally occurs close to release and is structured--and often perceived by clients--as a culminating Big Event. Consequently, the attempt to insert traditional usability testing events into the iterative agile process is viewed by developers as antithetical to their process.

The fundamental rationale that underlies the direct and observational techniques of user research is that a user’s actions speak louder than their words. As a matter of fact, as usability specialists we are trained to go beyond the surface of a comment and probe for the motivation that spurred the verbal reaction: if, for example, a user encounters an obstacle during a usability test, is the cause a design flaw or a unique characteristic of that individual? In my experience, many participants have an almost palpable desire to please the facilitator and avoid making “mistakes” during the assessment.

Similar to Amazon’s suggestive selling, e.g., “people who bought X also bought Y,” these sites group recommendations around a target book, band, or film. Liveplasma.com bills itself as a “discovery engine,” providing searches in multiple languages (English, French and German) as well as multiple English-speaking cultures (US, Canada, UK). The three English-language searches yield identical results; the distinction lies in the localized Amazon site that presents products associated with the search results.