Why context is important
Written by Andoy MontielI recently saw the image below and was instantly reminded about the importance of context when creating usable products.
Fave Usability blogs
Written by April CabelloI want to share some Usability blogs that I frequent:
1. Experience Lab - I got this from Serco Usability. It talks about anything and everything pertaining to experience design.
2. Handheld Usability - is the legendary Scott Weiss’ blog that talks about usability and user experience design in the mobile space. I just love this guy - very witty and insightful. I’m a BIG fan and was honored to have met him this year. I wish he can update more frequently, though.
3. Usability Post - usability blog of Pixelshell’s Dmitry Fadeyev. He’s got a lot to say about tips on good Web and software design.
4. User Centered - talks about anything and everything usability - from design, to testing to product reviews - from iPhones to browsers. Entries are user-generated so I get to read a lot of usability practitioners’ take on the usability of everyday things.
I wish there are more blogs on usability and user experience design. I found several of them but there are only a few writers who make the effort to update regularly.
Keep us posted if you find good usability blogs so we can share them here.
DiGi Prepaid – When little things add up to create an excellent customer experience
Written by April CabelloSummary:
My overall experience on DiGi prepaid was remarkably impressive. DiGi prepaid abided by the most basic tenet in providing a satisfying customer experience: reward, never punish users when consuming your service.
Being in the mobile industry for more than 8 years now, it became a force of habit for me to buy a prepaid SIM of my destination country whenever I travel abroad. Although my international roaming is always active, I find it interesting to check the quality of telco services out in other parts of the globe.
For the Holy Week, my chosen stop was Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. I’m a beach person, so I wanted to check out how KK’s beaches compared to the Philippines. I also heard KK offers reasonably-priced water sports and activities that definitely appealed to me. White water rafting, parasailing and jetski were the must-dos for the trip.
On day 1, my girl friends and I went to a DiGi booth at the Centerpoint Mall after exchanging some local currencies. I must say, I’m quite impressed with my experience – from the purchase, actual use up to after sales support. Read more
Usability poll: What are your thoughts about opening links as new windows?
Written by Andoy MontielDoes opening links as new windows make the site less usable?
- It depends on the situation. (70.0%, 7 Votes)
- Only links to non-html pages (ex. PDFs) should be opened as new windows (30.0%, 3 Votes)
- Absolutely! One should never open links as a new window. (0.0%, 0 Votes)
- Of course not. In fact, opening new windows makes the experience more satisfying for the user. (0.0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 10
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Cooking up wireframes with Balsamiq
Written by Andoy Montiel
Before designing a website interface, usability engineers represent the base layout via a wireframe. I’ve tried various tools ranging from Visio to OpenOffice.org’s Draw, and have found Axure to be the most feature-rich item for our needs. Recently though I stumbled upon Balsamiq, an Adobe Air-based wireframing application that is a breeze to use.
Read more
It’s been a while
Written by April CabelloApologies for the stale content. A lot of work is a lame excuse for not updating the blog. Andoy and I will be posting very soon.
For a quick update: we are both attending a 4-day mobile usability workshop by the legendary Scott Weiss.
Exciting!
Not a lot of people can say they’ve actually met the experts in their field, and like I said in my previous post, I admittedly have a tendency to be a fan girl. Disclaimer though: just for the experts that I look up to in usability and HCI.
Lucky us, we’ve met several already.
We will resume regular programming very, very soon.
Making User Login More Usable
Written by April Cabello
In the advent of federated login and OpenID, not to mention the release of the usability study conducted by Yahoo on OpenID, it is a relief to stumble upon usability guidelines for enhancing the user login experience.
Gary Barber authored 11 guidelines on how to improve the user experience of login. Usability guidelines and standards make all our lives easier as these already provide how-tos and clearer directions on how to make things easier for the users.
Although user login may well be considered as just one of the many functions in a web site or a mobile service, it is the most crucial part of amost community-based and social networking services (SNS) that require user login and authentication in order to fully maximize features of a service. Read more
Making things usable: A Usability Primer
Written by April CabelloLet this be our own version of Usability 101. In the Asian region, usability is not a pervasive practice. User-centered design is in its early stages, which makes it difficult for other people to understand it. The concept seems complex that in fact, when friends or acquaintances ask me what I do for a living, I always get a puzzled look when I say I’m a usability professional.
To define usability, I always refer to ISO 9241-11 (Guidance for Usability):
“Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” Read more
iPhone in the Philippine context
Written by Andoy Montiel
I have gone through five mobile phone brands in a span of 9 years. In my experience, Nokia has produced some of the most easy to use handsets. And I guess I’m not the only who finds Nokia handsets quite usable.
Enter the iPhone 3G, a new mobile device that has catapulted itself to become the most popular phone in the US within a matter of months after its launch. When I got hold of an iPhone, I was quite giddy at the prospect of testing out it’s new interface. This was my first foray into touch-screen phones. And since Apple has often been hailed as one of usability’s best friends, I expected a lot from this 3G handset. Sadly though, my experience was quite disappointing. Read more
The epiphany that gave birth to this blog
Written by April Cabello
“On the Internet, it’s survival of the easiest…. Give users a good experience and they’re apt to turn into frequent and loyal customers. But … it’s easy to turn to another supplier in the face of even a minor hiccup. Only if a site is extremely easy to use will anybody bother staying around.”
I just had to quote Jakob Nielsen for my first write-up for Talk Usability.
Yes, make this the official declaration that I am a Jakob Nielsen fan, despite what his critics are saying. As a testament to becoming a fan girl (albeit a geek one), I had to stop Nielsen on his tracks during the Usability Week 2007 in Hong Kong to make him sign my Usability Inspection Methods book authored by him.
C’mon people – you just have to admit it. No matter how radical the guy is about usability, he still popularized and evangelized both profession and practice.
And that… is what we’d also like to do. Read more