Before I begin, I must note that I hope against hope that the above design NOT be copied by any sane contractor. Implementing such a scenario would be wrong on so many levels.

Back to the importance of context.  Let us assume that an artistic fellow wanted to execute the above bathroom layout. Where would you recommend that he/she place the above design?

1. Gas station
2. Mall
3. Your local pub

#1 and #2 would be acceptable answers. #3 would be plain crazy.

Why would option 3 be utterly unacceptable? Because drunk mates would be using it on a regular basis. Needless to say, either one - the sink or the urinal - would be considered as toxic areas within 2 days (or 2 hours if it’s happy hour).  If, however, relatively sober people would use it then its usability would increase a wee bit.

So when you design a product or service, please do take into account the context of the people - drunk or not - who will be using your product. Your decision may lead to a more hygenic experience for the rest of the world.

Photo credit: There, I Fixed It

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.

Summary:

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.

Here’s a summary of what’s raving about DiGi prepaid:

1. Knowledgeable, friendly frontliners

It was quite obvious that we were foreigners trying to buy a local SIM. The 2 guys in the booth were kind enough to activate the SIM for us and inform us about the basic things we need to know – such as minimum top-up, load expiration, balance inquiry, etc.

One girl pal didn’t know if her mobile phone was locked to our local telco, and the guys volunteered to check the phone settings and configured the phone. They were very knowledgeable not just about DiGi’s services, but about handsets as well.

2. Selection of mobile number

On the counter of the DiGi booth, there was a list of prepaid numbers that customers can choose. This allowed customers to choose their desired prepaid mobile numbers that are still available – making them feel that they have user control and freedom.

3. Timely and relevant user feedback

I got pushed SMS for how much top-up I got left, for the calls I missed and for how long the last call I made was. What’s good about it was that the messages were pushed to me every time a specific transaction ends. The network also detected that I was already on roaming and pushed me the contact numbers of the Malaysian embassy.

Now that’s what I call going the extra mile for customers!

4. Free balance inquiry

When customers choose a prepaid SIM, it means value-for-money is important to them. Needless to say, balance inquiry through a phone call should be free for prepaid subscribers. I’m glad to discover that balance inquiry in DiGi was still free of charge. Meanwhile, telcos in the Philippines started charging for it several years back.

5. Automatic roaming

This impressed me the most. Upon landing back at the NAIA, I turned both my phones on. The mobile phone with the DiGi prepaid SIM immediately searched for a network. I was pleasantly surprised that I was on automatic roaming. Even CSL Hong Kong didn’t have automatic roaming when I was using their SIM 2-3 years ago.

My overall experience on DiGi prepaid was remarkably impressive. It abided by the most basic tenet in providing a satisfying customer experience: reward, never punish users when consuming your service.

Most importantly, DiGi made me feel that I was valued as a prepaid client – giving me ample user feedback and automating the most important tasks and features for me as a user.

DiGi prepaid definitely got it.

Disclaimer: Author is not connected to DiGi Malaysia. The article is an objective and unpaid review of their prepaid service.

1. It runs via Adobe Air. This means that I can use it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. As a zealous supporter of Linux, I am thrilled to know that this wireframing software runs on my favorite operating system.
2. The price is quite reasonable. For just US$ 79, you can have Balsamiq running on your desktop.
3. Community developed interface components are available online. Mockups To Go offers Balsamiq users a place to download additional design patterns that can be used for various projects. The Vote To Promote is one of my personal favorites.
4. There are a lot of predefined interface components. Balsamiq offers a ton of website components, making the task of developing layouts so much quicker.

Although a very useful tool, Balsamiq does have some negative points:

1. It tends to be a memory hog. I’m not sure if it’s just the complexity of the interface I’m designing or if it’s because of Adobe Air, but I experience a noticeable slow down in Balsamiq if I 3 wireframe projects open at the same time.
2. I cannot adjust some aspects of the predefined interface components. I have tried to render the Horizontal Rule widget in white instead of black numerous times, but Balsamiq does not allow changing the color of items with lines.

Overall, I am a fan of Balsamiq. It is a tool that helps me quickly develop a number of web interfaces. The sketch-like rendering of designs is a plus because it conveys the message that a wireframe is just a “rough sketch” of the final design. This software is something that I definitely recommend to usability practitioners.

Sample interface components available in Balsamiq:

Talk Usability wireframe made with Balsamiq

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.

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.

As Barber puts it, “as the Web becomes easier to use, people are becoming less tolerant of bad interaction design and will often seek out an alternative service if it offers a better experience, depending on how much they have invested in your site.”

This behavior might well be one of the explanations as to why a lot of SNS fanatics have migrated from Friendster to Facebook. Then again, this merits another blog topic. =)

User login experience, almost all the time, is influenced by a host of other factors. These factors include:

1. Security
2. Legal policies
3. Internal business processes
4. Existing or previous user login experience
5. Integration to legacy systems and platforms
6. User platforms and environments

On the vantage point of usability, the design principles for federated login from Google Security’s Eric Sachs also holds true as the basis for creating usability guidelines for user login:

• Design for usability
• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Capitalize on the existing mental model of users on login and registration.
• Design for widespread adoption. Design for all kinds of users – from the beginners to early adopters, from those who know how to use OpenID and to those who are still not aware of it.

At the end of the day, despite all the other factors to be considered in designing the login user experience, what matters most is that the experience puts the users at its forefront.

The login user experience should be natural, or at least close to users’ mental models and what they have been accustomed to.

* Image courtesy of LiVEJOURNAL.

]]> http://talkusability.com/reviews/making-user-login-more-usable/feed/ http://talkusability.com/musings/making-things-usable-a-usability-primer/ http://talkusability.com/musings/making-things-usable-a-usability-primer/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:16:09 +0000 April Cabello http://talkusability.com/?p=128 Let 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.”

From this definition, usability is measured by the following components:

1. Effectiveness – if users can achieve specific goals in a product with accuracy and completeness;
2. Efficiency – the amount of effort that the user needs to exert in order to achieve the goals in a product; and
3. Satisfaction – “the feeling that comes when a need or desire is fulfilled.”
   

For Jakob Nielsen, usability is defined as a “quality attribute” which measures how easy to use a user interface is. It is also a set of methods for improving ease-of-use in product development.

Expanding the components above, Nielsen defined usability with five (5) components, which I personally call LEMES:

1. Learnability – the degree of ease or difficulty that users experience in fulfilling the basic tasks in a product during the first time they encounter it;
2. Efficiency – the speed to which users perform the tasks once they have learned the design of the service;
3. Memorability – how easy it is for users to remember how to use the service after not using it for a period of time;
4. Errors – the number of errors users make and how they can recover from the errors when using the service;
5. Satisfaction – if the product is pleasant and/or fun to use.
   

Simply put, usability ensures that a product or service is easy to use.

No matter the jargon, usability puts users at the forefront of design. Usability makes sure that the design process is user-centered and that the product or service resulting from the design is useful, usable and relevant to the intended users.

I hope this sheds a little bit of light on what usability is all about. Perhaps, I will encounter less puzzled looks this time around.

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.

In my opinion, the iPhone does not fit well in the Philippine context. This is largely due to the following reasons:

• The predictive dictionary cannot be turned off. In the Philippines, we often use abbreviate words (text speak as they say) or Filipino when we text. The dictionary annoyingly suggests (and often times automatically inputs) words that I do not intend to use. I tried sending a couple of messages to my friends. Almost all of them replied asking what I meant by the cryptic messages they received.
• No tactile feedback. In a country that communicates via SMS more than voice calls, quite a number of us are so used to texting that we can do it even if we are not looking at the screen. I believe that this is largely due to the fact that we can feel the layout of the phone and know what button we are pressing. The iPhone, on the other hand, does not provide the same experience because the screen that also serves as the keypad is flat and provides no tactile feedback. I wish Apple would have employed even simple haptic feedback, like what HTC did for the Touch Diamond.
• No SMS forwarding. The lack of a copy and paste capability - coupled with no SMS forwarding - makes resending those important messages (or even those funny jokes) extremely difficult.

On the positive side, the iPhone is still quite easy to use if all you want is a media player. The touch interface is so intuitive that my kid, who was around 16 months old when he played with the phone, could easily navigate the image gallery via the finger flick action. Also, the information architecture Apple deployed in this gadget was well built; I easily found the help items or phone settings I was looking for.

Overall, the iPhone is still a revolutionary device. However, it may take a while before Filipinos - citizens of the world’s texting capital - get used to the new “non-SMS-centric” user experience it brings.

To those who have used the iPhone, what is your feedback regarding its usability?

Image of iPhone is from Dan H’s Flickr page.

“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.”

- Jakob Nielsen

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.

Andoy and I eat and drink usability everyday.

That’s what we do. That’s how we live.

Our normal daily grind entails making sure products and services work for users…and that they work effectively.

On certain days, it’s a walk in the park. On most days, it can be complicated.

Quite the irony of things, isn’t it? For us to ensure that designs are easy to use, we oftentimes have to engage in the most grueling mental gymnastics.

Just to share with you the inception of this blog, it actually happened at a time that both Andoy and I were in the middle of a difficult and frustrating project. In the midst of ranting about how exasperating it can get to evangelize the usability practice, we wondered whether there are others out there like us who experience the same difficulties.

We know there are, but the intricacies of doing usability in a developing country are quite distinct and “special.” We are trying to overcome economic hurdles as well as debunking myths about usability being an expensive activity and a cause to slips in project timelines.

Right off the bat, there was a flash of light bulb in our heads.

Why not be more “out there” and find others like us (and I catch myself talking as if looking for extra-terrestrials)?

Thus, this blog was born.

We want to reach out to other usability practitioners, enthusiasts and engineers. We’d like to share insights and opinions about the practice.

We want to share our experiences as usability professionals – how it is to be in a profession like this in a developing country.

We want to speak the usability language in the vernacular. Yes, we promise to try to avoid geek-speak as much as we can.

Most important of all, we want to share the usability of everyday things.

So expect product reviews – both rants and raves. And no, we are not getting paid for it.

If you would like us to review a particular product or service, just let us know and we’ll see if we can look into it.

Let me close by welcoming our friends and colleagues to Talk Usability.

We’re looking forward to sharing this space with you – this is what we do and what we like doing.