And you still think usability doesn’t matter?

After reading this article — The $300 Million Button — all I can say is, Wow.

It’s hard to imagine a form that could be simpler: two fields, two buttons, and one link. Yet, it turns out this form was preventing customers from purchasing products from a major e-commerce site, to the tune of $300,000,000 a year. What was even worse: the designers of the site had no clue there was even a problem.

The form was simple. The fields were Email Address and Password. The buttons were Login and Register. The link was Forgot Password. It was the login form for the site. It’s a form users encounter all the time. How could they have problems with it?

You can read the full article here.

The folks at 37 signals also tell us how a simple change helped them reduce chargebacks on credit cards by 30%.

Seriously. Usability. Like right now.

(Via the always interesting Jason Kottke)

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Why post-its still rule

Why Computers Can’t Kill Post-Its is a really interesting article by Lee Gomes, based on a study by MIT, on why people tend to use the low-tech post-its over other high-tech alternatives.

“…one volunteer subject “would write notes on Post-its and stick them to his cellular phone to transfer into Outlook later rather than enter the data directly into his smart phone, even though the phone supported note synchronization.

When asked why not enter the note digitally in the first place, he responded, ‘Starting in Outlook forces me to make a type assignment, assign a category, set a deadline, and more; that takes too much work!’

The article shows that usability and simplicity has an important role to play in technology. Obviously, there’s only so much you can do with low-tech solutions (post-its, notebooks), and you can do much more with advanced technology, but sometimes the lack of usability or having unnecessary complexity can be a stumbling block to users.

(Here’s the article link again)

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A well-designed shopping trolley

The Spar supermarket, located in the Oasis mall in Bangalore, has a really nice trolley that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. It’s red, is made of plastic, and has a sleek shape. In its skeletal form, the trolley has no baskets but just two “receptacles” (for lack of a better word) for shopping baskets.

You can “fit” two shopping baskets onto the skeleton to make it a trolley; one slides in near the bottom of the trolley and the other is “fixed” at the top of the trolley through two small supports that holes in the basket slide into. The shape of the trolley indicates how you should position the basket at the bottom of the trolley’s skeleton.

The resulting trolley is light and moves smoothly–you can even move it with one hand. (I wonder if the designers figured that some parents may have kids tagging along and might have only one hand free.) The trolley also does not take up as much space as a regular trolley which is a good thing in supermarkets, especially on weekends. The trolley skeletons also stack together nicely and don’t occupy a lot of space.

The amount of stuff you can carry in the trolley is limited, of course, to two baskets, so people doing tons of shopping may find that restrictive. I didn’t. The only negative about this trolley is that sometimes it’s veers a bit off-course when you’re doing the one-hand controlling–not a major issue but an irritant nonetheless.

After using heavy, metal trolleys in supermarkets, some of which just refuse to go in the direction you want them to, this trolley is a welcome change. I don’t know who designed the trolley but the first time I saw it, I was reminded of IDEO and its trolley design story. The trolley in Spar looks quite different but IDEO’s designs are not a bad standard to aspire to anyway.

If you get a chance to go to the Oasis mall and like seeing good designs, check out the trolley at Spar. And while you’re there, you can even shop for groceries or something.

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Signing at the back of credit cards

When a bank sends you a new credit card or debit card, they ask you to sign at the back of the card to avoid misuse. (The efficacy of this precaution in avoiding misuse is debatable but that’s another topic.) If you turn the back of the card, you’re presented with a narrow strip of paper on which you’re supposed to put your signature.

In my experience, the strip of paper is too narrow and is almost always glossy or slippery. By the latter, I mean that the pen slides across and doesn’t give you much purchase. So, your signature ends up not looking like your signature which defeats the purpose of signing the card. Also, since the strip is narrow, you can end up writing on the card’s plastic or if you have a flourishing signature, on the magnetic strip–not a good thing either way.

I realize that there are space constraints which prevent the card companies from giving us more space. They can, however, give us a different kind of paper to sign on, one which will give us better pen-purchase.

Too bad I don’t have that kind of paper with the card I just received.

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World Usability Day in Bangalore

For those of you in Bangalore with an interest in usability, you might want to check out the usability day conference scheduled for November 29 2008. You can get all the details of the conference and register at the WUD Bangalore wiki page.

Important details:

Venue: Yahoo! Campus, Embassy Golf Links, Inner Ring Road (http://bangalore.yahoo.com)
Date: 29th November, 2008
Time: 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

There’s no mention of a fee being charged for attendees, so I guess that it’s free. Best to check with one of the organizers if you are planning to attend.

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Take survey on why designers fail

Scott Berkun is conducting a survey titled Why designers fail and is looking for inputs from designers and well as non-designers.

Here are some details from the post:

• The survey is open to designers and non-designers.
• Goal is to better understand both causes and perception of causes of failure.
• Survey has 7 questions, all multiple choice, and should take less than 5 minutes
• You can be anonymous, but it you want a shot at prizes, put in your email.

I just finished the survey and it doesn’t take too long, so if you have a few minutes to spare, go ahead and take the survey.

The survey closes on Friday, end of day, US time. Oh, and there are prizes.

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As long as the message gets across

This was too good to pass up.

Please should be clearer.

The message (for the reset password page) was supposed to let you know that the password could only have alphanumeric characters, characters from a to z (upper or lowercase) or 0 to 9. For non-techie people, the term alphanumeric wouldn’t ring too many bells, so the message should’ve explained the term.

The security of a password which allows only alphanumeric characters is a whole other can of night crawlers.

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