Consistent automation in restrooms

I was watching a comedian on The Tonight Show the other night and he made an interesting observation about automation in restrooms (toilets or whatever they call it in your neck of the woods). He spoke about how he hated it when one part of the restroom was automated but the other was not, which caused him to do things that made him look stupid.

It was a funny observation because most of us have probably encountered places like these, for instance when the flush is automated and so is the soap dispenser, but the tap can only be operated by hand. Economics probably dictates to designers whether they can use full automation or partial automation and you can’t fault them for that decision.

But, the problem occurs when you have inconsistency because of not providing visual cues or clear enough labels or affordances. The inconsistency tends to confuse users who make “mistakes”.

The mistake is in not providing the right information to the users so that they can use the product in the way that it was intended to be used by the designer. And that is certainly not the user’s mistake.

Read Full Post »

Not temporarily avbl.

I was trying to find out about the availability of some train tickets on the Indian Railways website. After selecting the date and then the train, I clicked the button to check the availability and the next page had a surprise for me, which said:

Following ERROR was encountered in your Query Processing

Network links for this site are not temporarily avbl.

Please Try Again

I tried again but all I did was to manage to get the same message. The message is mildly amusing and is not very useful for the user because there’s no way to report the message or to recover from it. And, people who don’t know developer-speak will probably wonder what they did wrong.

It’s impossible not to have bugs in applications but it is possible to make error messages less cryptic. In this specific example, the use of the phrase ‘Query Processing’ would mean nothing to people who don’t know about databases and queries. (Even if you do know about databases and queries, the message may stump you but that’s another matter.)

I bet that if developers put some thought into it, they could make error messages useful to both the user and other developers. If language isn’t a developer’s strength, then find a technical writer or someone else who can understand the technical mumbo jumbo and make error messages better. I think users will appreciate error messages that are helpful rather than hopeless. Hey, some well-written error messages can even make you smile.

Pls. try agn. Please try again.

Read Full Post »

Check your slide projector before your talk

A couple of years ago I was invited to give a presentation at a job fair. The sponsors of the fair were allowed to make presentations about their companies. Everyone’s presentation tool of choice was PowerPoint.

One of the presenters, a senior technical writer, presented slides with too much information on each slide. If that wasn’t bad enough, some fonts were so small, they couldn’t be seen by the audience. She might as well have presented without the slides.

If this were an exception, I’d let it slide (unintended pun) but in my experience most people who are presenting don’t check how their slides appear when they are projected on a screen. If you use a projector, then sometimes fonts are distorted, sometimes colours can change, so it’s best to check in advance.

It can save you and your audience a lot of heartache.

Read Full Post »

A nicely done confirmation message

I was doing some shuffling, so I unsubscribed from a newsletter and resubscribed on their website. (Writer’s Weekly for all the cats who are curious.) After I entered my email address and pressed Enter, I was taken to the next page, where I encountered this message:

Thanks for subscribing to the newsletter.

Shortly you’ll get an confirmation email. It has the subject:

Your WritersWeekly.com Subscription Confirmation

and it will say it is from:

“WritersWeekly and Booklocker” (–email removed–)

In it is a link. Click on that link and you’ll be added to the list.

With the rise of spam filters, lots of legitimate email gets lost. Please keep an eye out for the confirmation email. It should arrive within a few minutes.

If you don’t get it within a few minutes, email (–email removed–) and asked to be added manually.

Perhaps this should not be a surprise because Writer’s Weekly is one of the finest sites for freelance writers and you’d expect them to write well.

Still it warms the cockles of my heart to see a message like this. I particularly like the bit about spam filters. You see, not all writers are tech-savvy, so pointing this out in a message is helpful, especially since the site’s newsletter has loads of subscribers. The tech-savvy ones can even ignore the message, they’ll know what to do anyway.

Simple, elegant, and clear–what all good design should be.

Read Full Post »

What’s the difference between soccer, futbol, and futsal?

I follow the English Premier League religiously and in our part of the world, ESPN and Star Sports are the channels of choice. They do a good job of keeping the football (soccer) fans in this part of the world happy.

If you’re like me and want to know the TV schedules ahead of time, so you can plan your weekend (pathetic I know), you have to click the TV Times link on the site. Then, select the country and the channel but when you come to the sport, it gets a little tricky. (Click on the thumbnail below to see what I mean).

If you want to watch football (which is what it’s called in this part of the world), you have to pick one of three options–soccer, soccer/futbol, and soccer/futsal. (There is an option called Football as well but I think that’s for the American football (NFL) games that ESPN telecasts.)

The correct option in this case (drum roll please) is door no. 2: soccer/futbol, something that I’ve found out by trial and error. It’s also something that I occasionally forget because it’s not so intuitive now is it?

Since ESPN-Star is a website primarily for the Asian region, maybe a bit of localisation would’ve helped. Using football to mean the kind of football played around here and American football to mean the kind of football played in the US would’ve been one way to avoid confusion.

And, if the terminology was consistent elsewhere on the ESPN-Star site, people would’ve gotten the message. It’s not. The menu bar near the top half of the page has an entry called Football. A lack of consistency, clarity, and unnecessary confusion means that the user will be unhappy.

These are problems that can be easily detected using simple usability tests. For websites which attract thousands of users it makes sense to do these tests, so you have to wonder why they’re not conducted.

Sometimes the ways of the developers and designers are mysterious to us common folks.

— Update: 30-Jan-2007 —

I was switching channels on TV today and came across a futsal match. It’s basically an indoor version of the regular football. You can learn more about it from Answers.com. I wonder why I didn’t check there earlier.

Read Full Post »

Designing with patients in mind

A physiotherapy clinic that I use recently changed its policy. It used to be that you could call up individual therapists and get appointments directly from them. A couple of weeks ago, the clinic’s think-tank decided that they wanted all appointments to be given out by the receptionists at their central office location.

The first time I had to get an appointment, it was phone hell. I dialled the number only to receive a message telling me that the phone was busy. Again and again. It took dogged determination over a couple of hours to get an appointment.

Later, I spoke to my therapist about why they did this. He told me that individual therapists were slacking off and giving appointments only when convenient (rather than during their work times) and the situation was getting tough for the clinic.

It was hugely convenient for me to call up the therapist and get an appointment. Now, calling up the centre means that I waste time because sometimes I don’t get through on the first attempt. Plus, they don’t have voice mail or any way to leave messages, so I’m stuck and have to try again. The alternative method of getting appointments, via the website, does not work because the contact form is broken.

As a customer, I am not bothered about the internal problems that the clinic faces. If it was a problem of keeping tabs on therapists, they could’ve asked therapists to call the central location and fill in the appointment sheets the day before. Or use any other method that didn’t affect the client so much.

By changing their process, they’ve made it inconvenient for me and their other clients. Even if they had a process in place where clients could leave messages, it would’ve been a workaround I would’ve been happy with. Now, I’m uncertain about how much time it’ll take me to get an appointment.

It seems like some companies make decisions without considering the impact those decisions could have on their customers. When you’re running a business, alienating your customers is not a smart thing to do. I’m not saying that no changes should be made, just that the changes should consider the impact on all the stakeholders. It’s customer service, not rocket science.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have call the clinic and get an appointment.

Read Full Post »

Reducing RSS subscription clutter

If you’re an RSS nut (i.e. you like to read your blogs in RSS readers) or if you’re into visiting blogs, you can’t help notice that most people offer RSS feeds to their blogs.

You would’ve also noticed that some sites have about a gazillion buttons allowing you to subscribe to their blog using your favourite RSS reader. One or two buttons, I can live with, but some blogs go button-crazy and create that enemy of all websites–clutter.

Enter Seth Godin, who does it differently. (I’ve not seen this used elsewhere but that may just mean that I’m an RSS nut.) Godin has two buttons under his RSS Feeds section and they both take you to a site called Add This. (See the screenshot below.)

I think it’s worth the extra mouse-click to reduce clutter, speed up website loading times, especially on pages which already have loads of images or on computers with slow Internet connections. So, if you’re one of those people who uses multiple images, consider using the Add This Widget. It’s elegant, it’s simple, and it reduces clutter.

And, it could be a way to achieve website Shangri-la.

Read Full Post »