Nick Dynice has a great rant about design and usability, and some of the points — like we should expect more — are rightfully so. Read on…
Edit:
A quote from a comment to the post: “The price customers pay for software and the level of usability they get with that software is inversely proportional.”
So true…
Flash is overused, but this is a good article on the best uses of Flash. Some of the points are pretty much, “duh.”
Look at the Caller ID on your phone, and don’t recognize the number? Caller Complaints is a community policed database of phone numbers that are basically telemarketers. The Digg style complaint rating is very, very cool.
I’m going to start reviewing the applications of MySpace I come across that I think have some value. Most of them have a serious fun factor — did you really think any of them were going to be actually useful — but there are a few of them that truly extend the profile.
Not all applications are about usefulness: Pokey is this great little animation of your own little pet on your home page. The dog fetches frisbies, digs up bones, needs to eat. There’s a definate fun factor here, and the animation is one of the best I have seen for a while.
Don’t pay enough attention, the dog barks. Go away for a long time, the dog sleeps. Feed the dog, and a bag of dog food appears (I hope they are charging Science Diet for showing the bag and logo). It’s cute, but I don’t think it has a ton of lasting power.
It’s easy and fun to use, but there are no viral functions to the application — it just seems people just add the application through the application gallery, and you would think they could use the dog to send messages.
There are no monetization applications for this now. We’ll see where it goes.
Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):
One of the forgotten facets of User Experience is that User Experience is everything on the website — the writing, the usability. It’s also if the site works from a functionality standpoint, and if there are system issues that don’t allow the user to complete a task, that’s a poor User Experience.
I ran into an issue at the Virgin America site — I tried to upgrade a seat from a premium to first class at check-in (which, by the way, is only a $50 upgrade on the day of the flight). My friends have been recommending the airline, so I decided to give it a try, because the price wasn’t much different than Alaska.
The issues were:
System issues like this are just as frustrating to the user as poor usability; users don’t know why things are going wrong, and sometimes assume that it’s something they did. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen during usability testing where a user would hit reset when hitting a javascript popup dialog.
Testing of a site is especially important if the site is an e-commerce site, like Virgin America, because it directly hits the bottom line. It’s all about ROI, baby.
The one usability issue I saw with the site was the color of the buttons (actually, the lack of color):
That continue button is really hard to spot. I would have made it dark gray (all the positives that color), to move the user along). The placement of the buttons was correct (positive to the right).
I do know that this site was designed by an agency (they were probably built the site also, and most agencies don’t have a lot of technical talent). Sometimes the look of a site should not take precidence over the usability of the site, especially when it comes to buttons.
On a good note, Virgin America honored the upgrade and did a wonderful job with their customer service, and the website had one important link — a mail to — so I could email the issue to their web team. I commend them for doing things the right way!
I wasn’t paying attention (big surprise), but this came across my RSS feed: SharePoint + SilverLight. Looks like a good read. The original post is over at the SharePoint Product Blog.
Well, not really. But this white paper covers a lot of the technology and it’s a bit techy for my taste, but you get a pretty good idea how to create a Social Networking feel to MOSS pages.
Stolen from a work blog. Go here.
I sit in a lot of pre-sales meetings, going over requirements. Clients always say the damndest things, and this was actually a discussion that I was having with a friend of my that just started a chiropractic business, also, on Tuesday.
The conversation went a little like this:
“Bob (I won’t hide the names of the innocent), you aren’t charging enough.”
“But I want my services to be affordable, and I want the right kind of clients.”
“What are the right kind of clients?”
“Clients that will value the services that I provide, I want them to show up to appointments, and work on their personal health.”
“But do you really care if they are about their personal health or not? Isn’t it more profitable to take clients with health insurance, instead of providing services to only those that don’t want to go through their insurance?”
“Yes, but those clients cost more because of the paperwork, and a lot of those clients don’t really appreciate the services. They just want the massage, and won’t take steps to help themselves.”
He’s taken a step to providing services for a particular market segment. He might not make as much money, but he’s carving out a niche in his market that he hopes will make him successful in the long term.
That’s a decision that we all have to make at some point — I’ve tried the “lower price, to build a relationship” route, and in my experience in the tech industry, it doesn’t work. My feeling is that those are the same people that will threaten to take their business to China or India or somewhere else, and they’ll never be happy, so I choose to stay in a high priced category. Because of that (whatever rate you are charging), the clients seem to value you more because they know they are paying a higher rate.
Whatever you do, all successful businesses pick their target audience — not trying to be everything to everyone. Apple does it. Microsoft does it. MySpace and Facebook do it. Why should you?
Thoughts, comments?
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact
