If you need to provide instructions, you’ve mucked up

May 15, 2008 – 5:50 pm

Sometimes when something on a website or app is apparently hard to use, clients, developers and designers will suggest that we need to provide instructions or help. I would almost always argue that this is wrong. If you have to supply instructions, then the design is wrong.

A few months ago, I came across this situation in the toilets of Winchester’s funky new redesigned library (called a ‘discovery centre’). Apologies for the poor pic, but I don’t really like hanging around taking pictures in public toilets. Presumably what had happened was this: they fitted the toilets with funky minimalist stainless steel fittings only to find out that people were emerging from the toilets shaking their hands and complaining that there was no way to dry them.

Of course the solution was not to provide a new hand dryer which although still funky and stainless steel and minimalist had some visible cue that you should stick your hands under it. Just a simple (albeit funky and minimalist) picture would do. The solution was to stick a shabby printed sign above it with sellotape (other sticky tapes are available). Presumably over time the sign will turn yellow, peel at the edges and probably get graffitied on. My guess is that this was not part of the ‘vision’ that the designers had.

So, my message to hand dryer designers is: by all means go funky and modern and minimal but not at the expense of usability, people need to know how and where to dry their hands. My message to web designers and developers is basically the same (apart from the bit about drying hands). And adding instructions is not the answer.

By Dan | Posted in User experience | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Eco packaging

May 8, 2008 – 9:59 am

I needed some wood finishing products for new doors I’ve had fitted at home. I couldn’t find what I needed locally, so I turned to the web where I found what I needed really quickly.

Lawson HIS had a good usable site (which presumably had good SEO since they were high up in Google’s results), despatched the goods quickly and were great all round. The icing on the cake was that the packing in the box was shredded cardboard rather than polystyrene beads or those plastic bags of air. OK, we’re not going to save the world this way (I appreciate the irony of the fact that the products I was using were eco baad) but they’re doing what they can which is to be recognised. Good work folks.

Shredded cardboard packing in a cardboard box

By Dan | Posted in Environment | Comments (0)

A website redesign gone wrong… and then put right

May 7, 2008 – 8:20 pm

… in my opinion. Postcode Anywhere have been one of my favourite companies for a while now. They provide a great range of affordable web services for doing things like postal address searches and finding the latitude and longitude of a postcode. The services are good, the reliability is good, the documentation extensive and the telephone support exceptional : I think they’ve won awards for just being a great company, and rightfully so.

BUT a few weeks ago they released their new website.

Screenshot of the new Postcode Anywhere website design

I think to truly appreciate how big a step back they’ve taken with this, you needed to have seen their old website, but unfortunately I was too late to get a screenshot of this [DF - since writing they may well have rolled it back - for clarity the new design is khaki and the old design is blueish!]. However, over the weekend, I must have spent at least 10 minutes swearing at the new one.

Amongst its biggest failings is its wizards : they try to walk you through common tasks. The idea is that they make life easier for the user who is unaccustomed to the site. I think that there has been a backlash against wizards for almost a decade now, so I’m a little confused as to why Postcode Anywhere have decided to go this route. In any case most of my frustrations were vented attempting to use one of their wizards that didn’t give me the options I needed to complete my task. And there was no viable alternative to the wizard, which left me completely stuck.

It is stupid to employ a wizard which dumbs down the options to the user with a list of idiot, non-comprehensive options that second guess the user’s task, particularly when that user is a developer, more likely than anyone to want a plain, straight-forward option that doesn’t obfuscate the underlying data.

Apart from this impossible interface, there are few more problems that leapt out at me:

  • Instructions in some wizards that tell the user they can avoid the wizard by clicking a non-existent link (particularly annoying)
  • Account codes displayed as images so that you can’t copy and paste them (something you will certainly need to do if using the web services)
  • Copy on the ‘Become a reseller’ page that tells the user that you really should think about becoming a reseller. Clearly you are, you’ve clicked on the ‘Become a reseller’ link… so how do you become a reseller?… I’m still none the wiser…

And then there’s the new colour scheme. I suppose it’s fairly trendy and the design is in keeping with all things web 2.0, but honestly, khaki and dirty orange? The old site was blue, fresh, exciting (still after 5 years), engaging and truly lovely. These new colours make me feel boxed in and oppressed.

HOWEVER dismayed I was with this website, Postcode Anywhere have displayed a truly admirable quality in starting to hold up their hands and admit they’ve got it wrong. I wrote a pretty disgruntled series of emails to them over the weekend, and got immediate response from their IT Director, Jamie Turner, acknowledging my feedback, that of others, and indicating that they’d be asking their customers for feedback this week with a view to fixing the problems or rolling it back.

Indeed today their customers got an email asking for feedback which said “You may have noticed that we’ve launched a new website recently to reflect our new branding and, to be honest we’ve had mixed feedback…”, and as I was writing this blog post I got an email from Jamie Turner telling me they have decided to roll it back. Hurray!

So, what have we learnt kids? That’s right :

  1. Always, always, always test your new ideas with your users, however bright you think they are.
  2. If you get it wrong, admit it, listen to your customers, and put it right.

Lesson over.

By Dave | Posted in Business, User experience, Web development | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Dave is slightly older than spam

April 30, 2008 – 9:10 am

Dave celebrated his 30th birthday last week. And spam celebrates its 30th birthday next week.

Happy birthday Dave.

I hope you die soon spam.

By Dan | Posted in Uncategorised | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Public spirit and BAD bus drivers

April 29, 2008 – 1:37 pm

While waiting in a queue for the drivers to change over on my number 211 bus this morning at Waterloo, I witnessed both the ugly side, and a really good side of Londoners.  The disembarking driver from the early morning shift tore a strip of paper from the ticket machine, screwed it up and threw it into the street under the noses of half a dozen queuing passengers.  There was a silent consternation in the queue as we all frowned and contemplated the blatant littering of the London streets by a public service worker.

I was still trying to work out if I was brave enough to pick it up and bin it (the answer would almost certainly have been no) when a lady in the queue went for it instead, passing it back to the driver with a polite “You’ve dropped this”.  He began by denying it, at which point other passengers (not me, I was still, um, weighing up my options) chimed in and pointed out he had.  A colleague with a clip board, presumably his supervisor, calculating that the driver was not going to get away with his denial, decided on a different tactic.  “There aren’t any bins on the buses and there aren’t any bins outside the buses, so we have to use the street.”, he said.  There was some more outrage from the assembled passengers, and more belligerent shoulder shrugging from the offender and his boss, before they left the scene remarking that “There’s more important things than litter!”.

The public spirited woman remarked after they’d gone that she was glad she’d made a stand, and I was glad she had too.  However depressing the littering act and subsequent attitude had been, it was refreshing to see a member of the public, braver than I, standing up for us all and the city we live in.

Just in case anyone from TFL fancies educating this BAD bus driver and his idiot supervisor, he was driving the 211 (bus number 9816) and was disembarking the bus at Waterloo at 9:20am on Tuesday 29 April 2008.

By Dave | Posted in Environment | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

That’s my kind of town….

April 24, 2008 – 9:15 am
Telly Savalas as Lt. Theo Kojak

For a nice warm up to Daves 80s style 30th Birthday party at the weekend how about listening to “Telly Savalas and the Quota Quickies” on Radio 4 at 10:30am. (April 26th).

The bizarre story of how three British cities in the late 1970s tried to make themselves appear exciting to a cinema audience, recruiting Kojak himself to present their travelogue.

Sadly I can’t find the Aberdeen version but the BBC have uploaded the Birmingham one to YouTube.

Highlights include some random dancing……

Image via Wikipedia

By John | Posted in Cool stuff | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

singer, ginger, linger ..

April 18, 2008 – 12:00 pm

This is for anyone who takes having English as their first language for granted.

By mwatson | Posted in Uncategorised | Tagged | Comments (0)

The darker side of timelapse

April 17, 2008 – 1:43 pm

Our regular reader will know that I like timelapse videos.

But this timelapse of a chap trapped in a lift (/elevator) for 41 hours which accompanies an enormous article in The New Yorker about lifts (/elevators) has chilled me proper. Anyone with a fear of lifts (irrational or otherwise) should look away now.

By Dan | Posted in Uncategorised | Tagged , | Comments (0)