Max Soe: Usability Everywhere

Choosing the right level of affordance in your designs

Max Soe — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:10:33 +0000

It all depends on the audience. Test your designs.

via http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1863-ui-start-to-finish-champagne#extended

Prototyping wireframes instead of sketches

Max Soe — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:02:42 +0000

Wireframes are coming up short with today’s Rich Internet Applications. Interactive elements on websites are proving ineffective as sketches.

Recently I’ve been using prototypes to demonstrate how things work.

Wireframes still have their place but if you can code, try prototyping. It’s actually faster to modify things this way.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sketchingincode

Not all user centered design is created equal

Max Soe — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:25:25 +0000

Usability and User Centered Design isn’t just about knowing how a design should look. It’s about how to ask the correct questions and in turn, obtain the correct answers.

Claiming adherence to user-centered methods and philosophies is too easy; anyone can do it. Ask people what they would like to see in a re-design and you have ‘established’ user-requirements. Stick a few people in front of your design at the end and you have ‘conducted’ a usability test. Hey presto, instant user-centered design process. If only!

More at Infomatters

Gender Differences in Website Usability Criteria

Max Soe — Thu, 07 May 2009 07:57:02 +0000

From: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/usability-criteria/

On website usability criteria – Men prefer speed, women prefer ease of use

A misguided idea: You can educate users about how to use a user interface

Max Soe — Wed, 06 May 2009 06:22:40 +0000

From: http://www.demystifyingusability.com/2009/04/how-relying-on-user-training-is-a-failed-strategy.html

The idea that you can educate users about how to use a user interface is misguided. The goal of usability is to create intuitive user interfaces. Intuitive means the design does not require understanding…If it’s not intuitive, you’re in trouble, help or not.

Best sign-up process I’ve used so far

Max Soe — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:15:39 +0000

http://steadyoffload.com has a great process when I had to sign up.
The process was:

1. Enter email + CAPTCHA
2. A page saying that an email has been sent to me with my details.
3. I receive an email with a temporary password with a login URL to a control panel so I can change my password.

SIMPLE!!

I don’t have to think about things like creating a password straight away, I don’t have to enter my address, DOB and all these other things that slows down the signup process for me. Well done steadyoffload.

Why do cars have brakes?

Max Soe — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:42:58 +0000

So we can drive faster

I was doing a course was on digital circuitry in my 2nd year of Computer Science at university. One day we were discussing the design of fly-by-wire systems.

The lecture (who was one of my favourites) asked us – “Why do cars have brakes?”

Some replied “to slow the car down.” Others said “to stop the car.”

“NO!!” he belted out at the top of his lungs. “It’s so we can drive faster!”

Good point.

A quick note about email notifications

Max Soe — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:17:03 +0000

Processing email is stressful. People are too busy to deal with certain email messages and ‘fluff’ in emails is deemed to be a waste of time.

When people check their email, they are already dealing with multiple requests for their time from the boss, family or peers. They want to complete the task at hand (the email) and move past anything that is not essential.

More information at Jacob Nielsen’s Alertbox

Branding

Max Soe — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:52:19 +0000

Branding is not about getting a target market to choose one corporation over its competition, but about getting prospects to see the corporation as the only one that provides a solution to their problems.

Smashing Magazine: 7 Ingredients Of Good Corporate Design

Observing and listening

Max Soe — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:58:02 +0000

Pay attention to what users do and how they interact with a product rather than only listening to what they say. When interpreted wrongly, what they say may lead towards the incorrect path.