Warmest Greetings,

Please Press the Blinking Button For Gawd's Sake!  

:: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 ::

That's what the poor Gas Station Attendant was trying to tell me to do via hand signals from inside the gas station last night. You'd think after years of pumping my own gas, I'd know how to work all gas tanks, right? Wrong!

It's dark, it's about 10 degrees and windy, and I'm taking my kids home from last night's roller hockey game (My son's team won in an overtime tie-breaker, 8 - 7. Yay!) The gas light is on so I know I can't make the 20 minute drive home, where my favorite gas station is located, and where the gas is also cheaper. So, I pull up into an unfamiliar station near where the game was played.

Most self-serve tanks, or at least the easy ones I'm used to using or seeing, simply have you press the particular type of gas you want, you put the nozzle in your car and start pumping gas. Sometimes they require that you indicate the method of payment. Last night's gas pump had a series of buttons on top of the type of gas buttons, with a little red blinking button and words that said "PRESS HERE".

I kept pressing the gas type button anyway, never even seeing the blinking red light button. Since they were ALL blinking at me, I thought they were to indicate I should find the yellow gas type button below them and make my selection there. Meanwhile, my kids are yelling at me from inside the car, where it's nice and warm, "Mom, hit the blinking button!" and the gas station attendent was waving at me and pointing and gesturing wildly from inside the store. Finally, he ran outside into the freezing cold and told me which button to push.

Can you believe a usability consultant had this much trouble pumping her own gas?

The gas station guy told me, when I sheepishly went inside to pay him, that this happens all the time. People miss the blinking button. Interesting how even though there's a red flashing light trying to get our attention, and even the words "Press Here", people still do what they do most everywhere else, which is click the type of gas button instead.

This is why I can't stand Microsoft's WinXP. When they changed the user interface, I had to relearn how to work a PC. I didn't think they designed it to be any easier. Sure, first-time computer users whose first exposure to a Microsoft Windows OS is WinXP won't know any different, but for people who have developed routines, habits and working systems using previous versions, when were these user needs taken into consideration? You can change XP to "look like" previous versions, yes. But for me, that didn't help me like XP any better. My favorite PC is still my older desktop with Win98. And my favorite gas station is the one closer to home, with only one obvious yellow to push to get gas for my car.

Search engines have to worry about their usability too. Grokker is getting more and more press these days. Here's a look at how some search engines are handling visual navigation >>> Grokker, or Visual Navigation

"The advent of increasingly visual and better structured browsers like Vivisimo, Grokker or TouchGraph is beginning to shake up a world that seemed to be static. A definitive reference point appears to still be beyond the horizon, but we are definitely closer..."

Wouldn't it be nice if the gas pump knew what I wanted and the gas hose unhooked itself, opened my gas tank, took my money and made me coffee, without me having to get out into the freezing cold or pouring rain?


Danny Sullivan writes for today's SearchDay about a search engine that offers personalized search results in Eurekster Launches Personalized Social Search

"Personalized search? The concept has been that by knowing some things about you, a search engine might refine your results to make them more relevant. A teenager searching for music might get different matches than a senior citizen. A man looking for flowers might see different listings than a woman.

Eurekster's twist on this concept is to provide personalized results based not on who you are but who you know. Friends, colleagues and anyone in your Eurekster social network will influence the type of results you see."

Designing for the senses is one of my favorite topics lately and Thread's Dirk Knemeyer writes about it in From Brick to Click - Bridging the Divide Part 3 of 7: eCommerce and Experience Design

"The biggest advantage that brick-and-mortar stores have over eCommerce stores is the physical experience. There is just no getting around the power and influence of a physical environment. All five senses are stimulated."

(Which is what I was writing about in my Why Ecommerce is Not Ready for My Daughter or Me)

It's about time somebody made SEO fun! Still in BETA. SEO Consultants Directory Knowledge Tests. (Thanks Kalena for the heads up on that one.)

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 1/21/2004 11:19:35 AM

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