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 Kimberly Krause on 1/21/2004 11:19:35 AM
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There is a Fire Lit Underneath Yahoo!'s Butt
:: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 ::
If you don't get it right the first few times, copy Google. Yahoo! Establishes Yahoo! Research Labs to Advance & Enhance Technology Innovation
More stuff to memorize. W3C moves ahead with mobile Web standard
"The W3C technical specification -- Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structures and Vocabularies 1.0 -- enables handheld devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants), to communicate with Web servers and exchange content delivery information, according to the consortium. The system, for instance, will allow a mobile phone to tell the server its display size so that content is delivered in a format that fits the screen. "
Usability:
I bet you couldn't wait for Part 2. Are You Designing for Usability or Sales? by Bryan Eisenberg
"Scenario design helps users achieve their goals. How do you plan scenarios? Well, if you're designing scenarios for a commercial Web site, one that demonstrates return on investment (ROI) by getting sales, leads, or registrants, you design persuasive scenarios by turning the information you have on your users into personas."
Web design tip. The Perfect 404
"A user-friendly website will give you a helping hand while many others will simply do nothing, relying on the browser’s built-in ability to explain what the problem is. We can do better than that, can’t we?"
Know your website USA user. Internet use grows to 69 percent of US adults: poll
And your Chinese ones. Broadband Internet usage soars in China
Other shocking news and stuff:
Going the way of Farscape. Star Trek: ENTERPRISE rumored to be riding off into the Universe sunset.
I wasn't surprised to hear that Dick Gephardt lost the 2004 Iowa Caucus . After the US Government made a law against sending Spam (lame as that law is), this Presidential candidate's staff found it necessary to send me a minimum of 5 spam emails A DAY for about 2 weeks. Um. Hello!!!
At least somebody isn't giving up hope on the unwanted email problem. According to Going Upstream to Fight Spam
"Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative, said a technology that recognizes legitimate senders may prove more efficient at curtailing spam than existing filters, which only work on messages that have been downloaded to servers and PCs."
World Social Forum Kicks Off
"The forum will end with a demonstration against the U.S. occupation of Iraq."
Where is Google's QA Department? Ending Dot Bug
"In what appears to be a bug from code to support international Google sites like google.ca, if you visit a page on google.com. (note trailing ".", something which is technically equivalent to not including it but rarely used) then the links to "Images" and "Groups" on the top don't work."
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 1/20/2004 10:32:11 AM
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Why peeking at your website competition is a good thing.
:: Monday, January 19, 2004 ::
I almost blew by this latest Alertbox from Jakob Nielsen, called How Big is the Difference Between Websites?because it sounded too technical and dealt with metrics, and I wasn't in the mood for brainwork yet. But, my usability addiction became too much and I read it. He wrote about competitive testing between websites.
"Competitive testing is a special type of usability study that compares designs from multiple companies in the same industry. Across the studies I analyzed, the average difference in measured usability was 68% when comparing two competing companies."
Even if you don't do what he did exactly, there were some things worth considering for your own website situations such as:
"On the Web, all advantages are temporary, and you must keep innovating to stay ahead."
"Indeed, one of the main reasons to run regular competitive studies is so that you won't be left behind by a competing site's improvements. The tendency to copy the best designs explains why two sites in the same narrow sector will have smaller differences in measured usability than one might expect. "
"When you run a thorough usability project in which you discover customers' needs and design your site accordingly, you can expect your site to improve by 135% on average. "
"You can patent usability innovations to keep the competition from stealing them. Most Web projects are managed by marketing departments that have no experience with the patent system. Websites, however, are inventions and should be protected when you invest in developing something new. Talk to people in your legal department."
I loved this. The folks at Adaptive Path have a piece called Seven Resolutions for 2004. Here's a few:
"I’ll collaborate more often with my team, get input from individuals throughout my organization, communicate personally with the people that matter about the ideas that matter. "
"At some point, every group whose work touches the user experience—information architects, interaction designers, marketers, and so on—seems to think that they own the user experience, that their focus is the most integral. But user experience never depends on any one discipline. Everything comes together to create the whole."
One thing I forgot to mention about the new usability newsletter debuting this week called Successful Sites Usability and Marketing Newsletter is that subscribers can submit sites for a possible website reviews. The newsletter is intended to be make usability related subjects easy to understand and implement yourself. No mind boggling techie stuff to confuse or slow you down!
If you wonder why. Cart abandonment is high, but e-retailers have more control than they know>
"The survey showed, for example, that 35% of the 600-plus consumers polled had abandoned carts due to additional costs such as shipping or because delivery times were too long. The second most-cited reason for cart abandonment was that web sites ask for too much information in order to make a purchase, which was mentioned by 30%. 17% of those surveyed said they abandoned online purchases due to a lack of product information, while 14% said they changed their minds and opted to purchase at a store instead of online."
SEO:
Karon Thackston writes SEO Copywriting - In the Wake of the "Florida" Update
"For those of us who have been focusing on search engine copywriting that appeals to both the engines and the site visitors, Google's upcoming changes should be very exciting."
Other:
Today, in the USA, we honor a King.
An Interview with Martin Luther King III
"The Internet has the potential to be a true equalizer among races, sexes, and ages. The Web's anonymity allows content to overshadow color. At the same time, the poorest and most underserved members of our society are not allowed the opportunity to utilize and benefit from this technology. They are falling victim to poor schools and low socioeconomic levels that prevent them from learning the technology."
"There are hundreds of Web sites dedicated to hatred and hostility. The Internet can promote division and racial insensitivity, but it can also promote love and harmony. I don't believe in suppressing freedom of speech, but I do believe that we can drown out hatred by creating 10,000 sites dedicated to justice and tolerance. We must show our children that there is far more love and fairness in the world than prejudice and hatred. We've got a lot of work ahead of us."
Addendum to Friday's "Don't Say Hi" entry:
There's a new virus out with a subject line that says "Hi" and it comes with an attachment. Worse, "The worm harvests addresses from the following files and mails itself to those recipients, using its own SMTP engine." For more details, see W32/Bagle@MM
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 1/19/2004 01:35:21 PM
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