I came across this excellent article http://boagworld.com/design/combating-design-by-committee and thought it was worth sharing. I think ‘design by committee’ is every web manager/designers nightmare. I particularly agree with the bit about 1-2-1 interviews being more effective. Group sessions need to be very carefully managed and I have seen a few get out of control and way off the point.
Design by committee
November 17th, 2009Web design conventions; positioning of common elements
October 6th, 2009Here are some quick thoughts on the positioning of common elements on a web page:
- Home button in or near menu on far left on all pages except the homepage
- Logo in the upper left corners of all pages
- Open search field in upper right of all pages
- Log in/out upper right of all pages
- Shopping basket icon upper right of all pages
The above highlights the most common areas of placement for particular elements on a website. As such users expect to see them there. Following these design trends helps users feel comfortable/familiar with how to use the website and allows them to get on with their desired task.
Ten simple accessibility tips for online forms
October 1st, 2009- Use the label elements to associate form controls to text label
- Ensure that the labels are descriptive
- Position labels appropriately to maximize predictability of relationships to their controls
- Where necessary show examples of expected data input, for example date format
- Group related form elements by using the fieldset and legend elements
- Group related options by using the optgroup element in a dropdown menu for example
- Ensure there is a logical tab order through form controls
- Include text instructions at the beginning of the form or set of fields that describes the necessary input
- Ensure that the user activates changes by the use of a submit button, for example don’t use onchange events on dropdown menus
- If you have to use an onchange event ensure there is a clear explanation of what will happen when the control is changed prior to the controls activation
Random usability thoughts…
September 18th, 2009A call to action within text is stronger than graphical ads, as people ignore anything they think looks like an advertisement.
A home button should be on all pages except the homepage somewhere on the top left of the screen. A link home from the logo should also exist but is not enough on its own.
If items are given an equal visual weight, their order isn’t that important. A good example is the role based IA on the http://www.hfea.gov.uk/ website.
Lastly… wireframes always make a page look far busier than it will be in a designed version.
Usability vs accessibility
August 11th, 2009It is widely acknowledged that accessibility complements usability and there are very few examples where they conflict. But I have found one…
The national lottery results checker available on their website used to work really well for me. It used to move focus to the next field once you had input your number for the current field automatically. I’d have my ticket in my left hand while inputting with my right – it was a real annoyance to move my right hand to the left side of keyboard to tab across or worse change focus by using the mouse. Due to accessibility guidelines this has now been changed so that there is no automatic change of focus – you have to activate the change by pressing tab or click. So I feel I have quite an awkward experience.
There must be a solution that works well for both. The WCAG 2 guidelines 3.2 says you have to make web pages appear and operate in predictable ways and I think the preference is for the user to activate any change, which is perfectly feasible for search controls or dropdown selection boxes. However, thinking about how many will use this control it may be appropriate to follow the alternative advice stated in the success criteria, if an onchange event occurs is there an explanation of what will happen when the control is changed available prior to the controls activation.
My solution therefore is to ensure that the user is informed that the control will change focus once they have entered a valid number for a field. This therefore meets the guidelines and works for me. Does this work well in practice for people using screen readers or alternative technologies? I would be glad to get any thoughts on this.
The benefits of good web accessibility
July 20th, 2009I thought I’d try and summarise the key benefits of good web accessibility here:
The financial benefits:
- A larger potential audience
- Potential for increased sales on eCommerce sites
- Reduced site maintenance / bandwidth costs
- Return on Investment: the money invested in accessibility can be made back and more.
- There are over 10 million people with disabilities in the UK with an estimated annual spending power of £80 billion.
- Legal and General claim a 95% increase in quotes and 90% increase in life insurance sales and 50% increase in natural search engine traffic
- http://www.shaw-trust.org.uk/experts_urge_it_teachers_to_make_accessibility_a_p
The technology benefits
- Natural search engine optimisation (SEO). “Google is a blind user who reads the entire website every month then reports what it finds to millions of people” Mark Pilgrim – 2004
- Improves interoperability of the site across devices, such as different browsers, mobile devices.
The user benefits
- Improved usability
- Improves readability, quality and confidence in site content
The legal benefits
- UK law: the 1995 Disability discrimination act
- October 1999: DDA section 21 came into effect. It is unlawful to discriminate against disabled people in the way in which you provide services.
- Websites are mentioned in one of the case studies in the supporting material.
Welcome to my new website
June 1st, 2009Hello, I’m currently developing my new website, that will be all be up and running very soon. In the meantime be sure to enjoy my blog section.
If you wouldn’t do it for ‘real’ then don’t do it online.
April 20th, 2009Businesses really must think about matching the online customer experience to the offline world.
Real life scenario
Imagine that you went to your local travel agent to book your summer holiday.
You told the travel agent the holiday you wanted and paid a deposit. The Agent then gave you a booking reference and told you when to pay the outstanding amount.
You return to the same travel agent to pay the outstanding amount on the due date. However, the agent tells you that because you have booked a sun holiday, you can’t pay for the outstanding amount there; you need to call this number or go to our other shop in the town.
I chose to go to the other shop in town and enquired how I get to the other shop. The agent gives a me a map of France, which is a little pointless because I’m in the South East of England. When I complain that the map is incorrect, The agent tells me “In this instance you will need to call reservations”.
No travel agent would allow this to happen in one of their shops, so why do they allow it to happen on their website? Apart from being completely frustrating, this is exceptionally bad customer service and would put me off going back next year to book my holiday.
How to make it better
Just three simple changes would make me a happy customer who would think about going back.
1. Allow me to make a final payment online. After all, I could make the deposit payment or I could have paid in full first time, so why can’t I pay the rest online while other types of holiday makers can?
As far as I could see from the web form, the booking reference was in a different format to the one allowed. If the issue is just as cosmetic as it seems, then this is really bad.
If it is database rules, then these too are easily changed. When I did eventually find my local shop to pay, the agent just entered my booking reference in to the system gave me the chip and pin device and it was done. It took all of 2 minutes (except the 20 minute walk to the shop).
2. Fix the map functionality online, just in case I do want to go in store
3. And finally, when I point out that the map isn’t working, don’t tell me to call reservations, it has nothing to do with reservations – I just want to use your map.
Business benefits
From this example there are a couple of clear business benefits:
1. Happy customers mean possible repeat business (who can afford to let their customers go to the competition?)
2. Reduced process costs – Was it really necessary for the shop staff and website customer service to be involved as well as the telephone reservation team to be on standby for one simple payment?
Usability, persuasion, emotion, and trust…
October 8th, 2008I was quite surprised when recently shopping on Amazon.co.uk to experience a few usability annoyances as well as buying a camera that I hadn’t intended to.
I was doing a bit of research on a particular camera I had seen elsewhere to see if I could get it cheaper. I was pretty convinced I was going to buy it; the decision was now from where. However, this changed when I spotted the user reviews. They ended up being pretty mixed, and someone suggested an alternative. So I checked out the alternative, which had all positive reviews and I ended up buying it.
This was totally against my initial intention or expectation and my decision to purchase was based upon my emotion as I was led by the user reviews.
However, basic usability was not great, what an awful screen where you enter you card details:
- The layout felt weird, as the entry fields were laid out horizontally for, card type, name, number etc etc; and
- There was bad error feedback: I missed something out (I think) because when I hit next/submit (whatever the button was called to get me to the next screen) I got an error message telling me there was something wrong with my details. So it cleared everything I had entered and didn’t tell me where or what was wrong, so I had to fill out all fields on this page again. How annoying:-(
It’s not a catastrophic usability error because I still completed my purchase, but it was annoying all the same. Maybe I made allowances because it was Amazon; because of the Brand I kind of trusted them a bit more, but if it a smaller and less well known site/company I’m not sure I would have continued.
Check out http://beyondusability.humanfactors.com/ where designing for persuasion, emotion and trust is thought to be essential when staying ahead.