Blog posts by Kim
Kim is an analyst at heart, with a keen interest in intuitive, usable and accessible designs. In her spare time she tries to make up for a sports-less childhood, with varying degrees of success.
By: Kim Chatterjee
It was late at night, and over cookies and tea, we were preparing for a presentation at OzeWAI 2011 about Dealing with the 7 Attitudes to Accessibility. It was a tough topic – culture change is hard. It’s not an overnight process, there’s no magic wand, and regardless of whatever idea you’re introducing, it all boils down to people and how they react to that idea.
As always, we found the answer was in asking the right questions: Who are you dealing with, why do they think that way, and what can you do about it? Immediately a flood of stories, hilarious situations and tactics burst forth – and with that, the Attitude Adjusters card pack was born.
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By: Kim Chatterjee
We’d recently updated our website and belatedly realised (after the phone started ringing off the hook) that one of our all-time favourite artefacts had gotten lost in the ether. Whoops! So here is the WCAG 2.0 Map (PDF, 324KB), back by popular demand.
For those of you who haven’t come across it yet, this WCAG 2.0-on-a-single-page is a clickable mind-map that helps put the web accessibility guidelines into perspective. We get a lot of feedback that it helps make WCAG 2.0 digestible, and it makes sense to us and to those we’ve shared it with. So here it is… and sorry for making it disappear for a few days.
Enjoy!
By: Kim Chatterjee
In conducting numerous accessibility reviews for government and corporate sites, we’ve shared in the web community’s uphill battle of seeing problems too late, convincing development teams to make small changes, convincing executives that accessibility is important. We often dreamed out loud of a perfect world where in-house teams learn how to assess their own access requirements.
Well, it’s a new year, and we’re doing it. We’re biting the bullet, opening the floodgates, sharing the love – and whatever other metaphors we can throw in there. We’ve decided it’s time to share what we know.
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By: Kim Chatterjee
Quality is often found in the attention to detail. I am especially drawn to quality design that saves you time and simplifies your life – if even for just a moment.
So would you believe I’m in love with a light switch?Think about it – whenever we have to take command of an unfamiliar room, we always spend a few moments checking what all the switches do.
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By: Kim Chatterjee
We kicked off TED fever in Canberra as we plumped up the bean bags, popped the popcorn, and welcomed fellow aficionados through our doors to watch some of our favourite TED talks on a windy Thursday evening. We’d picked the theme ‘Design and the Future’, and there were chuckles mixed with oohs and aaahs and a few uh-ohs as we saw the future unfold into augmented reality, virtual kids and a few broken systems.
Here’s what was on the watch list (warning: watching TED is intensely addictive):
Thanks for coming, everyone, and we hope to see you around at TEDxCanberra in October
!
By: Kim Chatterjee
We recently built stuff out of flat-pack IKEA boxes – it was like being kids with LEGO all over again. We did it in record time, without a single stuff-up, minimal effort, and had an incredible sense of achievement. It actually didn’t have anything to do with our carpentry skills or with Paul’s impressive toolbox which housed half of the local hardware store – it was simply to do with the IKEA instruction manual.
With software development, the help file is often the last piece slapped onto the package. It’s often hefty, a nightmare to maintain, and updating it can be a full-time and thankless job. Creating good instructions is an art. So when we see good help, we take note. The IKEA instructions had us sighing in geeky rapture – here’s why.
- A good help file makes itself known. With IKEA, the instructions were wrapped around essential items – you would have to acknowledge its presence, but you could put it aside. Likewise with software, you shouldn’t have to guess if there is help associated with something by hunting for it, hovering tentatively over an item, waiting for something to pop up. But you don’t want that annoying bouncy paper clip distracting you all the time either. You want to be able to easily see where it is, so you can go to it later if you need to.
- A good help file doesn’t assume language. We all chuckle at interestingly translated instructions, or groan at vague blurbs that skip essential steps, or glaze over and abandon instructions if they read like War and Peace in fine print. IKEA skips language altogether – no need for the translations in 20 languages, just look at the pictures.
The only relevant text to read is the page number, which cheerfully indicates that you’re progressing. Likewise in software development, the help file shouldn’t assume that you are an old hand at the task, or that you have a lot of time to read and decipher it. Help should be kept as simple and as universal as possible.
- A good help file is unambiguous. The first accusation whenever an enthusiastic flat-pack assembly stumbles to a halt is that there’s a missing piece that wasn’t included in the pack. Ten minutes of searching and swearing later, and you realise you’d used the wrong pieces in step 4 and so your step 18 is stuffed. IKEA look at the small details and point them out to you, anticipating confusion over similar pieces. The pictures clearly, and without being patronising, tell you which one to use.
- A good help file anticipates users’ problems. Nothing is more frustrating than needing help and not finding a ready answer, not even in the FAQ or the user forums. You might be in ‘the zone’, under a deadline, have already tried the obvious solutions, tried to guess all the keywords to search for, and do you have time to wait for tech support to email you back? IKEA’s instructions show that someone’s thought about how people might hurt themselves, break the product, or find different uses for it. And then they included this in their instructions, and added tools and extra bits in the package in case you did want to mount those shelves on your wall, or child proof it, or stand it on its side.
A standard design principle is to create an interface that is intuitive, which doesn’t require the user to need instruction. This is certainly true. But for those specialised situations where guidance is recommended, tutorials essential and trouble-shooting expected, the help file should be designed with the same care for the user’s experience. Most of your users will never want to read it – but when they do need it, it makes the difference between a painful user experience and success.
