It began as a Christmas party for developers but is now attended by all channels within the web industry, including designers, planners, UX’ers and strategists, where people get to mingle with other branches of the industry they don’t see much of.

Focussed strictly on conversations, not presentations, it is a good opportunity to meet ‘n’ mingle with plenty of the best that Sydney has to offer. Register for this free event and keep your eyes peeled for one of the Stamford Sydney crew, Andrew, Frankie, Joe, Jon, Kim, Laura, and Patrick.

It first started with a blog post by Los Angeles-based web developer, Joe Devon, challenging developers on ‘Accessibility know-how needs to go mainstream with developers. NOW.‘.

There are a number of events happening around the world, including Australian events such as the Melbourne Web Accessibility & Inclusive Design group, the Brisbane Web Accessibility & Inclusive Design group and the Sydney Web Accessibility & Inclusive Design group, who are doing an accessible bar & pub crawl.

Everyone is encouraged to take an hour to experience digital accessibility. Examples include going mouseless for an hour or trying an assistive technology. There are a range of suggestions at the Participate page from the Global Accessibility Awareness Day website.

At Stamford, we’ve encouraged our crew to try a range of things, including turning on the accessibility features of our mobile devices, and of course, the pub crawl! Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day!

Come see Ruth discuss how to design for cognitive difficulties, then Kim and Ruth team up to show you how to promote culture change towards accessibility.

Joe Ortenzi will be bringing his passion for standards, compliance and accessibility to the agenda by presenting a vision of universal design that sits well with the number one blogging platform in the world. If you’re interested in any aspect of WordPress, consider registering for one more of the two days with some good challenging questions.

We’ve been working with FaHCSIA across several projects helping them foster an accessible culture. They took it to heart so completely that they produced the following fast-paced, engaging, polished video, which demonstrates how universal design is both important and easy to achieve. Packed into three and a half minutes, the video explains why accessible content is valuable, how FaHCSIA created tools and workflows to make it easier to achieve, and, most importantly, that it is everyone’s responsibility. FaHCSIA have also supplied a text transcript and audio version.

A significant hurdle in getting an organisation to understand the importance of inclusiveness is the cultural change required to advance it. Everyone has a part to play, from senior management and budget controllers, through to content creators and development teams.

If you work in Government, accessibility is a legal requirement under the National Transition Strategy, if you don’t work in government its still important, because your site’s lack of accessibility may be a barrier to a significant number of people reaching your content. Can you really afford to be a barrier to a significant proportion of your audience?

PTV seems to have made the mistake of not involving their users in the design process. Incorporating user research in the software development life cycle would not only have helped to avoid such a huge public backlash and the accompanying brand damage, but would have saved PTV the considerable money it will be costing in attempting to address the issues presented by the interface.

Here are some of the comments from the App store:

• Looks good, doesn’t work (Grigwig, 20 April)
• The worst app on the app store! (Hanoconda, 21 April)
• Didn’t anyone test this? (Doryanthes, 21 April)

Many complained the app was not intuitive. There were appeals to would-be upgraders not to take the risk and to stick with the old Metlink app. Others pleaded for a rollback while many more complained that the upgrade wiped their favourite trips saved in the previous version. The overall feelings I get from reading these reviews is anger and immense frustration.

So what is actually wrong with it?

To find out, we conducted some guerrilla usability testing on two tasks that are likely to be common requirements for your average public transport user.

1. When does my next Train/Tram/Bus depart? and
2. I need to be somewhere (e.g. work) by a certain time (e.g. 9am), so what time do I need to be at my local tram/bus stop or train station?

Our testing revealed that, while the app caters to both of these tasks, it’s a frustrating affair of trial and error to find and complete either task.

Figure 1

The app starts by asking the user if it can access your current location. We expected that by on clicking “Yes” to allow access, the map would move to show public transport nearby, but it doesn’t. Instead, the start page of the app (see figure 1) offers a search box together with a Google map of central Melbourne upon which all train stations are marked. It also provides users with a button to favourites and ”jump to my current location”, as well as a transport mode selector, although it should be noted that all these were missed by participants.

1. For both tasks, participants choose to enter the name of their suburb into the keyword search box, rather than pan around on the map in an attempt to locate themselves. All test participants missed the “jump to my current location” button so they had to perform the task manually.
2. The nearest train station was easily located via the search. However, we noted there is no option to view search results on a map. People who aren’t intimately familiar with the transport routes nearby would find this much more useful, particularly as the maps points out where you are in relation to the transport options.
3. The map is only presented when you have selected the option from the search results (in our case a train station). The selected train station is highlighted on the map along with two ambiguous icons – both are different kinds of arrows (see figure 2).

Figure 2

From here on, it’s a matter of tapping either icon and hoping it does what you want. Not surprisingly, we had around a 50/50 success rate. For those who were not successful, frustration levels definitely rose.

When does my next local Train/Tram/Bus depart?

It turns out the correct icon for “when does my next local train/tram/bus depart” is the one on the right. However, clicking it does not reveal this fact. Users are first asked to select their direction of travel. This is not necessarily unreasonable, but being several steps into their task by now, users still have no idea if they are even close to getting the information they’re seeking.

I need to be somewhere (e.g. work) by a certain time (e.g. 9am), so what time do I need to be at my local tram/bus stop or train station?

So the icon on the left provides access to the journey planner. Once again, user frustration is not surprising given that they are still not sure whether they will get the information they’re after. But frustrations rise even further because the search engine usually appears to find no results. So here you have a situation where the user knows there are trains/trams/buses between two locations and yet the app is telling them there isn’t.

Did someone say frustrated?

Usability testing conclusions

Usability testing revealed a couple of insights that could significantly improve the usefulness of this app and public perception. First and foremost, the app appears to expect expert-level experience with iPhone apps. This is clear because throughout the app, there is little or no way-finding information. For example, there is a significant focus on the interactive map, but there are no clues for users as to what they should do with it. That’s probably why our participants used the keyword search instead – they knew how it worked.

To aid way-finding, the app should provide:

1. Clear task options
   Perhaps it’s not sexy, but if users could just select from explicitly labelled tasks (as offered by the previous Metlink app) it’s likely they would have a great deal more confidence in using it. Tasks such as:
• Plan a Journey; and
• Next Services
2. Progress indicators
   There are several pieces of information required by the app for it to tell users what they are seeking i.e.
• Departure location
• Destination (and therefore direction of travel)
• Mode of transport
• Required time of departure/arrival.

If the collection of this information is to be spread over multiple pages as it is in this app, then basic usability principles would recommend providing users with an indication of where they are up to in the task and how many screens they need to complete before completion.

It’s that easy. Provide users with clear access to the tasks they are seeking to complete.

This situation could have been avoided.

As demonstrated, by adopting a user-centred design approach the risk of this exact issue occurring would have been mitigated. By engaging with a variety of real public transport users during the design phase:

• The real needs of users would have been accurately identified; and
• The proposed interface could have been tested to ensure it truly is easy-to-use and intuitive for it’s target audience.

To be fair, many organisations make the same mistake. The Ford Motor Company, for example, recently released a new touch-screen and voice control interface in their cars. The interface was so hard to use that it caused Ford’s customer ratings to free-fall. Only after the damage was done, Ford started to engage with their customers to develop an upgrade. Read more about how, After Ratings Drop, Ford Reworks Touch Screens.

Just like Ford, PTV have now decided they had better engage with their customers to help make improvements as the following statement, taken from Friday’s press release suggests: “We will use feedback received from users of the app to help build on its current features.” Unfortunately just like Ford, the damage has already been done.

What’s worse for both Ford and PTV is the cost of re-working their interfaces. It has been well documented in a number of studies (including research conducted by IBM and Rockwell) that making changes to applications after they are launched can cost between ten and 100 times the cost of fixing the same problem during the design phase.

Stamford provided further commentary about this app in The Age on 24 April 2012.