By Ricardo Escalon-Jimenez, 24 October, 2008
Some say that the iPhone is not yet a BlackBerry killer. But this year at Web Directions South 08 we may have proved otherwise.
Stamford organised for some of the team to attend Web Directions in Sydney to man a stand and to preach the gospel of usability while promoting our new Sydney office. Instead of just having a static stand we thought we would also invite delegates to participate in a simple comparison of the iPhone and BlackBerry interface.
Our findings were slightly skewed by gravity and the sample of the population. Gravity played a role as we used post it notes to rate the ease of use of the phone. However, gravity pulled them down and yours truly put them back up. Our sample included attendees of the Web Directions conference. This bunch was mostly iPhone users.
It’s funny because this may actually say something about the conference delegates. If you want to make a statement about your creative coolness then you pull out an iPhone. But, if you are serious about business then the BlackBerry is your phone of choice.
The findings...
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On mobile devices tactile response is not as important
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One of the biggest criticisms that the iPhone has had is that it lacks a physical keyboard. Its virtual keyboard offers no tactile response and therefore it just doesn’t feel right. However, surprisingly this is not what we found.
First we have to consider that we are talking mobile devices here, an area where people’s expectations of the user experience are quite low. There isn’t an expectation to be able to type at the same speed as you can with a full size keyboard.
Next let’s look at the two keyboards:
The iPhone presents users with just the information they need. 90% of the time they are typing letters. 10% of the time they typing numbers, therefore 90% of the time users that look at the screen are confronted with a simple interface. For a beginner the experience is intuitive and easy to use. Experienced users can also type without looking at the keyboard. The spell checker picks up common typos to help you do this.
The BlackBerry’s approach is to super impose numbers, functions and letters all on the one keyboard. Making it hard to learn. So for the beginner this keyboard is hard to use and the tactile repsonse is not important. For an experienced user, the nipple on the number 5 may serve as a tactile anchor and help them type without looking at the keys.
- iPhone is more computer than a phone
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The BlackBerry received a significantly higher satisfaction rating for making a call. The reason was that you can simply enter the phone number and press the call button, just like you do on any phone. On the iPhone, you have to change its mode to phone, then navigate to the number keys, dial the number and press call. The whole experience took people 2 seconds more, but they still ranked the BlackBerry higher in the satisfaction scales. Contrary to its name, the iPhone is more computer than phone.
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Time to task completion is key to high customer satisfaction
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For the other two tasks that we tested (email and sms) the time it took to complete the task was strongly linked with how people perceived its ease of use. With the BlackBerry taking almost twice as long to send an email, users ranked it poorly. The main complaint here was that users could not find how to send an email to someone not in their contact list.
Again, this study was by no means definitive, we only tested users at the beginning of their learning curve, the sample was heavily skewed towards the iPhone and gravity played a role in the satisfaction scales, but even with all of those factors we still gained some great insights from the experience. It shows how great insights can be gained through even basic usability testing and how better understanding how your users interact with your product can greatly enhance your understanding of that product.
A big thank you to everyone who took the time to be involved with the iPhone Vs Blackberry "smackdown".
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By Ricardo Escalon-Jimenez, 10 October, 2008
Trying to start a Web business with a team of strangers and include user-centred design over a single weekend is next to impossible. But, that is exactly what I had to do last weekend at the Melbourne Start Up Camp.
About Melbourne's Start Up Camp
Start Up Camp is an initiative by Bart and Kim, from TJoos.com, to get professionals from a variety of fields to work together to create a Web business in a weekend. This process includes press releases, a business plan and a working site, all in one weekend.
Different teams had different approaches to working together and as a team ours went through the ups and downs of team formation. For my team, it was like an episode of The Apprentice, you know, the loudest person wins the argument. The argument was so heated, that one of our team members had to be re-assigned to another team. However, we pulled through and created our business idea.
On this weekend, 3 businesses were created:
MarketBeagle, marketting for the massess. A Webside that helps small businesses understand their marketing efforts better.
www.MarketBeagle.com
An SMS meeting service. At the airport? If so let them know and they’ll hook you up with a bit of pluck to talk to a stranger.
www.ABitofPluck.com
Play indoor sports? Who are you playing next week? Are they any good? Find out at iSporster.com, your indoor story.
iSportster.com
Usability in the fast lane
I was involved with iSportster.com, and I was using user centred practices, combined with agile methodologies to deliver requirements for the programmers to start coding. The question that I had to answer quickly was:
What can I do in such a short time to deliver a user friendly solution?
My approach to this question was
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Work on a problem with a familiar domain
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Around 3 of the 6 members had played indoor sports before, and one was currently playing indoor sports. They served as domain experts throughout our requirements gathering stage.
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Model the user and their goals/tasks
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If the context of how the website will be used is not understood the team would have looked at it as a set of features, with information or data driving its design. Instead, we wrote brief personas and scenarios to understand how someone might use the site. These were then used to brainstorm the features to facilitate the scenario, effectively letting the user drive the design.
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Easy to implement visual design to leave time for usability improvements
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I designed some wireframes and produced some visual designs that were modelled on an existing CSS framework. This meant that I could easily train other people how to code for it and we could implement it in record time. This left some time in the end to tackle some of the usability problems that emerged through the evolution of the product.
What would you like to read next?
There is so much more I could write about the lessons that I learnt over the weekend. But, being a user experience sort of guy, I’ll leave the questions to you. Let me know what you are interested in by leaving a comment on this post. Some ideas include:
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What did developers and business people at Start Up Camp think usability was?
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How do user experience professionals define usability?
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How did the development of iSporter turn from user centred to data centred?
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Posted in Usability,
By Di Pierce, 2 September, 2008
Ruth Ellison & Adrian Newton presented to the Local Government WebNetwork Conference 2008 on the topic of improving service delivery via the implementation of usability in Government. This presentation highlights theimportance of usability and user-centred design and provides practicaltips for improving much more than just the look and feel of yourwebsite.
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Posted in Conferences, Design, Usability,
By Amir Ansari, 26 May, 2008
It all started with an internal discussion we had at work. Our Design Director asked all the consultants if they had any inputs into a presentation on User Centred Design being delivered to a group of developers.
A flurry of emails followed – ranging from developers not caring about cost and usability and only loving their code, through to the need to get developers in the design process early because they are so valuable to this process.
While all these emails went back and forth, it occured to me that this inherent instinct to protect one’s code or ‘creation’ is not just limited to developers, but it is in fact a human trait. We all do it! Let me explain.
I recently bought some Venetian blinds and being a handyman, decided to install them myself. Now, most architraves and window framings are quite simple and support Venetian blinds reasonably well. My house isn’t quite so simple and hence I had to use my creativity to install them. Five hours later and after numerous efforts to find studs and adjust the levelling due to our sinking house, I managed to install the blinds. Now let me make it clear that I am a Virgo, and hence a perfectionist. Stepping back to examine my hard work and effort, I couldn't help but smile with arrogance at having won my battle with the window frame and successfully installed the blinds.
My wife, on the opther hand, took no more than three minutes to comment on the faults and imperfections of my installation. Funnily enough, I went into defensive mode straightaway, arguing what a great job I had done finding a solution to this difficult problem. I was almost heartbroken that she had focused on the 'bigger picture' rather than appreciating my hard work and intricate solution. At that moment, the work discussion mentioned earlier popped into my head. Oh my god, I’m one of those (referring to developers and their love for their clever code to a complex problem).
I had failed to step back and look at the bigger picture, which is what I do every day at work as a UCD practitioner. I had been sucked into a narrow tunnel of specific problem-solving and had totally overlooked the importance of installing the blind from an aesthetic point of view.
We all tend to get bogged down in the detail, especially when immersed in a specific problem solving activity.
So what am I actually trying to say? Two things: firstly, apologies to all those developers who constantly get referred to as “code-loving techies who can’t step back and look at the bigger picture”. It’s not just you, it’s all of us. Secondly, I want to emphasise the importance of UCD practitioners (and indeed anyone) constantly stepping back and questioning their own design solutions against the high-level goal.
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By Amir Ansari, 5 May, 2008
While reading the book on personas (by the way, this blog isn't about personas!) entitled "The User Is Always Right" by Steve Mulder and Ziv Year, I came across a website that tabulates 200 years of baby names and ranks them in popularity.
Now, before visiting the website, you might envisage a big table of names, or some dynamic table where you select the year from a drop-down list and it ranks by baby name, or you select a name from a drop-down list, and it shows you the ranking for each year. Instead, I found that the website presented this data in a visual way that is not only clear and concise, but dynamic and interactive, providing an enjoyable user experience. Now, while I can think of some improvements to the interactivity of the graph, holistically it is quite clever.
The baby name page also provided a link to yet another amazing website with examples of other data visualisations. On this site my favourites are the "Thinking Machine", "Market Map" and "Many Eyes".
In my 10 years of usability consulting experience, it remains rare to get an opportunity to really push boundaries through applying unorthodox technologies and techniques to achieve a project's objectives. It is actually common for clients to be fairly conservative in their approach. They invest extensively in us to supply their online technology solutions, expecting a result that looks good, provides a rich user experience, but has some level of conservatism in order to satisfy internal politics, branding needs and other pre-requisites.
As user experience professionals, I believe it is our duty to push those boundaries on behalf of our clients. We should constantly evolve our creativity and continually question ways in which users expect to interact with and experience the online world, now and into the future. Happily, we seem increasingly to be getting our way. Client conservatism appears to be giving way to a broader acceptance of innovation, and we are now often asked by clients to help them think creatively about novel techniques for using the web and other technologies.
Visiting the two sites above has reminded me that there are clever people out there doing clever things. We should always keep a look out for new and different user interaction solutions so that we can make use of them... and hopefully take them further.
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Posted in Design, Innovation,
By Lisa McArley, 2 May, 2008
An incident in a car park this week got me thinking about the nature of
signs and the importance of placing them at the right point in the
journey. I'm not talking about labeling
here, the signs made perfect sense; the problem here was timing.
Signposts are there to ultimately get us to our destinations quickly,
safely and with the least amount of wrong turns or dead ends. Sometimes however signposts send us to the
wrong destination and, in this case, literally up against a brick wall. After parking in the underground car park, I
got out of the car and took several confident steps towards the large,
prominent sign saying "lifts". Then I
stopped. As I had got closer another
sign became visible that directed people to two different lifts, the public
lifts and the club lifts. I wanted the
public lifts so I followed the arrows, and that's when I hit the brick wall. Back I went to the first sign to check the
direction. No, I was definitely following
the signs...to a dead end. Looking up the
car ramp I could see the lifts within tantalizing reach but there were large
signs prohibiting pedestrians on the ramp.
In the other direction, I could see stairs, but they were going down and
I needed to go up. So there I was, seemingly
literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.
This experience got me thinking about the importance not just of proper sign
labeling, but of placement and destination. At what point in the site journey do we place
the sign to the next step we want users to take? When do we give them signs to other destinations? Through testing and working with users, I
have learned to place signs (such as registration calls-to-action or related
information details) at the point in the journey where users are most receptive
to them. Sometimes this might be at the
start, but sometimes it's after they've done a little bit of exploring on their
own and are ready to look for, or be prompted with, that next step. Take the example of someone arriving at a
product site and being forced to register before they can browse items or add
them to their basket (yes, this still happens).
Forcing people to register before they've decided its worth their while
will only drive users to other sites where shopping is easier. Sites should also allow users to choose
whether to register (because there's an advantage in doing so, like saving time
on repeat purchases) or to simply make the transaction (including bill payment)
without registering.
Likewise, hitting people with information about hotels when they've
arrived at the flight search page is a little premature but showing them that
information after they've booked a
flight is helpful because they're now ready to take the next step in their
travel arrangement process.
So, did I get out of the car park?
Yes, I took my chances with the vehicles and walked up the cars-only
ramp to the lifts. The door into the
lift foyer had no affordance, but that's a whole other issue, nor did it tell
me what floor I was on (a hazard for the return journey!) but I did manage to
eventually get myself onto the street above.
Moral of the story? Don't send
your users into brick walls. If the
directional sign to the lifts had been placed after I had proceeded down a
flight of stairs, I would have found them easily instead of being deterred too
soon and sent literally up against a brick wall. So think about when and where to give
directions. When will your users be
receptive to further information or calls-to-action? When is the right time to show them secondary
directions? What would be useful to know
now and to where would they like to go?
Remember, it's a lot easier to leave your site than to exit a car park,
so make sure you use signs well.
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Posted in Design, Usability,
By Amir Ansari, 8 January, 2008
How often have you burnt your hand trying to pick up a saucepan by the handle, or touching a hot plate at a restaurant? When it comes to the web, as technologies improve and more and more people (including my mum) start to use the web, people's expectations of website usability increase and comapnies need to respond to stay in the game. Yet, when it comes to consumer products, although technologies have also improved in the fields of metals, plastics etc, we still see so many products on the shelf which could easily have been tweaked to make them more user-friendly . In the example above, it would be simple to incorporate smart materials so that a handle of a saucepan changes colour to inform you that it's hot. Some saucepan manufacturers have incorporated technologies to display a red circle in the middle of the pan telling us it's at the optimum temperature for cooking, so why don't they do the same with their handles to tell us that's it's at the optimum level for... burning your hand!
Here are a few thoughts as to why the consumer product industry has been outstripped by the web industry in instilling usability:
- With millions of websites out there, the competition for people's attention is intense, placing greater pressure on companies to improve their web usability in order to attract and retain users against the competition;
- Specialised organisations and companies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Stamford Interactive exist, defining clear standards for the internet and embodying them in user-friendly websites respectively;
- Users can easily provide feedback to companies and webmasters regarding issues they have with websites, either via a simple email to the webmaster or the completion of a feedback form.
The above three points are not reflected in the consumer goods and manufacturing industries. Although there are many saucepans out there and we have a choice, brand loyalty, country of manufacture, and pricing force us into that choice. Secondly , there are no organisations like W3C in manufacturing of consumer good, and although safety standards exist, they are not really linked in with the usability of the product. Finally, the mechanisms for providing feedback for physical products require far greater effort, and the fact that few of our own consumer products are manufactured in Austaralia users further discourages users to provide their constructive feedback to overseas companies.
Now, I'm not saying that the web has attained a universally high level of usability and we all know there are still countless poor websites out there. It just seems that although the web is still in its infancy, it is already leading the field in terms of both expectation and delivery of usability and user experience.
So what is the solution?
I think we, as consumers, could raise our expectations of manufacturers to provide us with sensible products and be actively engaged in providing feedback for the products we use day to day. We should also learn to be more discriminating about good design, ensuring companies that have put some brain power behind their good products are rewarded for their efforts. This way we can hopefully raise the bar for other manufacturers and over time, reap the benefits of a world full of good, usable products.
As they say, "It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease!"
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Posted in Design, Usability, Innovation,
By Amanda Harding, 22 November, 2007
Ruth Ellison presented to the Canberra Web Standards Group on 12 November 2007 at the National Library of Australia on the topic of Implementing Accessibility in Government. The Web Standards Group is for people who are interested in web standards and best practices. There are currently over 5000 members from 112 countries.
Ruth took a look at some things to be aware of when implementing accessibility in an Australian Government context, from organisational level issues to people and technology challenges.
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Posted in Conferences, Design,
By Amanda Harding, 13 November, 2007
Paul Cruse, Stamford founding Director and Principal Consultant, has written the attached white paper. The paper is based on a recent presentation to our Canberra clients and covers the history and subsequent evolution of government intranets in Australia.
Next Generation Intranets for Government
PDF (750kb)
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Posted in Innovation,
By Stephen Zafir, 31 October, 2007
Just as the World Wide Web brought each of us access to millions of points of content around the world, Web 2.0 now mobilises the information and allows us to interact with it. Social networking and folksonomies offer an engaging new level of connection between people and ideas. Like all innovative technologies, however, they represent a great set of concepts and features, but not necessarily the full realisation of their potential. As user-centred designers, it is our role to understand the extended meaning and potential of these innovations so that we can apply the approaches and learnings to the real-world requirements of our customers and their users. For example, the use of tagging, tag clouds and organic information hierarchies points to a new way forward for traditional Information Architecture. Although traditionally most company websites or intranets are a static proposition, each user brings a unique approach to the information. Consequently, even a good static Information Architecture represents a compromise between the different mental approaches brought to the website or intranet by the range of users. Allowing users to tag information elements essentially creates an evolving categorisation model whereby users can form their own logical relationships across existing information structures. These relationships can then be utilised in two ways;
- By the system, to provide a mechanism for direct linking to related elements.
- By the Information Architect, to inform evolution of the Information Hierarchies themselves.
In this way traditional, off-line analysis techniques for Information Architecture (such as card-sorting etc.) can be augmented by new on-line information, provided by real users whilst engaged in day-to-day interactions with the information. The result may be a measured movement toward more fluid information architectures which, over time, can evolve to reflect the mental approaches of their users.
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Posted in Design, Innovation,
