Everyday Interactions

“Poorly designed user interface” will most likely never make it to a cable company’s NPS survey, which is a shame, because this is precisely why I opted for no cable television over cable television provided by Comcast.

This UI is poorly designed for several reasons, such as the unnecessary amount of scrolling icons and the lack of important information like the current time. For the sake of this blog, it’s important to know that it was about about 9:15am.

As you can see, Comcast’s UI has provided the user with infinite scrolling… in both directions. This is problematic for several reasons:

1. Infinite scrolling is problematic in ∞ and -∞. If it is impossible to record a TV show from the past, why would a user want to go back in time to see the TV shows he or she missed?
2. No point of reference. I have no idea what the current time is, so scrolling in the past or in the future becomes confusing.
3. User’s mental model of channel surfing unaccommodated. Because moving the left/ right arrows is restricted to the infinite scrolling, it is not immediately obvious that you must navigate the vertical channels by clicking the up/down arrows within the time slots. That is, a user can never navigate through the channels directly. The user is forced to keep his or her eye on the TV stations while the scrolling up and down through the physically inconsistent TV schedule grid.

These poor UI design choices combined with the infamously poor customer service provided by Comcast made me reassess my life enough to come to the conclusion that no TV is better than bad TV. I can only imagine how many others have arrived at this same conclusion. When will companies learn that design always matters?

Thanks to mobile technology, my obsession with local news has intensified dramatically. I happen to own several local news apps, but the polarity between the KXAN mobile app (Austin) and the KPRC mobile app (Houston), specifically their use of modal window alerts, is worthy of being examined. Let’s begin by looking at one part of the KXAN mobile experience:

Oh boy. Looks like there’s an urgent story developing. Let’s check out the details:

Wah wahh. What happened to my urgent story? The message in the modal even included an ELLIPSIS… yet when I pushed for the rest of the story, I get plopped down into the news feed window where I will have to search for the story. But, as the image shows, this urgent story has not yet been added to the feed, meaning I will have to patiently wait for the story to appear, if it appears at all. Frustrating, to say the least. 

Now, let’s take a look at KPRC:

I push for the story details, crossing my fingers…

This is better than what I was expecting. The story featured in the modal window has been pushed up to display at the top with the day’s other stories below. Its font is highlighted to stand out even more as the urgent story corresponding with the modal window. I tap on the red text…

The details of the urgent story displayed.

The main difference between the two mobile apps is how much attention they paid to the user flow. Both apps identified the need to alert users of urgent stories by using a modal window, but only one app designed with the user interactions and expectations beyond that point in the user flow in mind.

Websites go down. It happens. Now matter who you host with, no matter how much it boasts of being up 99.999732% of the time, websites go down. Last week, nordstrom.com went down.

I’m not sure how much nordstrom.com makes per second, but my guess is that it’s a lot. So every second someone is unable to cure a week’s worth of pent up frustration with a little retail therapy, this popular retailer is losing big bucks. But thanks to its genius site down page, I think Nordstrom will recoup quite a lot of its losses:

So, what’s so great about this page? Glad you asked.

1. I still see the Nordstrom brand. Instead of a generic layout with courier new font, this page carries the very palpable Nordstrom brand. From the fashionable image to the strategic choice of words (“… as we make site enhancements.”), the Nordstrom brand is alive and well on this page. 
2. I can still do stuff. Even though I can’t access the entire site, Nordstrom gives me the option to pay a bill online, join the email list, or even pick up the phone to call. I can even busy myself with its social media presence while I wait. 
3. I can easily get back to shopping when the site goes back up. A link to the website is prominently displayed so that when the site is available, I can just click there, instead of opening a new tab or re-typing the link.

Ultimately, what do these elements ultimately communicate to me, the retail therapy- seeking user? I am assured that everything is under control. The fact that this page has been laid out to tell me what’s wrong, what I can do in the mean time, and that I will be able to access the entire site soon tells me that this brief break is being taken care of with utmost priority. Nordstrom has shown us how to flawlessly deliver confidence to its users, even in a time of duress.

Most of us know that mobile apps can save time and money, but did you know that they can save your life as well? Mobile technology is the new way to receive urgent weather reports, and WeatherRadio is the best weather reporting app out there.

This mobile app breaks all the right rules. Consider modal alerts. When the National Weather Service issues a watch/ warning, WeatherRadio rather obtrusively relays this message to the user:

Modal windows are usually reserved to communicate to the user that the app can’t continue functioning without the user’s decision about something. Traditionally, modal windows are not used to shout at the user, but rather to deliver the message in a more friendly tone. Such is not the case for the WeatherRadio app, and rightly so. The last thing a user needs is to push the app to see if there are any LIFE- THREATENING weather warnings out there.

Similarly, this weather warning need not be written (or read aloud, in this case) in a friendly, conversational tone. In fact, its loud, succinct, almost God- like audio is what makes this WeatherRadio the men amongst the boys of mobile apps. I’d love to know if they tested the voice to see just what type of voice is most likely to cause alert because this voice has waken me up many a’ night, which is perfect since the most deadly instances of severe weather tend to be those that strike at night.

So there you have it. Some rules really are made to be broken.

Southwest is awesome for several reasons, and now it can add “Awesome user experience” to that its list of awesomeness. Let’s take a look at a Click n’ Save email campaign they ran to celebrate Leap Day*:

All Click n’ Save deals are for a specific date range. In other words, don’t expect to the get the advertised deal on a flight to Denver at the end of the week. In the past, guessing the applicable flight dates was an unwanted gift to the user. Ah, the fond memories of choosing erroneous dates in the hopes of inching closer to the mystery dates with the deals! Fully expecting to play this game again, I clicked through the email campaign to the Southwest website. And to my surprise…

Dates are pre- selected!

The soonest dates that apply to the Leap Day campaign are already selected, freeing me, the humble user, from the burden of having to play Guess the Cheap Dates!

The littlest detail has made a world of a difference. I theorize that this detail is the result of two conditions:

1. Seamless communication between different departments within Southwest. Communication between marketing (the email campaign), design, and development makes the mechanics of the email to web work as it should. 
2. Southwest’s understanding of the customer journey. Considering the various entry points into the web experience makes this user experience so effortless and so intuitive. 

So, I have thanked Southwest for pilots who calmly warn of upcoming turbulence, flight attendants who make flying fun again, and no baggage fees that prevent me from making poor hygienic choices while traveling, and now I can thank them for making the user’s experience between email campaigns and the website a breeze.

* Is “Leap Day” even a real holiday? 

Pinterest needs no introduction. I love Pinterest and have devoted several of my otherwise productive hours to browsing pins and following boards. From time to time, I like to mix it up a bit by visiting actual websites. On a recent visit to Anthropologie’s website, I noticed that I hadn’t added anything to my wish list in weeks, quite possibly months.

It was then that I wondered, with the sensation of Pinterest, have e-commerce sites seen a large dip in wish list usage? What are their plans to combat the [presumably] decreasing numbers? My thoughts of doom and gloom came to a screeching halt when I found myself on a product detail page.

A “Pin It” button was comfortably nestled in between the other popular sharing tools.

Anthropologie could have spent precious time and money trying to incentivize the use of its wish list. And for all I know, that could very well be in the works and in an email campaign coming to my inbox in the near future. But the seamless execution of taking a brand that could be a secondary competitor and embracing it so that your name and product can still reap its benefits is genius.

As more techies race to unleash the next viral sensation, existing brands should take a hint from Anthropologie. Embrace what may seem foreign or slightly competitive, and create a seamless connection between the two brands.

Most usability test how-to lists began with, “Make the user feel at ease, explaining to them that this is not a test. Every time I rattle off that preamble, I get the feeling I really come across like this to my testers:

Photo Credit: Daria Wiki

Show me, don’t tell me. Show the tester that this is not a test by making the test more real and natural. Even if you are timing some of the tasks, there are ways to insert these timed tasks with a natural rhythm that makes the tester feel like they are merly having a conversation with you, not sitting down to take the bar exam.

So, how do you make a natural usability test? Try these three approaches:

1. Make the most of scenarios. Don’t get too involved in the theatrics of the scenario because this will have a disadvantageous affect, confusing the user and distracting them away from the actual task. But used strategically and sparingly, scenarios will take the user’s mind off of being tested and more on completing the task at hand, which delivers more authentic test results in the end.
2. Break up the timed tasks by inserting a few conceptual questions. We all know that securing willing users for usability tests is no easy fete, so you might as well make the most of precious time. Use conceptual questions to dig deeper into the thought process around how the user approaches the task. This will provide a fresh insight you may not have been aware of by simply completing the task.
3. Write the test plan in a conversational tone. Who says users are the only nervous ones in this test? Most designers are not natural born conversationalists, so take some of the burden of coming across as “natural” by creating a usability test with a conversational tone built in.

There you have it. Three easy ways to make usability tests more relaxed, getting higher quality feedback.