When we were first introduced to the computer it was to help us solve problems not create them. Your mother bought a computer so she could get things done quicker. She bought it because it had all these cool features that could “Remember things for you”. We build software to help solve problems, to remove some of the more mundane things in life to make life simpler. Computers are supposed to make things easier, they are not supposed to take my time to answer stupid questions.
Each day goes by that I still find major issues with User Interface development of major web sites. There is SO MUCH information available for free on the Internet that major companies still make no attempt to help the user.
What am I complaining about?
When I visit a web site I want it to do things for me. Provide a service. The following sites provide services, but all fail miserably in regards to basic usability and irritating steps of action.
FAILING
www.ups.com, www.dhl.com, www.fedex.com, www.honeywell.com – All of these sites suffer from the same problem. They make me think. Why in the hell cant you figure out what country I’m in? There are ways to do this all over the net. Yet these companies cannot figure it out? I mean, come on… companies like Honeywell who have TONS of engineers on staff cannot figure this simple crap out?
My Beef: Don’t ask me where I’m from, when you already know. That’s like asking me my name when I’m wearing a name tag.
www.myuhc.com (doctor locator) – This thing… oh man, it makes me want to scream. The problem is … if you log into your account, you can “locate a doctor”, yet when you get prompted to enter search criteria you get asked what your plan is. HMO, PPO, PPO PLUS, BLAH BLAH BLAH, like 15 choices. They all look the same to me. That means I have to pull out my wallet each time, find my card, search the small print just so I can answer this question. BUT WAIT…. I LOGGED IN, DID’NT I??!?! That means, the web site should already know what plan I’m part of.
My Beef: Don’t ask me what my plan is if you already know. Again, its like asking me my name when I’m wearing a name tag.
SUCCEDING
Outlook Web Mail, Gmail – These apps have it down. When I type in an email address and send an email to a contact, these applications save it for next time. The next time I attempt to send an email and start typing a few letters the app helps me find the person I’m looking for. Either by first name, last name or email address.
Google.com/Live.com/ask.com – All of these provide great suggestion techniques (such as explained below). Google does really well in this area. Tim Ferriss said that while in Germany (or somewhere Europe) he typed Google.com and got Google.de (Germany’s Google). At the top of the site it had a small icon that said something to the nature of “Looking for the US Site? Click here.” So it helped the 95% case of actual German users, but maybe the other 5% actually wanted the US Google (note: the %’s are just made up, but you get what I’m saying).
Pandora – The music discovery channel. If you like “Wu Tang Clan” and you would like to find artists that are similar to them Pandoras Music Genome Project will help. It helps by finding music similar to your tastes through over 400 attributes. But the real nice thing about the interface is how easy to use it is. If I typed in “Wyclef Jon” the system will return a question to the user “Did you mean ‘Wyclef Jean'”. Well of course I did, but maybe my friend always said “Wyclef Jon” so I thought it was “Jon”. But hey, the user interface helped me find what I wanted to find. It didn’t make me think. If helped me find what I wanted to find through assisting me with my spelling.
TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR SITES USABILITY
– Don’t make the user re-enter information you already have. (name, address, etc, – basic info)
– Use the Auto-Complete type of control as much as possible. – This helps users when typing in free text. If you’re asking them to type in an address into a geographical website, try to assist them with possible solutions. Not everyone can spell Minneapolis correctly the first time. 🙂
– If you are an international site, FIGURE OUT WHAT COUNTRY THE USER IS FROM and give them that country.
– Catch all the errors. I MEAN ALL OF THEM. I should never see a MySQL Error, a YSOD or anything like that. Give me something telling me that something went wrong and I should check back later.
In the end, its all about user experience. Make it easy.
The only problem is … is very hard to make something simple. 🙂
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