There is no Dana, only Zoul.
I've been testing Newsie, an RSS reader for the iPhone, over the last couple of days. Sometimes it crashes. For whaterver reason the crash report contains this random Ghostbusters quote. I love it.
Some rights reserved
Uploaded on Oct 25, 2009
|
Map
0 comments
Sunday Morning Frustration
After reading Robert Hoekman Jr.'s
The Myth of Usability Testing, I thought I'd read Rolf Molich's Comparative Usability Evaluations for myself.
All was going well, until I had to track down a paper in Behaviour & Information Technology.
Unfortunately, this journal is kept behind a paywall at informaworld.
Informaworld refused to disclose the price of the paper until I registerd.
After one of the most painful registration experiences I've ever encountered, I was finally given a "buy now" link.
Upon clicking on the link, I arrived at the page shown here. I have no idea what a "pricing option" or how to choose one, despite going through all of my account settings.
The end result is that the system simply won't let me buy this paper.
Hoekman and Molich make a convincing argument that user testing isn't a panacea for all usability woes. Be that as it may, someone clearly needs to do some user testing on informaworld's shoddy e-commerce system.
Some rights reserved
Uploaded on Oct 25, 2009
0 comments
Fold's not dead
I keep hearing that the "fold is dead."
I understand the point -- users will scroll -- but I think we ignore the fold at our peril.
Like so many things, this depends on context, and we define the context.
This is the first screen of the iStockPhoto checkout process at 1280x800, and it provides a pretty good example of what I mean.
This screen does a decent job of conveying that it is the first step in the purchase process, but doesn't clearly convey what you are expected to do.
It provides no cues that there is anything below the fold. It certainly doesn't indicate that there is a massive form to fill out hidden down there.
The orange, shiny button at the bottom right says "Change order," but that's not what most users expect it to say. Based on their experience with other shopping carts, they expect it to say "Next step", "Accept" or something similar.
In other words this page looks like a "Review your Order" page instead of a "Billing & Shipping" page. At least, that's what it looks like above the fold. And in this context, that is all that matters.
The person who showed me this page did exactly what you'd expect him to do: he clicked the "Change Order" button and went a step backwards instead of proceeding to the next step, as he expected.
People will scroll, but the fold sitll exists. It has an impact on the way users experience a site. It's not unimportant, and it's certainly not dead.
I realize that many of the proponents of "the fold is dead" often follow this slogan up with caveats. Nevertheless, I think that the slogan itself is problematic, and I would humbly suggest that it be dispensed with forthwith.
Some rights reserved
Uploaded on Oct 16, 2009
0 comments
UXExchange (StackExchange) OpenID delegation issue
This is what happend when I try to authenticate on any StackExchange-based site (including StackOverflow) with my OpenID.
I've had this problem for a while (with StackOverflow, not UX Exchange).
This may be an issue with the way I've implemented OpenID delegation on my site. I've double checked the setup, and it seems to work on pretty much every other OpenID-enabled site.
I seem to be able to login directly with my myopenid credentials. This is less than ideal, since it means I effectively have to use two OpenIDs -- one for StackExchange and one for everything else.
I should note that I was able to sign up for UXExchange yesterday. The same goes for StackOverflow. This seems to happen once I've registerd with the site and try to log back in.
Some rights reserved
Uploaded on Oct 15, 2009
2 comments
Cool 3-D specs
We're at the Barbican about to see Up. The 3-D glasses are the coolest
I've seen yet.
Some rights reserved
Uploaded on Oct 10, 2009
|
Map
0 comments
