Identify or Die: Do You Know What This Symbol Means?

Take a close look at the icon above. If you saw it on your car's dashboard, would you know what it means?

You better: Your life may depend on it.

According to cars.com, one out of three drivers surveyed did not understand this difficult-to-decipher warning light. Which means that more than a third of drivers on the road today are in danger of creating a major accident if this symbol suddenly lights up.

The article says the icon is supposed to be "idiot proof," but as we've learned in thousands of usability tests, there is no such thing when it comes to symbols. The real "idiots" here (Hey, if they are going to call us idiots, then I'll throw it right back at them) are the designers and developers who don't label their icons. Everyone who sees a symbol for the first time has their own image of what it represents.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a word will prevent a thousand pictures - and in this case, save your life.

No, I won't tell you what the symbol means (Take a guess below first), but you can read the original article and explanation here.

Babysitting the interface: The myth of self-service

As we prepared for another road trip and the attendant joy of air travel in America in 2010, I was musing about the common sight of a human being helping passengers use the so-called "self-service" kiosk. It was in that frame of mind that I went to Facebook; I had to laugh when I saw this screen with the instruction: DO NOT CLICK THE "Go to Application" BUTTON ON LEFT!

Human intervention with software, Web pages, and kiosks is a regular occurrence across corporate America. You see it first-hand at airport counters, supermarkets, a co-worker's desk. We see it inside call centers and controlled environments. How much does this cost business, education, and nonprofits every day?

Well into the year 2010, we are still seeing an utter failure to budget - or even account for - the design of information structure, meaning: Where will this digital media experience begin and end? How does the user know where he is in the morass of content? How do you know whether you've seen and experienced all the content? How does he get to related content? Did anyone design or plan this experience? What are the opportunity costs related to this basic failure of planning?

In 2000, seven years into the commercial Web, a failure to plan and structure digital media interaction was understandable. Skeptics were still expecting (or hoping) that the Web would die. In 2010, the failure to plan and structure digital media is unforgivable.

If your digital media project lacks a budget item for information design (information architecture, task sequence design, user interface design), it is destined to under-perform and disappoint. Web sites and applications, software applications, kiosks, intranets, instrumentation interfaces - any digital implementation must include planning and architecture beyond simple functionality and appearance.

The Self-Service and Kiosk Association begins to address the usability issue in a blog post by Stephen Kendig, but the industry is just beginning to scratch the surface. If we use the Web as an object lesson, bad information design proliferates more quickly than good design. We will be living in a dystopian reality if the same problem propagates across self-service in a world that seems determined to eliminate human-powered customer service. The current economic woes will only exacerbate the problem.

If we're going to eliminate the human from the equation at all the transaction points of daily life, the digital interface must be bulletproof. Else we are destined for the worst of both worlds - unhappy customers, unhappy workers. Babysitting an interface is no one's career goal.

So, how were your e-sales this year? E-com usability

So, how were your e-sales this year? E-com usability may be easier to discuss in recent hindsight, after the dust has settled and the wishful thinking has stopped. How well did you do? What sort of ROI (return on investment) are you seeing?

E-commerce success can be measured in many ways; gross sales numbers are just a start. A more critical number in our view: Abandonment rates. How many people abandoned a shopping cart? Do you know exactly when and where it was abandoned? Most importantly - Do you know why someone abandoned a transaction?

The UK firm userfocus recently discussed "Nine tests for a usable checkout" which certainly merit a look. It's great to see another firm reiterate what we've been observing - and telling our clients - for years. "Ask the minimum number of questions. Use consistent and standard form controls. Place error messages next to the entries that need correcting." Truly commonsensical advice.

While the Nine Tests checklist is a great contribution, we still need to understand our users on a more specific level. The Amazon one-click book shopper is not the Playboy online club member, who is not the engineer joining IEEE online. Mental models, and the reasons for our purchases, play a role. The Amazon book shopper has learned to trust one-click ordering and needs little else. The Playboy user may like the added thrill of the chase that results from "teaser" screens. The engineer at IEEE will grumble if date entry fields don't enforce formats (he's an engineer!).

User experience is about seeing the world through the user's eyes, even if briefly. The personal interaction that comes from user involvement - be it as advisor to the design team, or simply as usability test subject - is irreplaceable. Feel-good aside, sincere understanding of - and concern for - your user is the key to successful business online.

You can and should know how many transactions were abandoned; that's tactical. Understanding that user and designing to his needs is strategic.

Coda: I was about to join an association I really admire last week. They lost me at unenforced date format for my date of birth. Why did they lose me? Because I know they're smarter than that.

Who exactly is taking my money? Poor usability = reduced online sales

It's ironic that online check-out - the point in ecommerce at which users are most sensitive - is the point where many Web sites fail to provide the brand consistency that users need to feel confident about entering personal information and credit card numbers.

Abrupt interface changes (from the main Web site to the ecommerce application) are the most common - and most destructive - usability problems on ecommerce sites. A startling new interface with different branding, combined with a new URL, will give pause to any user, regardless of technical literacy. They wonder: Am I on a different site? Is the privacy policy different? Who exactly is taking my money?

When someone decides to purchase from your Web site it's because they trust you and your brand. Our own research and usability testing has shown scores of users halting and not completing transactions when they encounter an unfamiliar screen at the point of interaction.

What caused this problem? Initially, many Web sites did not have ecommerce functionality, so it was bolted on as an afterthought. Third-party applications were used as the ecom stopgap. Brands were not allowed to customize these interfaces. The result: A bumpy ride for the user, reduced sales for the company. See examples below of the inconsis

The solution: Bring ecom under your primary Web property so users trust you - leading to increased online sales. Plan for ecommerce within your information architecture.

Example of a third-party payment system

Clicking on conEdison's "Pay by credit card" option takes you to a third-party company that handles the payment. The transition is jarring for several reasons:

• New URL doesn't mention conEdison
• NCO logo replaces conEdison's in the upper left
• New color scheme
  
• New privacy statement.
  

The payment agency does responsibly provide a link to their own privacy policy and disclaimer that they are a third party that handles payments. Yet, other than the inserted conEdison logo, it's difficult to tell that this page relates at all to conEd's parent site.

Internet to the rescue of print? HP's MagCloud

Recently some of our brightest colleagues have been singing the praises of HP's MagCloud platform. The true value as we see it is the ability for publishers to leverage archived content, allowing readers/users to assemble customized print products that meet *their* priorities. According to HP, "MagCloud is a tool for a professional or mainstream publisher to create a publication that is sold before it is printed, but it can also be a consumer-driven self-publishing tool."

It's a logical step given what we've seen in the usability lab over the last ten years. Users will gravitate toward what interests THEM - *not* towards what publishers want them to see (thus the great value of "Related Content" links). There's a clear correlation in the music industry: People got tired of buying albums when they really just wanted a few songs. The industry fought the trend. Enter Napster and iTunes.

The publishing industry continues to be hobbled by 20th-century rules of engagement. What could happen if publishers, sitting on years of relevant content, allowed their readers to self-serve a product that is truly meaningful to them? What if educators could assemble special issues for their students? What if "love mark" readers - those who are diehard fans - could assemble their custom editions of anything from Arizona Highways to Playboy? Happy users. Targeted advertising opportunities. What a wonderful world it could be.

Ecommerce is alive, usability problems still rampant

Clearly ecommerce is far from dead - it leads growth in retail even during this global economic downtown. Yet usability problems, which negatively affect sales, are rampant. Why has this problem remained with us since ecommerce first began?

In August of 2001, the dot-crash was roaring, about to be amplified by the events of 9/11. Early obits for the Web were popular. So it was that usability eminence Jakob Nielson asked, "Did poor usability kill ecommerce?" At the time, Nielsen conducted usability testing of 496 users on 20 US-based sites; failure rates were 56%. Nielsen also estimated that 79% of the sites could increase sales by improving usability. What has changed? Well, ecommerce is no longer an experiment. From Internet Retailer: "Sales of the Top 500 online retailers grew 11.7% to $115.85 billion in 2008 from $103.69 billion in 2007 while Internet Retailer estimates the total retail sales market grew 1.4%."

So ecommerce usability problems have gone away, right? Wrong. In many of our usability tests (2000 - 2009), we've observed all kinds of users attempting to purchase online, and we've watched them abandon transactions for the same old reasons:

• Clunky or incomprehensible checkout process
• Brand inconsistency between the parent site and the ecommerce application
• No evident privacy policy
• Confusion returning to shopping after placing a purchase in the shopping cart
• Failure of shopping carts to retain user choices
• Asking users to complete extensive forms prior to checkout

These are user task path problems, with a dose of emotional intelligence in design sorely missing; look at ecommerce interfaces for a myriad of more straightforward (and unacceptable) UI problems that undermine users and impact sales.

There is no replacement for information architecture, user interface design, and user-centric task sequence design as processes required for usable ecommerce platforms. Companies that took the time to stabilize their ecom platform before adding a plethora of products are the winners.

If your business model relies on online sales, plan to increase those sales by conducting usability testing and investing in solid information design. Time to stop guessing.

Out-of-the-grid design - when is it a good idea?

My longtime partner in Internet adventure, @jackpowers, posted this today:

@Jack Powers Eff usability, I love great design. RT @onextrapixel Characteristics of Less Conventional Websites w/Examples http://bit.ly/19iDHq

So I checked it out. Jack's got excellent taste, and the examples provided by Charlotte at onextrapixel.com are gorgeous, modern, compelling.

My take: I adore great design. As a fine arts major, I remember grumbling about why we had to master still life before creating abstract works, about the excruciating color-chart exercises. Eventually I understood that I needed those fundamentals before I could truly abstract.

We'd love to see a Web full of sites like those at oneextrapixel. But as a working (not theoretical) information architect, I must say that the best candidates for this sort of visual design are professional visual designers and hip development shops (there are quite a few portfolios there) and, of course, entertainment, where the non-conventional approach has always been appropriate.

Information-rich Web sites need to have gotten Web 1.0 right before moving to the unconventional Web site. This means branding, strategy, user priorities, information architecturem user interface design. All the boring stuff that creates a truly usable Web site. Then we can (if justified by mission) move on to abstraction.

Jazz musicians must master the piece before they can improvise. We look forward to working with clients that have already mastered the Web fundamentals so we can take them to the next level. Until then, our job is to get them to master the fundamentals. And to keep an eye on beautiful design, so we can lead the there when the time is right.

Privacy policies: Impacting conversion and online sales?

The last few years have yielded discussions of the role of text in interface, or text as interface. Stepping away from conventional interface design for a moment, we applied the principle of text as interface to an evaluation of the privacy policies on Amazon.com and Yahoo.com.

What did we find?
We learned that Amazon's privacy policy is highly specific about the type of information it harvests about its users, whereas Yahoo glosses over much of the same information. The end result is the appearance of a lack of transparency on the part of Yahoo, compared to Amazon's extremely specific and open policy statement.

Why does this matter?
Our usability studies have shown that privacy policies and clarity of how well they're stated directly impacts a user's likelihood to complete an interaction. Amazon and Yahoo both admit to collecting the following information:

• Email address
• Login, name and password
• Cookie information
• Address
• Occupation
• Social Security number
• Personal descriptions/interests
• Software and hardware attributes
• IP address

What else is collected?
Yahoo remains vague, whereas Amazon specifies that the following information is collected and why:

• Computer and connection information such as browser type, version, and time zone setting
• Browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, and platform
• The full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) clickstream to, through, and from our Web site, including date and time
• Content of reviews and e-mails to us
• The phone number you used to call our 800 number

Who else gets my information?
While both companies state that your information is shared with third parties and trusted partners, only Amazon lists names, which include:

• Target
• CD Now
• Verizon Wireless
• Sprint
• AT&T

Google Dashboard - a move in the right direction

Google's announcement today of Google Dashboard is a start in creating greater transparency. It allows you to view and manage information that Google is currently capturing. For example, you can view privacy policies and manage setting for all your Google accounts such as Blogger, GMail and Chat, view which of your data is private and which is visible to others, and remove items from your Web history.

We at Interface Guru encourage you to make use of tools and services that openly declare their usage of your personal data. Facebook's lack of transparency has been a recent hot topic - and rightfully so. Stand up for your digital rights!

Great ad - it's about relevant placement

Previously we talked about how important placement is in online advertising and how poor placement can make any ad bad. Now let's talk about which ad types are the most effective and bring the best return on investment.

NON-INTRUSIVE

"This could be good"
Ads that don't intrude on requested content don't annoy users. Text overlays on video windows take advantage of the un-used space without detracting from the desired video.
Above: A text overlay ad displays across the bottom of a video window without obscuring the content.

CONTEXTUAL

"I need one of those"
Users with "banner blindness" still respond to contextual advertising and good SEO. Users blind to popups and interstitials will still click on an ad when it's relevant to what they're already doing.
Above: Chart depicts ROI success per ad type.
(source: Marketing Sherpa and Ad:Tech survey)

RELEVANT

"It applies to me"
Online articles that include related brand information work well on younger users, who view them as more trustworthy than random banners. Advertisements relevant to what users are already looking at are more likely to get traffic.
Above: Graph depicts which ad formats users are most likely to respond to.
(source: ARAnet AdFusion survey)

Bad ad - it's all in the placement

In our view, good advertising doesn't turn off your users and drive away traffic. Don't bash them over the head! Attract users with smart ad choices that make it clear you value them as much as you value advertisers.

TAKEOVERS

"Who are you?"

Would you plaster a billboard over the signage at your company's headquarters? Keep your masthead visible so users know who you are.

POP UPS

"I didn't ask for this."
The ad shouldn't be the first thing seen on your site. Once users have enjoyed your unique content, they're more likely to respond to relevant ads.

POOR PLACEMENT

"Where can I go?"
Obscuring navigation implies that ads trump your original content. And it prevents users from reaching what they came for.

Do bad things happen when developers design user interface?

We work with some incredibly talented development teams around Web sites, Web applications, and software projects. Unfortunately, teams missing a user experience specialist often find that they cannot come to consensus on what the user interface should look like, or what it should do. This leads to a sub-optimal user experience, with the common result being that powerful software functions are invisible to the user. That wastes money - and obscures the excellent work of your team.

The cost to business of skipping the critical planning stages - which include user profiles, usability testing, information architecture, user interface design and task sequence design - is incalculable. Skipping these steps means endless hours of expensive meetings where everyone has an opinion, but few have real data.

Stop for a moment and consider the areas of expertise your employees own today. Is there someone on staff with formal training in user interface design? Information architecture? Task sequence design? If the answer is "no" or "sort of," it's time to start adding up the cost of all the hours spent in meetings with no consensus, so you can reallocate those funds to usability training or professional services that will bridge the gap.

CDC test of social media: Complexity makes usable design a challenge

Check out the concise summary of "social media usability testing" conducted by the CDC. Covering MySpace, blogs, widgets, e-Cards, and podcasts, the study points to the unsurprising conclusion that complex products - such as widgets - must meet a higher standard of usability and credible user experience.

I'll bracket that statement with two statistics from the study. First the e-Cards: "100% participants worry about viruses/spam." Which, of course, influences the decision to open the e-Card. This is what our Usable Times 5 methodology would describe as a Permission issue - as in, "I did not give you permission to send viruses or spam to my computer." Of course the Web site does not explicitly say it will send viruses or spam. But it doesn't reassure users that they won't have to worry about them, either.

Second, the widget, which only 45% if respondents were able to share and download, caused users to "struggle." Again, a reduction in usage, for different reasons. The loss here is in the development time for that widget, which is then under-utilized due to poor task sequence design. The presentation of user interactivity required for interaction with the widget is not straightforward enough for this user base. Interactivity is another Usable Times 5 factor.

The usability test report also discusses problems with adjacency of controls (instructions for use of podcasts too far from the action button, counter-intuitive "save this file" labeling). This is a common problem easily revealed in usability testing, and solved in user interface design.

The best news: "Visitors who use our new media products are more satisfied
with their visit to CDC’s Web site." That encourages all of us to continue the development of the many diverse expressions that currently fall under the rubric of social media. But these findings also point out the significant gap between the products we create and the user's ability to understand them without us there to explain them.

The need for information design on all digital products remains unmet.

The study, created by Sarah Greer, Catherine Jamal, Mike Peltz
and Cari Wolfson of the CDC's Division of eHealth Marketing, gets kudos for its frank look at CDC's current usage of media tools. No surprise to find FDA's Sanjay Koyani thanked at the end - he was among the first to create Web user experience standards in 2003 with the Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines.

So that's why government has no time for usability analysis?!

Slashdot reports a Washington Times story claiming that one senior executive at a government agency spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his computer. It's important to to remember that the Sun Myung Moon-funded Times has its own very conservative axe to grind. But if this is true, I wonder if it's a contributing factor to why many government Web projects seem to have no requirements for the evaluation of digital media while funding same.

The larger, sadder, more expensive issue is the ongoing loss to American government - and business - from poor use of technology. Bad decisions, bad builds, lack of objective evaluation. No oversight. No accountability.

The for-profit world moves too quickly for its own good sometimes. The non-profit and government sectors may not feel the same sense of urgency. Time for them to address important issues - like why technology projects need a plan, a purpose, and objective evaluation. We've expressed this sentiment in many environments; it seems to fall on mostly deaf ears. Fiddling while Rome burns, or rather, supporting poor overseas online sex workers (the executive's excuse).

Why it's crucial for social networks to make privacy obvious

In today's Science Daily: Many Online Social Networks Leak Personal Information To Tracking Sites, New Study Shows. Science Daily does an excellent job of explaining the technology; our usability studies show that users are acutely aware of being "tracked" in some way. This is as true of the 13-year-old "digital native" as it is of older late-adopters. If you want people to adopt your social network, you MUST declare privacy policies - particularly at interaction points such as registration fields and profile set-up forms.Kudos as always to Science Daily.

When FREE is a lie - personal info and privacy, astrology.com

Back to my favorite (of late) whipping boy, astrology.com: This iVillage site should not assume its loyal readership will stick around. The outdated visual design now suffers even more from intrusive advertising that I close immediately (if a popup). The term FREE on "today's three special offers!" is deceptive, because as soon as you click through, you will see it -is- FREE - but you must submit personal information, which these days is worse than asking for money. How many people exit the transaction at this point? iVillage, are you looking at your stats?

Word on the street is that astrology.com is about to face some stiff (and contemporary-looking) competition. Time to review metrics, conduct usability testing, and redesign this very outdated interface. I visit regularly and it seems someone has decided to experiment with varying placement of elements on the home page.

Other problems on astrology.com: No dates on items like Tarot readings. If today's cards are the same as yesterday's, why should I trust the site?

In closing: Clicking through to the Numerology offer, which requests full name at birth and full name used today, as well as email, does not offer a visible privacy policy. Oh, and the browser window titles don't match the pages.

iVillage's success with this site is at risk.

What is usability? Remove the jargon and it's just common sense.

What is usability and user experience? The Web is so full of jargon and buzzwords it's easy to easy to write off terms that like as more of the same. But, while somewhat clunky, these two terms do state exactly what they are. How usable is something? How good was your experience using it?

Let's look at a weather site for some basic usability. I need to know if my outdoor practice will be rained out tonight so I go to weather.com. I'm not sure where to start looking in the navigation until I see a search box where I can get local weather info.

Great start - right until a Mentos ad popped up and my fingers reflexively twitched toward the command+w keys. Like all the users we've tested, I hate pop-up ads that hi-jack the content I asked for. But I restrained my trigger finger and the info I need is available in a variety of presentations on the same page. There's not much chance of rain so I'm ready to gear up for practice.

Overall I was able to find what I was looking for right off the home page. Score one point for task-based usability! However, I'm not sure how I'd find anything without the search box. Let's see if I can find a satellite map of the weather in my friend's town, where she's been without electricity due to storms.

Starting from the home page, I click on the "maps" link under the big picture. The first things I see on the new page are animated ads. Next, a list of map options: outdoor activities, health and safety or weather details. I don't know the difference so I'll try "weather details".

Now there's another menu with at least 20 options that don't mean anything to me (US regions, US satellite, severe alerts, short term forecasts). When I pick a map to enlarge it doesn't identify any cities or get big enough to make an informed guess about what cities are under the glowing green blob.

At this point I'm muttering out loud and ready to just start Googling. That's a huge ding in the usability points - confusing your user to the point where she just leaves the site is exactly what you don't want to do.

Finding a satellite weather map on a site dedicated to weather shouldn't be this difficult. But the glut of options and lack of explanation about what any of it meant left me confused, irritated and empty-handed. Although it did leave me with inspiration for a blog entry about bad user experience.

Usability isn't about what you hope people will do or what advertisers want them to do. It isn't about being the most cutting-edge, the most expensive or providing the most options. Often those frills end up making something that's more frustrating than useful. Good user experience means your users are able to do what they need to do, simple as that.