Archives for 2012

I’ve observed a lot of user testing sessions where people are very nervous about clicking any kind of Facebook sign-in or integration button, expressing concern that they don’t know what it will do, and don’t want everybody to know everything that they are reading.

This must be a worry for Facebook, although it isn’t by any means universal. Only yesterday I observed a session where a woman explained that she was more than happy to share whatever news she was reading. “There is no secret in reading the newspaper. It isn’t porn” she said. But the longer legacy of “frictionless sharing” might not be lots of rows logged in a database somewhere, but an impact on the willingness of users to activate features that involve Facebook.

Źródło: The rise and #fail of the Guardian Facebook app, Martin Belam, Currybetdotnet

A to akurat słuszna obserwacja Jakoba Nielsena:

A second reason intranet usability has not kept up with intranet features is the increasing reliance on out-of-the-box design from packaged intranet solutions. Having studied the winners of many years’ Intranet Design Annuals, it’s clear that great intranet design requires companies to modify packaged solutions to suit their specific needs.

The default user interface will do you no good. Although it’s nice to use packaged software instead of coding everything yourself, the user experience remains your responsibility, and you must design a user interface that goes beyond the default settings.

Źródło: Intranet Users Stuck at Low Productivity, Jakob Nielsen, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox

Bardzo dobre (chociaż miejscami bardzo oczywiste) podsumowanie  Dana Saffera, autora bardzo popularnej książki Designing for interactions, zawierające rekomendacje jak najlepiej upraszczać interfejsy i doświadczenia:

• Remove features. The more features you have, the more complexity you have.
• Hide features. Use menus, tabs, dropdowns, etc. to make features available, but not seen until needed.
• Organize features. Cluster like features, content, and controls together under a single area (which can be hidden).
• Tightly align the user’s mental model with the product’s conceptual model. The closer you get, the simpler it will seem.
• Make every choice visible. Rather than hiding all choices under a dropdown, for instance, show them all.
• Conversely, hide some choices if there are too many to be reasonably scanned.
• Reduce choice. Take away customization and limit choices to the most often used.
• Smart defaults. Have them. Make them visible.
• Shortcuts. Make shortcuts to the most used actions in the product.
• Distribute functionality to the right platform. Decide where functionality should logically be located: device, desktop, web. Don’t cram everything onto one platform unless it makes sense to do so.

Źródło: Product Design (software): What is the best process for simplifying a user interface and experience?, Dan Saffer, Quora