Notice how Chrome actually also shows occurrences of “ae” when searching for “æ”.

The same thing goes when searching for “Ø”, “Ö” or similar accents: They will show occurences of “o”.

Usability wise, I think this is a rather good principle for end-user solutions, just like Google Chrome. But, but. As an advanced user, i would like to know if i can turn it off? Not as a general setting. Because the usecase would be that you search, and find too much. Based on this, if you search for something with accented characters, a new checkbox should appear. My suggestion (mockup):

This way, you will start with a “wide” search and end up being able to filter in more correctly.

Da Danske netbank for et halvt års tid siden opdaterede brugergrænsefladen, var det for at gøre banken mere brugervenlig.
En ting er dog blevet værre: Udbakke-metaforen. Nu er den gemt mere af vejen end nogensinde før.

Se fx her hvor jeg netop har lagt en regning i “udbakke” til betaling. Hvor lang tid var du om at finde den?

Lad os lige  spole noget tid tilbage. Danske bank proklamerede at man ville investere op mod 1.000.000.000 danske kroner i at gøre netbanken mere brugervenlig. De kalder initiativet “Bedre bank” (link til “bedre bank” info). Her er et screenshot med teksten “Vi investerer massivt i brugervenlighed”.

Fra danske banks website... men uden link til uddybning af konkrete tiltag

Jeg benytter mest netbanken til betaling af regninger. Udbakken er en feature, som opvejer en væsentlig ulempe ved Nem-Id sikkerheden: Jeg slipper for den irriterende Nem-Id kode ved hver transaktion. I stedet kan jeg bruge udbakken, og betale alle regninger i een samlet transaktion, så jeg kun skal bruge Nem-Id koden en gang for alle betalinger.

Som ofte før, sættes sikkerhed i modsætning til brugervenlighed: Der er den ulempe ved udbakken at brugeren selv skal huske at tømme den. Og i tilfældet med Danske Bank, er udbakken vildt let at overse.

Problem: Udbakke let at overse

Hvor lang tid var du om at lokalisere udbakken på øverste screenshot. 1 sekund? 10 sekunder? Har du ikke fundet den endnu? Måske vidste du hvor du skulle kigge på forhånd. Jeg gjorde ikke. Og hvor pinligt det end måtte lyde, har jeg faktisk også lagt i udbakken, og glemt at tømme den. (Det er vel sket 3-4 gange det sidste år).

Lad os lige vende tilbage til screenshottet øverst. Jeg har netop lagt en regning til betaling i udbakke. Sådan her ser skærmen ud:

Netbanken på billedet giver korrekt to vigtige informationer:

1) Udbakken er ikke tom, og
2) Statusbeskeden viser at informationer jeg netop har indtastet, er gemt.

Hver af disse informationer er vildt vigtige. For regningerne bliver ikke betalt før udbakken er tømt, hvilket i sig selv er en vigtig information, Danske Bank udelader at skrive direkte. Disse informationer skal have 100% opmærksomhed i brugerens bevidsthed, men fylder kun 5% af skærmen.

Og statusbeskeden står endda nederst, hvor vi læser oppefra og ned.

Det meste af pladsen bliver faktisk brugt på indtastningsfelterne til en “ny transaktion” (“kontooverførsel” på skærmbilledet ovenfor). Dette er sikkert med tanke på, at folk somme tider vil indtaste flere overførsler, når de nu er i gang. Men vægtningen burde være omvendt, så man ikke overser at man har lagt i udbakken, og at udbakken kræver opmærksomhed.

Mit forslag: Tydelig status, med link til handling

Når udbakken er i brug er den vigtigst, ellers betales regningerne ikke. Derfor SKAL udbakken fremhæves når den er i brug. Et par enkelte midler til at fremhæve beskeden er:

1. Flyt vigtige beskeder til toppen.

2. giv status større visuel vægtning (jeg har tilføjet lidt farve)

3. Lav link til handling (jeg har skrevet “vis udbakke” som link i statusbeskeden)

Det kunne eksempelvis gøres sådan her:

Bonustip: Advarsel hvis banken forlades med fyldt udbakke

Som en sidste krølle på halen ville jeg nok lige tilføje en skræddersyet meddelelse til en bruger som ved et uheld forlader netbanken:

“Din udbakke indeholder transaktioner, som ikke er betalt. Tryk OK for at forlade netbanken. Tryk annuller for at gå til udbakke”.

Eller noget i den stil. Tilføj beskeden både ved log-af, timeout, og hvis brugeren forlader siden ved at bruge browserens “tilbage”-knap, lukker browser vinduet, eller skriver ny adresse i adresselinien.

Bemærk: For god ordens skyld bør jeg nævne at  jeg pt. arbejder for en kunde (Nordea) der er konkurrent til Danske Bank.

In this case, I searched for “earth h….” and it suggests “earth hour 2010″ But on top of that, it inserts a link to the most relevant website directly. Smart and time-saving, i suppose.

Also, it does not clutter the suggestion box completely. Adding link to all suggestions would clutter the box, I think.

Also, I saw that google now shows real-time updates of news results inside the search result page:

Notice that scrollbar in the bottom of the screenshot: The result page keeps updating.

Oddly enough I ran into a few things during the install process that I think Apple could improve in their interface. (using Snow Leopard)

Apple should recognize a new unformatted disk inserted and show an install guide

I took out the old disk, inserted the new one, and booted the machine. After 1-2 minutes of nothing, a big folder with a questionmark appeared in the middle of the screen — blinking. No helpful text (no text at all). Just one big blinking questionmark on top of a folder.

Several things could have helped me here.

• Show a helpful message that boot disk is not found (it may have crashed or have been replaced)
• Show a note that to select a boot menu, restart the computer while pressing and holding the ‘C’ key.
• Detect that a new harddisk (other than the one used on last successful boot) is inserted, and show a message helpful for explaining harddisk upgrade steps.
• Tell me that I need to insert the Mac OS X disk in order to restore the system, restore backups, or install.
• After loading the Mac OS install menu from the Mac OS X disk, there is one big primary action: Install new OS on this computer. I rushed and pressed, but should have looked for the secondary options in the dropdown menus. An easy improvement is to add smaller, visually less dominant, but visible  secondary options (“format new hard drive”, “restore system from backup”).

Many of these points are pretty obvious when i write it now, but I know each one of them could have saved me brain cycles and time in the harddisk swap process.

I wasted 2 hours of valuable time here. Because of the missing help on screens, first I put the old hard drive back in. Then I put the SSD drive in a usb-dockingstation to investigate it with Disk Utility. Then I called Thomas to learn that I had to press ‘C’ at startup to force a boot menu. Furthermore I was too quick and pressed “Install new system”, before I found the dropdown menu and saw the menu item I should have taken: “Restore the system from backup”

By the way, It took roughly 3 hours to read 120GB from the TimeCapsule and everything was back up and running. Hooray for TimeCapsule.

Photos and more info from:

• njr 3.0:  Restoring a hard drive from Time Machine
• James Duncan Davidson: Restoring from Time Machine
• Legit Storage Reviews: Intel X25-M 160GB 34nm MLC G2 SSD Benchmark Review

The main points are:

• 1. Form Labels Work Best Above The Field
• 2. Users Focus On Faces
• 3. Quality Of Design Is An Indicator Of Credibility
• 4. Most Users Do Not Scroll
• 5. Blue Is The Best Color For Links
• 6. The Ideal Search Box Is 27-Characters Wide
• 7. White Space Improves Comprehension
• 8. Effective User Testing Doesn’t Have To Be Extensive
• 9. Informative Product Pages Help You Stand Out
• 10. Most Users Are Blind To Advertising
• Bonus: Findings From Our Case-Studies

Just to pull one of many useful findings:

1. Form Labels Work Best Above The Field

A study by UX Matters found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. On many forms, labels are put to the left of the fields, creating a two-column layout; while this looks good, it’s not the easiest layout to use. Why is that? Because forms are generally vertically oriented; i.e. users fill the form from top to bottom. Users scan the form downwards as they go along. And following the label to the field below is easier than finding the field to the right of the label.

Tumblr features a simple and elegant sign-up form that adheres to UX Matter’s recommendation.

Even though most of the findings are pretty much basic stuff, I highly recommend reading it and researching the linked articles in the bottom.

This example from Pixum (internet photo developer) shows a good detail:

The status message from Pixum gives immediate feedback that makes it easy to go to next step

Note that the status message contains a link to the shopping basket to provide easy way to purchase. This design decision will probably decrease number of abandoned shopping carts.

Important lessons:

Provide help where users need it — not hidden in help windows where people only go when they give up using your app.

Make sure that the most important action is the most visible on page at the current time. No need to visually hint the shopping basket until there is something in it.

Today I found that these two commands can do it for iChat for mac:

$ cd /Applications/iChat.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/
$ mv SmileyTable.plist SmileyTable.plist.bak

Restart iChat. (tip from MacOSXhints.com: Disable graphical smileys in iChat 3.0 but it works for me on Mac OS X 10.5.8 with iChat 4.0.8 (619).

Now my conversations look like this:

Which reminds me that I better soon write a short article on the problem of having the wrong and obtrusive defaults in your applications.

I’m managing a website for a customer and they want to have the AdSense program running on their site. Piece of cake I thought… First off I created a new AdSense account for the domain with my customers contact information and linked it to my own Google Account. I used my own Google Account because I didn’t wanted to bother my customer with the technical setup e-mails I expected to arrive. So my thought was to transfer the AdSense account to him at a later stage. BIG MISTAKE! That’s not possible.

But since I hadn’t activated the AdSense account yet – only created it, I thought I could just start over and create a new AdSense account for the same domain and link it directly to my customers Google Account. This was not possible. My customer got an e-mail saying the supplied information was identical with information on a previously created AdSense account linked to the Google Account [xxxxx]@gmail.com. It’s interesting to notice that “[xxxxx]” in this cause was not my own Google Account e-mail address, but actually belonged to a colleague of mine!

Why did Google write that e-mail address to my customer? My colleague had not previously created an AdSense account in my customers name. My colleague does not even have AdSense activated on his Google Account. I on the other hand have both. How did Google come up with his e-mail address instead of mine?

Closing an AdSense account

Anyway. I thought it would be best to close my newly created AdSense account and begin the whole process again. Now how do you close an AdSense account? Officially Google will tell you that if you’d like to remove products from your account, you just have to follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Google Account.
2. Visit the My Account page.
3. Click the Edit link located next to ‘My products.’
4. Select the product you’d like to remove from your account.

The truth is that I’m using 15+ Google products and not one can be removed this way. The only option I have after clicking the Edit link is to close my entire Google Account all together!

Reading the help page again I find that the small print say:

Currently, it’s not possible to remove all products listed on the My Account page. If you’d like to remove a product from your account that isn’t on the My Account page, please visit the Google Help page, where you can find extensive product-specific information.

Ahh… So I just need to find some AdSense specific information about how to close my AdSense account? The hunt continues…

After a lot of searching I find this form: Closing my Google AdSense account. I submit the form, wait and later receive a nice e-mail telling me that they are unable to cancel my account because I currently have “payment holds”. I must admit that I’m not entirely sure what that is, but since I haven’t ever used or earned any money with this account, I didn’t think “payment holds” should be an issue. They tell me, that if I want to give up my rights to get my money (what money?), I must fill out another form almost identical to the one I filled out before. The new form have the same name but the URL is slightly different: It ends with “cancellation” instead of “request_cancellation” and have this extra check box:

Why didn’t they just show be this form to beging with?

Well, after filling out the form I got this e-mail:

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us. As per your request, we have
permanently closed your account.

Finally!

Trying once again

After finally having closed my originally created AdSense account, I tried to start over and once again apply for a new one – this time also making sure to choose my customers Google Account as the one the AdSense account should be tied to.

But now I was told that my customer already had an AdSense account and I therefore couldn’t open a new one. What!? After looking at the e-mail Google had previously send my customer (the one weirdly specifying my colleagues e-mail address), I found that the AdSense account creation process actually had been put on hold and that the only option to get it started again was to delete my own (or my colleagues?) Google Account. There was no apparent way to let Google know that I just canceled the AdSense account “manually”.

Stuck

Now what? I can’t create a new AdSense account unless I close my own or my colleagues Google account – and I don’t want that! I’ve tried to reply to the e-mail my customer got from Google, asking them to continue the process – but so far no response. And why do they think that my colleague have created an AdSense account using my customers credentials?

Dear Google, please help me!

P.S. Sorry that the first post I write here in a looong time is a rant. But at least I’m getting started ;)

First attempt: After spending 10 minutes writing I pressed “save and exit”. but the article never changed.

Second attempt: Spent another 10 minutes writing. In the review I pressed Command+backspace to delete to start of line. Unfortunately, the webpage interpreted this as “back”, and since the Microsoft based system operates on the same URL, it effectively deleted my entire text. (pressing “forward” brought up the old text)

Obviously, I should have pressed Option+backspace.

Third attempt: Accidentally hit Command+Backspace after 3 minutes of writing. So now I’m giving up! I decided I will NOT change that article, so the information in it will remain outdated until somebody more patient decide to change it!

Worst issue I have with this system: it’s very easy to make irreversible mistakes! (which I think is one of the 3 most important issues that Usability can address: Make it hard to make mistakes).

I wonder if you have similar experiences from your daily life with IT systems? I also wonder if anybody has measured productivity losses like this in IT systems?

Related articles:

• 3 Simple Usability Tips For Developers (Feb. 2008)
• Jef Raskin’s First Law of Interface Design Explained (March 2009)

You see the list of files, then click delete on the row you want to delete.The row then appears “selected” (the darker colored rows at the bottom). What confused me was that it still says “delete” followed by an “X” icon that usually means “delete”.

Now, to to delete, press “save changes” below the rows.

This layout is close to the old-school principle with checkboxes adjacent to the rows. This example is seen in Hotmail (where I think it originated 13 years ago).

In my opinion, the new Google Groups style mass deletion could do better:

First, the selected rows must have visual clue that it will be “deleted” — not a “delete” action (icon) that suggests further interaction is needed.

Second, change wording on button to “delete selected messages”. Or, better yet: The button should be permanently disabled and enabled only when at least one row is selected.