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

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.

Of cause we should have noticed, since the amount of spam had dropped to zero. But now that we are receiving thousands of spam comments once again we know that everything is ok ;)

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 ;)

Furthermore, the principles are really, really good and deserve attention. I like that there is room for performance specific measurements (“every millisecond counts”) because long response times drive people nuts. I’m also glad they put in “Engage beginners and attract experts”: Discoverablility and progressive disclosure are important principles that can help ensure simplicity in the interface so the novice users are not frightened by too many options.

Google User Experience version fetched 2008-06-26:

Google User Experience

Our aspirations

The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is “Googley” – and will satisfy and delight people all over the world.

Ten principles that contribute to a Googley user experience

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.

The Google User Experience team works to discover people’s actual needs, including needs they can’t always articulate. Armed with that information, Google can create products that solve real-world problems and spark the creativity of all kinds of people. Improving people’s lives, not just easing step-by-step tasks, is our goal.

Above all, a well-designed Google product is useful in daily life. It doesn’t try to impress users with its whizbang technology or visual style – though it might have both. It doesn’t strong-arm people to use features they don’t want – but it does provide a natural growth path for those who are interested. It doesn’t intrude on people’s lives – but it does open doors for users who want to explore the world’s information, work more quickly and creatively, and share ideas with their friends or the world.

2. Every millisecond counts.

Nothing is more valuable than people’s time. Google pages load quickly, thanks to slim code and carefully selected image files. The most essential features and text are placed in the easiest-to-find locations. Unnecessary clicks, typing, steps, and other actions are eliminated. Google products ask for information only once and include smart defaults. Tasks are streamlined.

Speed is a boon to users. It is also a competitive advantage that Google doesn’t sacrifice without good reason.

3. Simplicity is powerful.

Simplicity fuels many elements of good design, including ease of use, speed, visual appeal, and accessibility. But simplicity starts with the design of a product’s fundamental functions. Google doesn’t set out to create feature-rich products; our best designs include only the features that people need to accomplish their goals. Ideally, even products that require large feature sets and complex visual designs appear to be simple as well as powerful.

Google teams think twice before sacrificing simplicity in pursuit of a less important feature. Our hope is to evolve products in new directions instead of just adding more features.

4. Engage beginners and attract experts.

Designing for many people doesn’t mean designing for the lowest common denominator. The best Google designs appear quite simple on the surface but include powerful features that are easily accessible to those users who want them. Our intent is to invite beginners with a great initial experience while also attracting power users whose excitement and expertise will draw others to the product.

A well-designed Google product lets new users jump in, offers help when necessary, and ensures that users can make simple and intuitive use of the product’s most valuable features. Progressive disclosure of advanced features encourages people to expand their usage of the product. Whenever appropriate, Google offers smart features that entice people with complex online lives – for instance, people who share data across several devices and computers, work online and off, and crave storage space.

5. Dare to innovate.

Design consistency builds a trusted foundation for Google products, makes users comfortable, and speeds their work. But it is the element of imagination that transforms designs from ho-hum to delightful.

Google encourages innovative, risk-taking designs whenever they serve the needs of users. Our teams encourage new ideas to come out and play. Instead of just matching the features of existing products, Google wants to change the game.

6. Design for the world.

The World Wide Web has opened all the resources of the Internet to people everywhere. For example, many users are exploring Google products while strolling with a mobile device, not sitting at a desk with a personal computer. Our goal is to design products that are contextually relevant and available through the medium and methods that make sense to users. Google supports slower connections and older browsers when possible, and Google allows people to choose how they view information (screen size, font size) and how they enter information (smart query parsing). The User Experience team researches the fundamental differences in user experiences throughout the world and works to design the right products for each audience, device, and culture. Simple translation, or “graceful degradation” of a feature set, isn’t sufficient to meet people’s needs.

Google is also committed to improving the accessibility of its products. Our desire for simple and inclusive products, and Google’s mission to make the world’s information universally accessible, demand products that support assistive technologies and provide a useful and enjoyable experience for everyone, including those with physical and cognitive limitations.

7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.

Those Google products that make money strive to do so in a way that is helpful to users. To reach that lofty goal, designers work with product teams to ensure that business considerations integrate seamlessly with the goals of users. Teams work to make sure ads are relevant, useful, and clearly identifiable as ads. Google also takes care to protect the interests of advertisers and others who depend on Google for their livelihood.

Google never tries to increase revenue from a product if it would mean reducing the number of Google users in the future. If a profitable design doesn’t please users, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Not every product has to make money, and none should be bad for business.

8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.

If people looked at a Google product and said “Wow, that’s beautiful!” the User Experience team would cheer. A positive first impression makes users comfortable, assures them that the product is reliable and professional, and encourages people to make the product their own.

A minimalist aesthetic makes sense for most Google products because a clean, clutter-free design loads quickly and doesn’t distract users from their goals. Visually appealing images, color, and fonts are balanced against the needs for speed, scannable text, and easy navigation. Still, “simple elegance” is not the best fit for every product. Audience and cultural context matter. A Google product’s visual design should please its users and improve usability for them.

9. Be worthy of people’s trust.

Good design can go a long way to earn the trust of the people who use Google products. Establishing Google’s reliability starts with the basics – for example, making sure the interface is efficient and professional, actions are easily reversed, ads are clearly identified, terminology is consistent, and users are never unhappily surprised. In addition, Google products open themselves to the world by including links to competitors and encouraging user contributions such as community maps or iGoogle gadgets.

A greater challenge is to make sure that Google demonstrates respect for users’ right to own and control their own data. Google is transparent about how it uses information and never shares data outside Google without a user’s explicit consent. Our products warn users about such dangers as insecure connections, different privacy policies on other websites, actions that may make users vulnerable to spam, or the possibility that data shared outside Google may be stored elsewhere. Google is reassuring but truthful about data sharing so that users can make informed choices. The larger Google becomes, the more essential it is to live up to our “Don’t be evil” motto.

10. Add a human touch.

Google includes a wide range of personalities, and our designs have personality, too. Text and design elements are friendly, quirky, and smart – and not boring, close-minded, or arrogant. Google text talks directly to people and offers the same practical, informal assistance that anyone would offer to a neighbor who asked a question. And Google doesn’t let fun or personality interfere with other elements of a design, especially when people’s livelihood, or their ability to find vital information, is at stake.

Google doesn’t know everything, and no design is perfect. Our products ask for feedback, and Google acts on that feedback. When practicing these design principles, the Google User Experience team seeks the best possible balance in the time available for each product. Then the cycle of iteration, innovation, and improvement continues.

I think this is a useful design pattern that can be valuable to most of our clients dealing with time-sensitive data.

It is time-consuming for an application to check if there are new payments on every request. This check is better off being uncoupled from the actual user request. Then, the check should be handled backend by a cron job or similar every second, minute, hour or whatever suits the data in the system.

The Paypal example has these advantages:

• Faster response times — does not wait for a backend account check
• Server less sensitive for extreme load because each request uses less cpu power
• Server can handle more users because each request ends faster

Any other pros or cons you like to add?

Technorati Tags: usability, performance, user experience, paypal, response time

Note how there is no confirmation when you delete and the items can come back pressing undo.

I really like this approach, and have long been pushing for a similar approach in projects I have worked with recently.

Now, there is a constant resistance (usually from a technical perspective), when discussing undo. And in the project I have worked in, none of them eventually decided to have undo. Here are the reasons I have heard from customers deciding not to implement undo:

1. Afraid of high technical costs
2. Prioritized new functionality higher than undo
3. Did not acknowledge the importance of undo from a user perspective
4. Did not acknowledge the annoyance of having to confirm the action over and over

In case you missed the A List Apart article by Asa, go read his brilliant “Never use a warning when you mean undo”. I could not agree more.

More info:
Alistapart: Never Use a Warning When You Mean Undo
Humanized: Undo Made Easy with Ajax (Part 1) and part 1.5

[tags]asa raskin, usability, undo, confirmation[tags]

So I ordered this DVD/harddisk recorder: Amitech 736 with all the right buzzword features:

• DVD player/recorder
• Built-in harddisk (I ordered the 250GB version)
• Digital tuner as a supplement to the analog tuner (better quality of recordings)
• One touch recording of programs
• Timer controlled programs
• Good looking

Features vs user experience

While the feature list was just what we needed, I wanted to put it in context with how it’s used in our home. The DVD is primarily for my 3 year old son Victor, so he can watch Bob the Builder, Koala Brothers, Postman Pat, Noddy, Curious George, etc., and occasionally cartoons recorded from morning television.

DVDs in the hands of a 3 year old get worn and it would fit perfect to copy DVDs to the harddisk. Most important feature! Second, to record the programs like Mickeys Clubhouse (broadcast in Denmark only Sunday morning, but could come in handy every afternoon if my wife and I wanted to calm Victor’s temper after a long day in kindergarden). Second most important feature: Record from TV.

But what always surprises me is that features are nothing: It’s how the features are executed. The user experience is very important to me (I’m a usability geek, of course). But as an end-user in this case, i found the following astonishing findings after the first weekend’s use:

First weekend, many wasted remote control presses

• Uses 25 seconds for startup. I can’t even eject the cd tray and load a dvd before the software is ready for taking my orders. Also there is no signal transmitted to the TV before everything is up and running.
   
• The harddisk is audible and makes me want to turn off the dvd recorder as much as possible. There is some kind of vibration noise that gets amplified by the (wood) shelf that the recorder is standing on. I’m trying now to put it on a silencer mat (magic fleece) I had to order in Germany. Dont know if it will work, but I’m now spending 16EUR to find out. I’d rather waste the money than live with the noise from the harddisk. Ideally, Amitech should of course use low-noise harddisks AND use a vibration damper that prevents harddisk vibration to move through the cabinet and down to the shelf. And of course some vibration-damping pads under the box.
   
• I tried to record some cartoons with the timer Sunday morning. Only Bananas in Pyjamas succeeded. (I recorded that as a non-repeating timer. The two other programs (Mickeys Clubhouse and Lazytown) dissappeared. They were set up as “weekly repeated” timed recordings. I suspect that the machine never recorded them. I can’t find them anywhere in the menu.
   
• No public forum for the product. So I can’t see, if anybody else have had the problems I’m experiencing.
   
• Not possible for me (yet) to record a DVD to the harddisk (not even when following the manual — Danish link). According to the manual I’m supposed to select the DVD at one point in the menu just next to the harddisk, but it’s not there. I have no clue if it’s me who’s looking the wrong place or something else? Could it be that the dvd’s are copyright protected? At least the system should tell me and show a disabled possibility.
   
• Different ways of naming recordings: One place, there is a keyboard for entering text, but some other places I have to use only up/down arrows for writing. (And here, the space bar is placed illogical after all lower-case letters, not before.)
   
• Channel numberings are strange: The two tuners are managed differently, so you have to set up channels for the analog tuner independently of the digital tuner and vice-versa. Each has in my case the numbers 1-4 in the setup menus. This makes it kind of a voodo-like experience using the channels outside of the setup. And result on my remote control: Channel 1 and 2 is actually the same channel (digital DR1), for some reason.
   
• Slow reactions to channel changes. We have only 5-6 channels at home. Whenever I press a number on the remote control it reacts slowly. For instance, I press “4″, and a status display appears on screen telling me which channel I a shifting away from. Approx. 1 second later it shifts to the new channel.
   
• The manual is written very feature-centric and not really user-centered. For instance, there are separate chapters on how to setup and manage channels on the digital and analog tuner. Ideally, there should only be one way to manage channels, regardless of if it’s digital or analog.
   
• After 3 days I’m able to use the following features without consulting the manual
  • play a dvd
  • watch digital channels
  • timeshift a tv-recording (I had to consult the manual to learn howto, though)

   

• I’m still not able to
  • Record a DVD to the harddisk
  • Record a TV program via the timer
  • Record a TV program directly

   

• Worst experience yet: My thumbs hurt. All the searching around in the menus. The timer programs I meticulously named but were never recorded. The searching for programs and features that I could not find.

How this could be improved

As you can understand, all of this is software-related issues. I’m very confident that the user experience can be heavily improved, and software can be updated, because actually, this is a very nice product with some good features, and it deserves to be used. Many eletronic products are simply put aside and not used. Videos with blinking 00:00 clocks that people never put the effort into update.What I really want to do here is not to criticize unconditionally, but to suggest some ways to improve the product. So with a colleague we plan to spend some evenings next months to come up with our own menu design. Furthermore, I hope that this can start a dialog with Amitech that can help them improve the product so that it works better for me in the context that I use it for.

The main areas for usability improvements:

• Menus should be reworked so that the functionality and the features are present and obvious at the right points in the the context of use.
• The content of the manual.
• Make features more self-explanatory, and make it easier to use the many features without consulting the manual.

Please use the comments here, if you have found any issues that you want to share, and also let me know which context you use it in. Also let me know if there are things here that is not important to you, and if there is other stuff that is much more important in your use of the product.

Feature list is cool, but user experience is more than feature lists. This hopefully will show, that user experience can be improved and hopefully in the future can sell products more easily.

Technorati Tags: user experience, usability, dvd, recorder, harddisk, amitech

What an interesting video. It will probably take quite a few years before this can be achieved by web browsers. I’m thinking that it will probably require an entire new image format to describe images that the browser can stretch.

Dr. Shamir’s webpage seems highly loaded, and my browser expects to use over 8 hours to get the 20MB report. Any alternative download locations?

Update: Mirror pdf document available at icdt.net – 20.3MB PDF (found via digg)

(via techcrunch)

Technorati Tags: crop, resize, stretch, photoshop, techcrunch

In my case I was at the net bank page watching my account. I pressed “search” to search for how to find the IBAN/BIC/SWIFT code for international transfer of money.

This action was enough for the netbank software to get insulted, and it immediately slammed the door behind me and logged me off. (The screenshot says “Log on” in top left corner).

Nykredit are one of the big financial players in Denmark, and like the competitors, I know a lot of effort is put into making the websites more portal-like so the website appears to be one connected universe.

That’s why it puzzles me that I’m actually logged off??? I’m sure that there is room for improving the user experience here.

PS I never found the SWIFT code to use for my friend to send money for my account. The search engine finds only information about sending money the other way (from my account to a foreign recipient). Ironically, I actually found the answer searching my personal email. It turned out I had asked the website supporters the exact same question a couple of months ago, then forgot all about it.

Lesson learned: Users tend not to use corporate website searches because they usually don’t find what they are looking for. This example was no exception.

PPS I can’t help noticing that this page has horizontal scroll and lots of HTML errors and warnings. Both things should be completely unnessecary with today’s standards of webdevelopment.

PPPS. Full disclosure: I used to work for Nykredit 6 years ago. It was a cool place to be and there were lots of skilled colleagues there. A few of whom I am still in contact with. Back in 1999/2000 I did a usability test of the netbank, so I know usability is in focus in the company.

Technorati Tags: nykredit, bank, netbank, user experience, uxp, usability test, banking, online banking