I made a conscious decision to pretty much stay off twitter earlier this year. It is a terrible time-suck, it is a firehose of all kinds of things that will rob you of your sanity and faith in humankind. It also did not help my state of anxiety at the time.
Continue reading “RSS”Usability
Good design is useful
I love this as an example of great product design – inexpensive, durable, brilliantly thought out to fit a common pain point. The little magnet clips them to your toaster so they’re alway within reach, the tongs feel nice to grip, and perfect for fising out those smaller toasts that dont poke out far enough, or larger items that are a bit stuck.
I’ve used them pretty much everyday since I bought them (actually my kids did whilst on a random shopping spree in Canterbury).
The UX is in the bag
wtf gmail contacts?
So this probably got implemented awhile ago, but how the blazes are you supposed to know that contacts are found by clicking on the Gmail word with the tiny arrow?
This is an example of trying to minimise the interface at the cost of usability, with negative results.
Ready for liftoff?
This washing machine looks like you need a degree in rocket science to start a wash cycle!
Seriously, if you had to guess at which buttons and dials you needed to operate, in which sequence, and the logic behind some of the groupings is, how would you fare?
Coffee anyone?
I know this is an established design, but I bet most people don’t understand the affordance in this lid for getting liquid out and into your cup.
Going down?
This was in a shopping mall elevator in Turku, Finland. Can you figure out how the buttons relate to where you need to go?!
Marks and Spencer self checkout
This one has bugged me for a while. Seems like a disconnect between the software and the planning of the self-checkout terminal. Here’s what happens:
- You scan in your items
- You choose to pay (by card)
- You are asked to insert your card, so you move to the card reader and gaze at it…
- Meanwhile, the main display is asking you a question about cashback, which you don’t notice because you are staring at the card reader and waiting to enter your pin!
It could have been better designed by either having the card reader close to the main display, or having the question about cashback coming up before you are asked to enter your card (which makes more sense anyway).