Usability is Made of Small Things

How usability is made? It is made of small things. Think about scenarios your users will use. Then improve them one after another. Think in categories of:

• ambiguity of operation

• clear messages shown to user

• speed of operation

• number of clicks needed to complete a operation

• possibility to work without a mouse

That’s not a rocket science. What more, thinking about small things, you can improve the application step by step. That’s completely different scenario than with for example performance improvements, where you often need to redesign big chunks of architecture to move out from a dead end. Usability improvements can be done easy in your next development cycle. Almost all you need is enough will.

The reason of all that evangelization lays in a list of usability issues I experienced lately.

• Error messages in Facebook. That’s so easy – hide your SQL messages, they tell nothing to most of your clients, they confuse users, they look unprofessional and they give out information about structure of your database, database engine etc. Give one of those funny error messages instead. Unfortunately, Facebook crew has still this step on the roadmap. Sin: unclear messages.

• Synchronization with Windows Mobile. I wanted to copy some music to my Windows-based Samsung i600 phone from the notebook. Should be easy: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, issue resolved, case closed. No so fast. ActiveSync which works as a middleman here can possibly want to make some encoding here, that’s why copying is so darn slow. First time I used it I thought the progress bar shows progress of copying the whole album. Shit happens – it was a progress of copying a single song… As a bonus the application you’re copying files from freezes until the process is completed. Sin: speed of operation.

• Playing music on Windows Mobile. OK, I’ve uploaded mp3s to the phone. I’ve started Media Player and found none of new music there. Ops, forgot to use the update library option (as it couldn’t be done automatically during synchronization). I’ve updated library and all music was gone. Ah, forgot to switch back default source for library from my device to storage card (as if it couldn’t remember how it was set before updating the library). And than finally I could start to listen to my music. Thank you Mighty Microsoft for your generosity. Sins: ambiguous operations and number of clicks.

• Setting up an internet connection via mobile phone. You want to connect to the Internet from your laptop through GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA/whatever connection of your mobile phone. You configure the connection and finally you have to type “number” which will be called every time you connect. I mean some cryptic chars like “*99#” which I virtually never remember. Sure, you do it once, until you’ll be forced to repave your machine, but even then it should be darn easy as mobile operators charge you for using the service (and flat rates still aren’t as obvious as you’d think). Sin: ambiguous operation.

• Logging into ticket reservation application. I travel a lot between Krakow and Warsaw. Almost always by train. I’m not sure how it looks like in your country but here in Poland we still need a ticket, as Poland isn’t so wealthy to sponsor free train rides (at least not for me). Anyway, I use Polish Railways on-line application to buy tickets at least once a week. I could write about its (lack of) usability for hours but for now just one simple thing. Every time I log into the application I have to confirm I agree with the terms of use. No information if something has been changed or not, just “confirm, don’t ask” approach. As you can guess the terms of use is quite a long document (16 pages actually). As I can guess no one is reading it every time (and most of users don’t read even once). If you see any reason to leave that feature there, tell me please. I see none. Sins: number of clicks, lack of thinking.

• Navigation in Google Docs. A couple of days ago I was working with Google Docs, editing very simple document. As you write text you probably use the keyboard unless you can steer the computer using mind powers only. When you want to mark the whole paragraph you don’t want to switch to the mouse and than back to the keyboard. In Google Docs you have to, because Ctrl+Shift+Arrow combination doesn’t work. And that’s not a sophisticated advanced operation – just everyday bread of word processor user. Sin: no-mouse navigation.

Every of those issues could be resolved in a very simple way. Neither of them requires much development or testing. On the other hand fixing any of them would improve user experience. You just need to think for a moment and have a bit of will to change them. Nothing more. Usability is made of small things.

Tagged as: software design, usability issues, user experience