Usability

I am feeling annoyed and frustrated with making bookings on he Internet. I’m off on holiday and thought that rather than drive straight through to the southernmost tip of England in one day, we’d stop off to see some relatives on the way. There’s six of us, so staying with anyone is no small undertaking. This time we decided to look for a hotel or B&B. Read more about: Thank goodness we have no dog! Booking a room for six people

A recent project to redesign an online form and create a version for mobiles reminded me, once again, of the importance of user testing.

According to Caroline Jarrett in her (very user-friendly) book Forms That Work, ‘Slot-in answers such as name, address, and date of birth are so well known to us that it is much easier and more natural to type them in directly rather than selecting from the list.’  For instance, she notes that it is difficult to scan options in a ‘Year’ dropdown because they look very similar. Read more about: So that’s why DOB fields are dropdowns

The topic of whether to allow users to check bets before they place them has come up a few times and often the arguments spread to the wider e-commerce world. Checking the contents of your basket before you make an order is common practice, especially for complex orders. Recently, one of our clients decided to remove the confirmation step from the checkout process to make it shorter, under the premise that “shorter checkout processes are better”. Read more about: Check your baskets but not your bets

I suppose like most people who work in the related industries, I have been having lots of conversations and thoughts about the iPad recently. Nearly all of them have ended with two conclusions: That the iPad is game changing (something I have not always agreed with); but no-one is really sure how. Well now I am convinced and I think I do know how. Read more about: The iPad is the latest business tool

Just like every year at the same time, a new version of the hugely popular iPhone was recently released on the market. The iPhone4 boasts a whole new range of sexy features like video calling or multitasking and, like its previous versions, is meant to take the mobile world to a new age. But despite all the hype a closer look at the device shows that the iPhone4 is far from perfect. Some important aspects of the phones technical specs have clearly been overlooked by the general public and even though it remains a state-of-the-art device, the iPhone4, I have to say is not as good as you may think. Read more about: The iPhone4 not as good as you think

I took the  iPad home for a few days and carried out some basic usability testing and below are some of my findings:

• Connect to my wireless network. All fine, except main CTA (after writing password) was amongst letters and looked equally grey)
• Watch YouTube videos – Eddie Izzard – great experience with the iPad sitting on my legs, picking it up every so often to show my husband who could also participate at a distance.

Read more about: Tasks with the iPad

A glass or two glasses of wine into a networking dinner recently, I found myself in a debate about whether the iPad would be game changing or not. I have some history of this subject as when we first started the company in 2001, we travelled the world testing Microsoft’s tablet PC to help understand how and where people would use it and what usability issues were apparent between device and software. Read more about: The iPad – will it change the game or is it just Star Wars monopoly?

The other day I deleted a note on my iTouch. I hit the little bin icon and just as I unthinkingly hit the red “delete note”, suddenly realised that I had not copied the phone number it contained – too late. That’s when it hit me that, contrary to a mental model acquired from long and intimate acquaintance with PCs, I did not have a recycle bin on the “phonetop” from which to retrieve the deleted note. Confusingly though, the application uses a bin icon to represent the “delete” action. Read more about: Does your mobile phone need an undo key?