Usability

My Kindle just arrived. It came in a brown cardboard box, Amazon style, except that this was a different model box from the standard ones – more classy, somehow, with its black band across one end. Tear off the strip of perforated card at one end, and the lid lifts up to reveal the object of your desire: THE Kindle. There’s something of an Apple feel to the experience – white, smooth – lustrous, even? – hard, moulded plastic inside, no frills, and the dark matte grey device nestled, pod-like, in the box. Basic instructions on the screen clearly display a diagram of the device, its USB/power cord and how to plug it in – so clearly in fact, I first thought this was printed on the protective plastic film, and so did a couple of other people I showed it to. So far this is turning out to be a rather good customer experience.

With something like reverence, I take it out of the box.

It is thin, it is light and it feels quite solid. Maybe a tad bigger than I expected – one gets so used to mobile phones – but not much. Definitely an improvement on the brick-like paperbacks I’ve carried around before.

Hiding underneath the device, a concertina leaflet – brown, recycled-like thick paper, adorned with a jumble of printed letters surrounding “Amazon Kindle” and “Quick start guide” – a very understated design – which describes getting started. Beneath this, a deeper recess holds the power/USB cable, also in a brown card wrapper. Full marks for branding and packaging.

The first surprise is that the display does not look or feel like a screen – and this was also experienced by the few people I showed the device to – both asked whether it was on or just the “dummy” print on the plastic cover. By comparison, my computer screen seems positively garish. It really is quite an amazing rendering of black and white text and images, very close to what one experiences on paper.

I’m not saying that the device is perfect. By virtue of being so thin, it takes a while to find the best way to hold it, though one’s fingers do tend to naturally be positioned over the “next” buttons on either side. Unlike a book one holds open, with both hands far apart and holding on to something, here both hands are quite close together (both hands need to be involved, since you need to press the “next” button to turn the pages). It is unfamiliar, but not uncomfortable – though this remains to be tested for an hour at a time. One solution is to invest in a Kindle cover: the drawback is the added cost and weight, but the form factor makes it more comfortable to hold, and also protects the screen from various hazards in my purse, such as keys and pens and sundry items.

The books I purchased on the Amazon UK Kindle store are already loaded, with no delay – since the device was on in the box, they must have loaded as soon as I purchased them online, over the 3G connection. I’m looking forward to reading on the Tube tonight…The actual buying process and usability of the device will be covered in my next post – so stay tuned!

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…

Catriona Campbell will be speaking at the annual Charities IT Conference with  media celebrity Jackie Brambles. A number of Foviance’s charity clients attended last year and we look forward to seeing them again this year.

Catriona’s session will include:

Web Development & Content Management

Getting your website strategy right
- Optimising your website for maximum interactivity and usability
- Integrating your website and supporter database
- Engaging and embedding a new kind of giving and sharing culture for future generations
- Utilising video resources for an effective call for action

Catriona Campbell – Usability Expert
FOVIANCE

Jackie Brambles – Media & video expert
BROADSTANCE MEDIA

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…

I was asked to field test Apple’s iPad presumably as penance for mouthing off about how impractical and uncomfortable I predicted it would be to use. While I haven’t changed my mind about the iPad, I’m also pleased to say that I was wrong about many details. So just like Jacob Nielsen recently did, I can now reveal my first usability findings for the iPad.

For the record, I started writing this article on the iPad which I was given to test-drive for the weekend, but its not currently very easy to get any copy off the device when typing in Pages, I had to give up and resort to my laptop. Read more…

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 07/05/10 and is republished here with permission.

As I write this I’ve just got back to the UK after presenting at the eMetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit in San Jose. As usual I’m trying to process all the input I’ve had over the three day conference and extract some of the key themes. With over 40 sessions running in multiple tracks over the 3 days, it was impossible to cover everything but one of the phrases that kept popping into my head over the duration of the conference was “Signals from Noise”. It’s a phrase that I used in my own presentation to highlight the challenges that we all face as businesses in processing the enormous amount of data that we have available to us at the moment. The web is a very noisy place and the data it generates and the data that we collect is also very noisy. Our role as analysts is extract signals from the noise, to interpret those signals and to produce actionable insights. Read more…

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…

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…