Usability examples

Usability problems and some possible solutions…

David Rashty, Isaac Waisberg

What is usability?

• Usability is closely related to ease of use.

• Designing a usable website or product means understanding users’ needs and taking them into consideration: ALL THE TIME.

Why is it so hard?

• It’s common practice between developers to postpone non-technical problems to the end. But then it’s too late to make changes.

• Many usability problems are considered peripheral.

• Usability problems are difficult to quantify.

Websites work anyway, don’t they?

Yes, but…

The question is not whether they do.

It is how GOOD they are!

Real life usability

• People are trying to make things easier to use for a long time now.

• In this presentation we’ll bring some examples of good and bad design (and some smart solutions to the bad ones).

Good and bad examples

Learn from the masters!

Real Life Examples

Daily usability…

Which design makes it easier to match the knob to the plate?

Why???

Either drink or hear music!

Guess what is the little black dot on the floor?

How do you open this window?

People generally don’t comply to pre defined paths…

This design may be dangerous…

The street lights emit yellow light instead of the more typical bluish white.

The problem is that sometimes it is difficult to tell whether a light is a yellow street light or a yellow traffic light.

When the white opener is given to someone to use, they invariably attempt to use the can opener by cutting down rather than sideways.

Why?

Is that clear that you can turn right when the red lights are on?

Is this usable?

When trying to open this file cabinet users found themselves pulling the handle on the top (See arrow).

Guess what happened?

It seems more difficult than necessary to tell whether one ofthese is inside out or not.

One of the photos shows it inside out; the other shows it right-side out.

The best way to tell if it is inside out is to experiment a little!

Tabs

One line is enough

Placing the buttons on the tabs themselves, confuses the users as to the consequence of selecting the buttons.

If the buttons are placed outside of the set of tabs, the

user can correctly consider those buttons as controlling

the entire set of tabs.

Terrible designs!

Too many tabs…

A smart solution!

An alternative…

Additional examples

Usability and stupidity…

This is hard to read. In fact, many people have gone stone

blind from reading horrible pages on Web sites. You

could be next! Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration.

Please, please, never do this.

This is easier to read. The colors may not be very pretty,

but they sure are easier to read than the example above.

Also avoid colors that look ugly together.

After accepting Word’s suggestion see what you get!

Conclusion

• Usability testing should be an ongoing concern of every designer.

• Making things easier to use can’t be prejudicial…

References

• www.baddesigns.com - additional examples of real life usability problems;

• www.iarchitect.com - bad design examples of computer interfaces;

• www.useit.com - Jakob Nielsen’s website;

• www.usableweb.com - Portal on usability.

Thank you!