Posts Tagged ‘hownotto’

And this is supposed to get me up on time HOW?

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

I’m writing today about one of the more amusing electronic gadgets in my possession, namely my alarm clock.  I have an Emerson AC100 dual alarm clock (which seems to be not produced any more, judging in my difficulty in finding information about it online).  By and large, I’ve done right by it.  I really like the red LED display, which is sufficiently bright to see the time when I’m looking at it, but not so bright that it’s distracting when I’m actually trying to sleep.  The automatic time setting feature is a great convenience (although it screws up daylight savings). It’s relatively easy to change the alarm settings how I want it.

But that’s not what I’m writing to talk about today.  What I’m writing about today is the button configuration and how that affects your sleeping habits.  Here’s a guide stolen from the reference manual (’cause I’m too lazy to take a photo):

Emerson AC100 radio

Emerson AC100 radio

Notice the snooze button (number 10) and the buttons to actually turn the alarm off (numbers 16 and 17, depending on which alarm is ringing).  Pretty big size differential between them, no?  Just out of curiosity, I actually measured them.  The alarm buttons are circles with about a 1/4-inch diameter, giving them a total surface area of 1/8 * 1/8 * pi, or roughly .05 square inches.  The snooze button measures 4 inches wide by 1/2 inch tall.  If it were a rectangle, it would measure 2 square inches, but it’s smaller than that because of the curvature.  Let’s say it’s 1.5 inches.  So, that means that the snooze button is 1.5 / .05 = 30 times the size of the alarm button!  Furthermore, the snooze button has a distinctive shape and location, whereas the alarm buttons are shaped and positioned in exactly the same fashion as buttons which do things that are completely unrelated, such as adjusting the clock time and time zone.

So, the bottom line is – when the alarm goes off, which of these buttons do you think is getting pushed?  Especially in the dark, groggy first moments of your morning?  It’s like they made this alarm clock for people who don’t want to get up at all, and just want to hit the snooze button every few minutes.

I suppose making the snooze button easy to find is good because really, it would suck if you just wanted those few more minutes and you were half awake by the time you hit the button.  But making the button which will actually let me get started with my day hard to find?  No wonder people hate mornings.

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How not to do usability: Blue Cross / Blue Shield

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

There are times when posting about a really bad user experience is simply an effort to amuse myself and my friends in usability, and so we can perform the all-important task of acting snotty and superior for a little while.  Then there are times when posting about a really bad user experience is to draw attention to something which truly has a terrible and awful effect on the human condition.  What I’m about to post is an example of the latter.

So I was calling up Blue Cross / Blue Shield to get pre-authorization for something, when in the middle of the phone tree, there was an option for “If this is a life-threatening emergency, press 1 now.”  This is all well and good – an insurance company’s goal is to keep you in good health no matter what the situation, even if it’s only so you can continue to pay your bills – expect for the fact that by the time I reached that option, I had already done the following:

  • Listened to several options on the phone that totally did not apply to me, including “Press pound if you are a provider or a non-member”, and “If you’re calling for some other program, the number has changed to this other phone number” – all spoken in a voice that was a tad on the slow side
  • Entered my birth date in month month, day day, year year year year format, with those instructions spoken out in detail, followed by the pound sign
  • Entered my eight-digit insurance identification number, which is on my insurance card that I had to dig out of my wallet, followed by the pound sign

All told, I reached this option after about two minutes on the phone.  I have to say that it felt rather long even calmly sitting in my office – can you imagine if it had really been a life-threatening emergency?  And having to wait for that long even after looking up the phone number for the insurance company and dialing it?

I also wonder what would happen if someone actually DID get to that option and select it My hope is that they would immediately be taken to an emergency operator, but I almost wouldn’t be surprised if it just sent you deeper into the phone tree.  Repeat after me: “If you have been shot, press 1.  If you are being digested by a bear, press 2.  If you are on a boat that is sinking, press 3.”

In short, a good general rule of thumb (and this applies for lots of things, not just UX!) is that if your behavior resembles a Monty Python sketch – you’re doing it wrong!

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How not to do usability: Harvard W-2 form

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

So this might be treading on Usability Fail’s turf a bit, but I felt it needs to be posted anyway.  (Sorry Lee, you’re just going to have to deal with it!)  Anyway, I had to fill out a web form to have my W-2 from my summer at Harvard re-sent to my address in Michigan (since W-2s generally aren’t of much use sitting unopened in a mailbox in Massachusetts). The form isn’t much of a problem to fill out, so I take care of it quickly.

And then I see this:

harvard_usabilityfail

Wait, what?

Okay, so let’s ignore the minor usability problems for a second, such as the red borders on the text inputs that scream “invalid”, the placement of the text explaining which fields are required after you’ve already filled out the form, and that big brown rectangle that’s actually a textfield, not to mention those awful indented buttons.  What we have here is a monumental failure to sanity-check your error correction against real-world data.  Yes, in case you haven’t guessed, this form will not accept the city “Ann Arbor” because it has a space in it.

Now, I know for a fact that computers have no problem whatsoever in storing data with a space in it.  (Heck, my full name has a space in it, and this form clearly accepted that.)  This can only mean that someone, probably a well-meaning but poorly-informed programmer, made an explicit and intentional choice to deny city names with spaces.   Really, couldn’t you think of a single example of a city name that legitimately has a space in it?  You didn’t think of New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Antonio, or Kansas City – not even my hometown of North Plainfield, New Jersey?

I understand that this form is obscure enough that it wasn’t worth running a full-scale usability evaluation on it, and I could understand if this came up on the web form of a business too small to afford usability testing.   But I expect better from Harvard, one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

So, to finish this story, I took out the space and submitted the city name as AnnArbor.  (I think CamelCasing your city’s name should be the first step towards establishing the city as a hub for new technology – are you listening, SanFrancisco, SanJose and RaleighDurham?)  And sure enough, here’s what came the other day:

harvard_w2

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