It’s so rare I get a chance to write an article about a good user experience that I feel all warm and squishy about it. So here goes…
Yesterday evening I was sitting in the COSCA Counselling Skills course I’ve recently started and we were having a discussion about the books listed as indicative reading and which were the most important to read. There are a fair number on the list and most people simply wouldn’t have the time to work through them all. Continue reading
I just saw something in my Facebook news feed that annoyed and slightly upset me. That was my first reaction. Now I’ve had time to think about it, I realise that there are a number of different interpretations open regarding what I saw – so here it is in a nifty little screen grab.
As you can see, someone likes the announcement an RNLI lifeboat has launched in order to help or rescue a person or group of people who could be in serious trouble. Continue reading
Glasgow gained a new home for its museum of transport at the start of the summer. A wonderful architectural work by the legendary Zaha Hadid, the Riverside Museum is now open for all to visit and I have recently completed in excess of 20 hours at and near the building in order to assess the space for usability. I’m doing this of my own accord rather than having been contracted for it – which means I get to post my results to the wider world! 
The reason for this is simple: I have started to look at how I can expand my usability skills and services to include spaces in addition to web sites, software and real world items. A brand new public museum is the ideal testing ground to work out both the analysis stage and how to report it, so that’s the reason and location covered. Continue reading
The idea that a person should visit a website and be told how to use that website is an aspect that has offended me greatly for more than a decade. I have already made the decision what form of computer – desktop, laptop, netbook, tablet, smartphone – I want to use and some of those have limited customisation related to the nature of device. Smartphones and tablets tend to have just the one screen resolution while netbooks may allow a number of screen resolutions, but these will be restricted by the fairly small size of the screen for example.
I will have made other choices on the way I am browsing a website based on the web browser I have chosen to use, whether or not I have additional plugins such as Flash installed and whether I choose to run the web browser maximised so it takes up the entire available screen space or perhaps I may wish to have it taking up only part of the available screen and have another application window beside it. Continue reading
I’m feeling in the mood to point out what I find to be really obvious errors of judgement in design at present, so I’ve just returned to one that’s been annoying me for several weeks now and taken a selective screen shot to demonstrate my irritation.
The following screen shot from 1stwebdesigner is the start of an article on how to use breadcrumbs to enhance a website. A much more obvious point I believe it shows – is how to completely destroy a website design by placing a ridiculously large block of adverts between the title and main body of an article. Continue reading
In a previous article, Unsubscribe me from this hell, I commented on how difficult it often was to find out how to stop receiving email from some companies along with providing an example of an easy to discover and use unsubscribe option. In this sequel I look at Verisign, one of the largest providers of SSL certificates used to secure website traffic etc.
I am fed up receiving useless emails from Verisign. They contain no information and often use scare tactics (falsely, I might add) in order to get you to choose their product over a competitor. I am, however, lazy and it’s taken me years to bother to look for an unsubscribe link. I found it in the expected place – tiny text at the bottom of the email buried amongst plenty of irrelevant lines of words. Continue reading
I’m not going to write an article to accompany this one, I think it speaks for itself. The only thing I will say is that it was neither set up nor is it an error. Enjoy.
I’m not going to get into the nature of the title, you’re either going to get the reference and throw things at me or you won’t – and probably still throw things at me. Let me set the scene: I was in the West End of Glasgow near the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and had just finished lunch in the excellent restaurant, Firebird, with a friend. We had been diving into cafés all morning as there had been regular short-lived, but rather heavy, showers. As we were waiting for a particularly heavy shower to pass before leaving Firebird and walking in to the centre of Glasgow to meet more friends, we decided that there was little chance of completing the thirty minute walk into the centre without becoming drenched, so we walked to the nearby Kelvinhall underground station instead. For those of you wondering what the underground is, you may be more familiar with terms like subway or metro. Continue reading
Well not quite. Although I do want to talk about that nifty little “unsubscribe” link that comes along with, or should come along with, corporate emails you’ve signed up to receive (because we all know businesses won’t email you without your first having chosen to be contacted, right?). Assuming there is one present, I’ve usually found it lurking right at the bottom of the email, often in a smaller font and not unusually buried amongst a fair amount of irrelevant dribble absolutely no one except their legal department cares about. Continue reading
Last night I attended a Scottish Usability Professionals’ Meeting with an excellent talk and group discussion lead by Andy Bright of tattie+toppin which was hosted by Scottish Enterprise in Edinburgh. While there I had to use the facilities (apparently that’s a polite way to say I went to the toilet…) and discovered a very irritating light switch design. I’ll apologise for the poor photography up front, you would never know I’m also a professional photographer when I’m using the camera in my phone! Continue reading