Category — Clickable Wireframes

Facebook’s new Places tool has sparked controversy in the last few weeks with many users feeling uneasy about the possibility of their location being made public in real-time.  The Places tool allows users to “check-in” at locations that are then shared with their friends in the Facebook network.  For the most part, users are able to control when they tell other users where they are – they must actively “check-in” and change locations (as opposed to the Facebook interface automatically updating their locale).  It seems harmless enough, but Places has a loophole that has caused some users to deem it the first step towards Facebook acting as Big Brother: By default, Facebook friends can check you in wherever and whenever they want.  This means that they can possibly check you in at places that you are not, perhaps getting you in trouble not only at work but also with friends and family.

You surely remember those times in school when you had to read some of the great works of literature in school. Whether or not you liked them, here are two examples of great poetry that we have turned into usability poetry, taking the original works as inspiration and exploring some of the topics of modern usability research. Enjoy!

Ode to a Skinned Interface Design
I went to the link my friend sent me,
And I saw what I never had seen;
An ad banner was built in the midst,
Where I used to click on the screen.

With no choice but to scroll down I did frown,
My friend’s interface design was upside down,
Like a tourist with no clue I looked around lost in town,
‘Cause there were no breadcrumbs to be found.

A millisecond too long I located local navigation,
Thinking ‘they sure could use a wireframe tool for their creations’.
With findability resolved these usability problems would dissolve
And, in tow, his search engine ranking would evolve.

This is part one of my blog on the memorability of an interface design, its importance and factors to consider when working to improve memorability.

What is memorability?

Memorability, in the context of user interface design and usability, refers to the degree of an interface design’s ability to be re-used by users without them having to re-learn the system all over again. The learnability of an interface design refers to the ease of use of learning to use a system for the very first time. But will users remember how to complete tasks after a gap of days, weeks or even months? The time it takes to re-learn a system or correct mistakes from incorrect use directly diminishes productivity, not to speak of the user’s motivation. This is where an interface design has to be maximized for memorability to ensure that it is easy for users to get back into the swing of things as quickly as possible.

Why is memorability important in the context of user interface design?

As neuroscience does indeed improve, it is now known that not using certain brain functions can lead to parts of the brain that handle those functions atrophying. In other words if we don’t use the cells often enough we can loose them. So it is with the navigation of interface designs. Each interface design takes some time to get used to and operate productively. Every time a user has forgotten how to use an interface, time is wasted and/or errors occur. If your interface design has poor memorability then users may even stop using it once they return to it and find that they can’t use it expediently anymore.

What to consider when designing for memorability of an interface design

There could be an inordinate number of reasons why a user could use an interface design wrongly. The key here is that learning and memory function best when the basics of the system are intuitive. Users learn and remember an interface design based on intuition of how to use the tools given to them. Yet, intuitive interface designs can be challenging to create because, after all, people are different. What can be intuitive for one group of people may not be for another group! One has to consider the target user of an interface design to make proper decisions. Is it an interface design for a tool aimed at computer scientists who have high technical proficiency? Is it aimed at consumers without intricate IT know-how? Is it aimed at young teenagers? This is where industry conventions are your best friend. If every word processing tool uses copy paste by clicking on Ctrl + C then that should be a standard you stick with when creating an interface design for such a tool. Another crucial thing to ensure is that users of different proficiency levels can use an interface design. Systems need to be designed to keep the basics intuitive with room for more complex operations to be performed as users become more experienced.

The Cons

According to Nielsen, the “critical failing of user interviews is that you’re asking people to either remember past use or speculate on future use of a system.” Interviews rely heavily on what people can remember (which is tied to the concept of memorability).  Thus, the main critical failings of users are:

•    Human memory is fallible: Humans can’t remember details about how they used a website and tend to make up stories to rationalize their loss of memory by either embellishing what they do remember or disclosing tentative or false information about what they don’t remember.
•    Users are pragmatic and concrete: Since users usually have no idea how to speculate about how they would use a system based on its description alone.  Users can use what is in front of them but not guess about how they would use an interface design that they have not been exposed to.

The main problem with interviews is that one cannot reliably collect concrete information about the specifics of a user interface design.

What interviews tell you and how you can use them

The main benefit of interview is, according to Nielsen, “exploring general attitudes”.  Interviews are a good way to understand the big picture related to an interface design, but not always the best way to measure details and specifics.  With that in mind, if you are going to use interviews as a method of collecting user experience feedback then use them in tandem with a usability testing method that is more precise or quantitative and allows you to get a better reading on the detail-based problems with your design.

In this two part blog post I shall look at findability and the crucial role it plays in the interface design of websites. In part 1 of the blog I shall explain what findability is and what the main issues are affecting findability on a website.

What is findability?

Findability, in computer science, refers to a user’s ability to identify and then navigate the interface designs of websites or web-apps. It encompasses aspects of information architecture, user interface design, accessibility and search engine optimization. The term findability is credited to Peter Morville who remarked that “findability precedes usability. In the alphabet and on the Web. You can’t use what you can’t find.” In this vein findability is two-pronged, on one hand dealing with users finding a website. On the other hand it deals with how users find things that they are looking for, such as the help section or contact details etc., on a given website. According to Neilson Online currently there are more than 1,733,993,741 internet users generating and interacting with vast streams of data. Findability helps ensure your website doesn’t get lost in the mix and, when found, not to be deserted by frustrated users who in all likelihood won’t return, barring a thorough reworking of the interface design.
If you are developing a website with a new user interface and are interested in optimizing your website’s ability to be located by prospective users on the internet, then it is important to infuse your design process with adequate research about the above mentioned topics.

Issues affecting findability on a website
Findability concerns itself with the effort to make a user interface design easily navigable or usable and to ensure that the interface design process is fully integrated and effective. Key to findability is the organization and representation of a user interface design.  This refers to among others, the layout, the use of breadcrumbs and local navigation. Are users able to easily navigate a website and find the services they were looking for? If they found themselves in the middle of a website (which happens often as people share direct links) would they be able to figure out where in the hierarchy they were?  These issues can easily be revolved by adhering to web standards and through iterative usability testing of wireframe prototypes created with the use of wireframe tools such as pidoco. Another important issue affecting findability is the qualities of your web-site’s content and how it is geared towards search engine optimization.

Several weeks ago Google updated their Google Images page interface design to move from a text-based to a more image based user interface.  The most noticeable changes include search image results that are assembled in a larger, more mosaic style pattern.  Google vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer also maintains that “stripping [the interface down] and highlighting the image” will be simultaneously enticing and beneficial for users.  The idea is that users will have visually visceral and instantaneous access to the products that they seek.

Further changes to the Images interface include the way Google allows users to view selected pictures. Users can now click on the desired image and it will be blown up with the website of origin shown as faded in the background.  Google will also be phasing out text ads and replacing them with image ads to further improve the usability and clarity of its interface design.

I recently came across an interesting gaming platform that I thought I’d share. It seems appropriate since there were several things that I noticed which stood out with regard to its interface design. Well, you’ll see for yourself if you read further.

OnLive is a new service that seeks to turn the gaming world upside down with a decidedly disruptive Web 2.0 approach. Thus far video games have been largely an affair of hardware, localized at that. You (which usually meant mum or dad) would buy a game console or a PC with the best possible graphics card etc… Once that business was out of the way all that was left was to buy the games. This meant buying a piece of plastic with data on it. With the advent of ubiquitous internet, downloading games directly to your local hard drive became possible through services such as Steam. However one needed compatible hardware to be able to run the software. OnLive’s premise is to harness the cloud and a web-browser for gaming. The games run on servers in a remote data center and the audiovisual output is streamed to your computer in exchange for your controller inputs. This means that as long as you have a good internet connection, the hardware settings of your computer do not matter. All very nice so far.

The latest iteration of Apple’s Safari web-browser sees the Cupertino based company renew its arsenal in the fiercely competitive browser wars. According to Netmarketshare Internet Explorer still leads the pack with 62.1% followed by Firefox (24.4%), Chrome (5.22%) and Safari (4.53%). The numbers clearly show that Safari has a lot of ground to catch up in the popularity stakes (especially considering it was around before Chrome). Although I suspect that a significant number of users of Internet Explorer use it simply because it came with their computer and do not see the need to for any other browser or use it due to company policy, this does not change any of the facts about this well-known browser with its familiar interface design, and Internet Explorer 6 on its own is still accounts for 17.17% of market share!

Competing in this setting, the new Safari boasts some great interface design features that increase the usability of the browser considerably. Safari borrows heavily from iTunes’ interface design even going as far as replicating Cover Flow and thus allowing users to view bookmarks and history visually as they would a photo album or album covers. Top Sites allows users to see their most visited websites at a glance in a cinematic interface design showing previews of the sites. These features of Safari’s new interface design lead to great usability. A photo preview of a website is recognised much more intuitively and faster than a list of URLs. Safari also scores usability points for its Full History Search which allows users to search for webpages using words or phrases from a website they visited, rendering it obsolete to remember complex URLs.

WizeHive, an online collaboration tool that lets users share files, manage projects and track activity with others in secure, private workspaces recently revamped its interface design along with adding further functionality. A great opportunity to look at some interface design questions. WizeHive allows users to track multiple people and projects through its project management system. Users can create workspaces tailored to a specific client for the sharing of key business data, notes, documents and tasks. In addition, WizeHive helps to automate business processes, such as job applications or contests, through its WizeApps.

What has changed in the interface design?

Perhaps the most notable change to WizeHive’s interface design is that the new interface design is now much more streamlined, thus saving users time when they work with WizeHive, which may potentially bring down costs.  As before the interface design displays recent activity within an activity stream like Twitter, but now up to five workspaces can be added to clickable tabs at the top of the screen for easy access in addition to a ‘More Workspaces’ tab to access other workspaces that are not displayed by an individual tab within the interface design. There are further little improvements that all seem to add to the usability and clarity of the program.

The Guardian, a major British national daily newspaper, has long received critical acclaim for its website which is also incidentally one of the most visited English-language news websites in the world. This success may not least be due to the influence of a superior interface design employed by the creators of the website, which greatly enhances usability. The website’s interface design is very efficient in layout and design allowing users to easily delve into the full gamut of news on offer along with clearly defined clickable breadcrumbs, helping users navigate easily to further subsections of the website.

What decisions led to this type of interface design?

An independent programmer name Phil Gyford has now offered users a unique streamlined way to enjoy the Guardian. Using the Guardian’s Content API he thought to tap into the need to consume news with the ease of a newspaper. No matter how well designed a newspaper’s interface design on its website may be, they all require users to actively navigate through separate sections. According to his personal blog, Phil Gyford “wanted something with reduced friction. There should be as few difficult decisions as possible, nothing harder than ‘shall I turn the page?’. I wanted to avoid having to make a big decision before reading an article. It should be as quick and effortless as possible, as close to how easy it is to start reading an article in a newspaper”. This statement speaks volumes to the importance of the ease of use with which end users (in this case the readers of the digital paper) can understand, utilize and navigate an interface design. With usability being one of the most noticeable determinants of quality online, its impact can not be overestimated, especially when addressing such a diverse audience as the Guardian does.