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 the second part of my blog on the memorability of interface designs.

What factors make an interface design more memorable?

According to TNL.net, there are two main factors that make a user interface design intuitive and memorable. One of these is through the use of visual cues. The very first thing that users are always confronted with is, obviously, the interface design that they lay eyes on. A good degree of visual cues are needed in order to allow users to scan and understand, for example, a web page quickly. Icons, symbols and other visual cues allow the user to make related associations with the task at hand. For example, when a user sees the „Home“ icon that looks like a small house he will be able to make the association, intuitively, that this icon will take him to the homepage. Visual cues that are logical and familiar to users allow them to make logical and familiar associations that make the user interface more memorable.

This applies not just to software but also to hardware ranging from microwaves to cars and can be traced back to Ivan Pavlov and the Behaviorism paradigm of Psychology. While performing an action on a user interface design, a user may often receive an unexpected reaction. If a positive emotional response is elicited from the user the chances are higher that the user will remember how the action was performed and what result occurred. In the same vein, an action that elicits a negative emotional response will also be remembered more easily by the user. No feedback whatsoever does not do much to engender the formation of new memories! The point is, both reactions make the feature more memorable because we tend to remember our emotional response to unexpected reactions. Of course, you might try to ensure that it is positive emotional responses rather than a negative one that reinforces the behavior.

Testing user interface designs for memorability

User input is needed in order to assess whether or not an interface design is memorable. An effective way to obtain user input on the memorability is to usability test the interface design. A good method is to assess how users use and remember your interface design by sitting them down in front of it and having them run through it. You should do this in several sessions. It is important that you use more than one user, as all users do not remember system tasks in the same way. You should do several rounds of testing, spacing the “run-throughs” by minutes, hours, and maybe even a few days. Note both the users’ unexpected reactions and their intuitive reactions to the visual cues. Interview and record your users’ feedback about the memorability of the interface design or have them fill out a survey — it is your choice how to collect the data. After you have obtained initial results, you can make the initial necessary changes to your interface design. Repeat iteratively until the user feedback shows that your interface design has attained a satisfactory level of memorability.

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.

One of the most common methods of gathering user experience feedback is to simply interview users about their understanding of a given interface design.  In theory, interviews should give you all the information you need to make the necessary changes to your user interface design in order to optimize the usability of your site or app for users.  However, interviewing is not always a foolproof method for eliciting reliable user experience feedback.  This is because users often tell you something different than what they have actually done with an interface, or maybe give you false information as to how they feel about the interface. Thus, there are pros and cons to interviewing users.  Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox gives some advice about how to navigate the pros and cons of user interviews. We will discuss some of his ideas below in order to help you construct an interview process that acknowledges both the benefits and limitations of the method.

The Pros

According to Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, interviews are most helpful when you want to “explore users’ general attitudes or how they think about a problem.”  Interviews help you get the big picture from your users and with this information you will be able to tell if there are any glaring problems with your interface design.  Interviews will also help you establish what your users think of the interface design in general, both their positive and negative attitudes.

One interviewing method that Nielsen asserts is quite helpful is the critical incident method.  This is an exploratory interview method which requires you to “ask users to recall specific instances in which they faced a particularly difficult case or when something worked particularly well.” Users often remember specifics, especially when something went well or something went very wrong. Posing users this question will allow you to gain some valuable information about the specifics of your user interface design, specifics which you can compare and contrast among the different users you are interviewing.

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.

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.