From The Archives: Usability

Enhanced metafiles, 16th April 2007

“When are those of us who build these tools going to start putting ourselves in the shoes of people that don’t speak C#?”

Visualise your audience, 9th April 2009

“I love the buzz of a big crowd.  It’s exciting to soak up the atmosphere created when lots of people are all in the same space at the same time.”

Dragging a big sack, 28th January 2008

“In the early days of any new product it’s really important that you choose your customers carefully.”

We’re not normal, 12th February 2008

“We’re not normal, but if we put our mind to it we can empathise, surely?”

Authenticity, 3rd March 2008

“Why do small businesses so often pretend to be bigger than they are?”

Don’t click here, 14th March 2007

“Even the most novice web users quickly learns that links are clickable, you don’t need to tell them where to click – unless, of course, you’re obfuscating your links by not underlining them and/or making them a colour that isn’t blue.”

Consumer Unfriendly, 7th September 2007

“Sometimes people don’t know what is good for them.”

Make it work, then make it look good, 29th May 2007

“What does it profit someone to have a site which looks like a million dollars but which doesn’t actually work?”

Thoughts about “users”, 14th June 2007

“There are only two industries that refer to their customers as users: high tech and illegal drugs.”

Getting to the third user, 29th January 2008

“The scene: some developers are observing their first usability test on some software they have built…”

Form Fail, 28th May 2009

“The quality of form design, in general, on the web continues to be a huge source of frustration for users and an embarassment for all of us who are involved in designing and building sites.”

Would you lick it?

From the Wikipedia page about Sugar Substitutes:

Aspartame was discovered in 1965 by James M. Schlatter at the G.D. Searle company (later purchased by Monsanto). He was working on an anti-ulcer drug and spilled some aspartame on his hand by accident. When he licked his finger, he noticed that it had a sweet taste.”

So, put yourself in that position.

You’re working on a new anti-ulcer drug and you accidentally spill some chemicals on your hand.

There are a couple of possible responses:

  1. “Bugger… I should wash my hands quickly!”
  2. “Hmmm… I wonder what it tastes like?”

To be an inventor you have to be the sort of person who is tempted to lick!

Chris Anderson on work and balance

Here are two nice quotes from Chris Anderson, from a recent post by Hugh McLeod:

On balance:

“Balance is a distant goal. In the meantime, I delegate,
work all the time, hardly sleep, totally ignore politics, sports and
pop culture, neglect my family too much and probably don’t do any of
my jobs as well as I could. But these are exciting days, and if ever
these was a time to be overextended this is it.”

On advice to school leavers:

“Don’t wait to be given a job to do something cool.”

Read the whole interview.

Previous posts featuring Hugh McLeod cartoons…

Books by Chris Anderson from Fishpond:

Loving Smack

Should a smack as part of venting parental anger be a criminal offence?

Should a smack as part of repeating habits passed down through the generations be a criminal offence?

Should a smack generating resentment be a criminal offence?

Should a smack as part of an instinctive (and lazy?) response to an undesirable or embarassing situation be a criminal offence?

Should a smack that you immediately regret be a criminal offence?

Should a smack as part of teaching children to not get caught next time be a criminal offence?

Should a smack as a genuine display of affection be a criminal offence? (what does that look like, I wonder?)

Should locking a child in a cupboard as part of good parenting be a criminal offence?

Should a hypocritical smack (‘How many times have I told you not to hit your brother? ‘) be a criminal offence?

Should a hypothetical smack (i.e. one that’s never given, because you don’t have kids) be a criminal offence?

Should a smack be a criminal offence?

That’s the question, isn’t it?

Notes on just working

I receive a PowerPoint slide deck via email.

I double-click to open it and get this error message:

PowerPoint Error

That’s a bit confusing.  It was just a couple of days ago that I was rudely interrupted by Microsoft AutoUpdate.  I had stopped whatever it was I was trying to do at the time to wait for the update to download and install (I’ve learnt from previous experience that it doesn’t like running in the background, and insists on constantly grabbing the focus, so I just waited while it did its thing).

Anyway … what to do?

I click “Yes”, and end up on a Mac Office 2008 support page headed:

I can’t open an Office document after I install Office 2008 SP2 Update

Looks promising.

“This is a known issue with Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 (12.2.0) that prevents some Open XML Format files from opening.”

In other words, the problem is because I have the most up-to-date version.

<sigh>

They promise a fix at some point in the future, but that’s not much use to me right now.

There are however eleven different possible solutions listed.

The first two start “Save your Excel workbook…”.  So, clearly this is not just a problem with PowerPoint, but you would think they could have at least had a custom error page for the specific application I was using.

The third “solution” is: ”Save your PowerPoint presentation, such as .pptx, .pptm, or .potx, by using 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows.”

All well and good, but it’s not my file and I don’t run Windows.

The fifth solution is: “Save your document to .doc, .xls, or .ppt format by using Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.9 Update or an earlier version.”

(the fourth, in case you’re counting, is another Excel only solution)

And so on…

My second favourite recommend solution, further down the list is: “Use the AppleTime Machine to roll back to Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.9 Update or an earlier version.”

But the best, by some distance, is this one: “Remove Office manually, reinstall Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac from the original installation media, and then upgrade to Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.9 Update. Do not upgrade to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 (12.2.0) from Microsoft AutoUpdate.”

I kid you not!

At the bottom of the page is a customer survey:

Microsoft Support Survey

I click “No” and then try to open the file in Keynote.

It just works … first time.