Information Prominence

Generally for every user initiated action the system should provide how to rollback the action. But, if the information is not prominent,though placed right in front, the user fails to notice and tries to look for it from where the action is initiated, and in this case the turn off InPrivate browsing option is not available under the Tools tab. The confusion begins in the user's mind and one of the most important 'E' of Usability, i.e., ease of use spirals down to drastic levels. It's strange to find this type of problem with one of the product giants like, Microsoft.

Look at the text marked inside the red rectangle in the figure, this information is what user would be looking to stop the inprivate browsing, but would not notice it though placed on the page because it's not prominent enough.

In fact, had MS put this info in a colored rectangle as I did would have been more usable and intuitive.

Simple things addressed intuitively are easily understood and make the products usable and pleasure to use. 'Don't make your users think'.

Repair the damaged first impression and rebuild the Trust Factor

First impression plays a major role in building the trust factor

I started living in a city called NOIDA for the past 2 years. And, I have a very low opinion about its infrastructure and aesthetic beauty. This is the impression I formed from the day I arrived, which is exclusively my own opinion though.

Yesterday, I went to sector 15A in NOIDA, oh! boy… I was simply mesmerized and thoroughly impressed by its planned layout, well manicured parks and clean black top roads, it gave me an altogether different experience. This experience has changed my impression about the whole NOIDA itself.

Now, you see where I am coming from, right. Well… the new experience has changed my opinion and uplifted the image of NOIDA, I actually started feeling much better everything about NOIDA now.

The image is repaired and the trust factor is rebuilt for a good period of time to come for sure.

Well then, can I replicate the above experience in repairing the trust factor of my online products?

Yes, I think we can.

Let’s see how…

If for some reason your current product(s) don’t enjoy a good impression amongst your users, which is the most important factor for building trust,hence keeps them away from your site, thereby creating a irreparable damage to your reputation and business, what to do then?

I don’t want to talk about the marketing and advertising here, just from product perspective:

There are few things that go into creating an impression of reliability and trust with people. Here are a few things to consider:

Start a blog, use the social media and then

1. Have an assurance logo prominently placed on the pages
2. You write in a clear and transparent way
3. You show you're fallible and make mistakes, and admit and correct them
4. You provide free reports, tele-seminar access, and other info for free
5. You don't over-hype your products but deliver your sales copy with research,
case studies and valid testimonials
6. Tell your users that you are more than happy to answer their queries and
available 24x7
7. You respond immediately when someone comments, asks a question or needs
service
8. When someone decides to participate or register for a product/event/service,
the auto-responder confirmations, instructions and downloads are smooth
9. You allow refunds and guarantees without questions

What else do you see as an opportunity to create trust?

Usability or Advertising?

Every website owner’s objective is to increase traffic to his website. What decides the success then? SEO or Usability?

SEO ensures a steady flow of traffic but doesn’t assure the site usage, so… the objective of bringing in visitors is not making any business sense as the growing numbers and the amount spent on marketing and advertising is not in sync with sales figures, because each conversion is way too expensive.

The success of any business or product lies in its ability to create buzz and user loyalty. Loyalty comes from satisfaction (product Usability & User Experience) that’s derived from the first interaction. The satisfied or loyal users create the positive buzz and bring in more users by referring your product or service, this way the business grows exponentially. Why your users are satisfied and creating positive buzz for you? Because they found your product or service very Usable, hence the positive buzz.

Do you think without the product being Usable, is it possible to retain the users and enjoy their patronization?

Many businesses are in a hurry to increase the visitors to their site ,it’s understandable, they hire my consultancy for increasing the numbers and are willing to spend a bomb towards marketing and advertising too. And when I point out that their site is lacking Usability and needs to be fixed before going into anything else dampens their enthusiasm.

SEO ensures visitors to the site but doesn’t assure to convert them into users and retain them.

An analogy to make the above statement more understandable:

Let’s say that you own a restaurant. You start spending money on advertising and see more and more people trickling into the restaurant each night. But you notice something peculiar. Some who come through the doors turn right around and leave. Others come and eat, but you never seem them come back a second time.
You start running the numbers and find that each night about X people are coming through your doors but only 5% stay and eat. You're selling about fifteen meals a night. You realize you have a problem. And the solution is... more advertising.
You know it's the rats and roaches that are turning people away but you feel that if you just increase your advertising you'll be able to sell more meals. It works. Each night more and more people come to your restaurant. Few stay but many more leave before they even taste your delicious cooking.

Now, the companies without finding the root cause, simply blow away their hard earned money on advertising, marketing and by hiring some self proclaimed quacks who are a mere termite to the company’s finances than being any value as such.
So… instead of fixing the Usability and User Experience of the product they just pilfer their money and energy on irrelevant things and eventually perish out of business.

Therefore, making the subjective products objectively with Usability will grow the business exponentially and create a positive brand image which helps raking in residual income.

Usability Quotes

This page is a collection of quotations related to usability, communication and design. They were collected from all over the web and from books.

Usability is like oxygen -- you never notice it until it is missing...
- Unknown authors

It's quite normal for e-commerce sites to increase sales by 100% or more as a result of usability. More important, they can probably avoid 9 of 10 returns by eliminating most mis-designed items (a 1000% improvement of the error rate metric).
- Jakob Nielsen

Over the last year online banking has attracted 6.3 million users, but a massive 3.1 million of those have closed their accounts already due to poor website design and inefficient service.
- Internet Money Issue 4

While internet sales continue to soar, recent surveys from companies that advise e-commerce merchants put the number of "abandoned shopping carts" at between 27 per cent and 66 per cent.
- JS Online

A report by Creative Good showed that 39 per cent of test shoppers failed in their buying attempts because sites were too difficult to navigate. Additionally, 56 per cent of search attempts failed.
- Creative Good

Changes cost less when made earlier in the development life cycle. Twenty changes in a project, at 32 hours per change and [a minimal] hourly rate of $35, would cost $22,400. Reducing this to 8 hours per change would reduce the cost to $5,600. Savings = $16,800.
- Human Factors International, 2001

Usability techniques allowed a high-tech company to reduce the time spent on one tedious development task by 40%.
- Bias & Mayhew, 1994

Speeding up development is a key goal for integrating usability effectively into product development. A one-quarter delay in bringing a product to market may result in the loss of 50% of the product's profit.
- Bias & Mayhew, 1994

Sun Microsystems has shown how spending about $20,000 could yield a savings of $152 million dollars. Each and every dollar invested could return $7,500 in savings.
- Rhodes, 2000

Online shoppers spend most of their time and money at websites with the best usability.
- Nielsen, 1998

Good navigation and website design make it easier for users to find what they're looking for and to buy it once they've found it.
- Donahue, 2001

You can increase sales on your site as much as 225% by providing sufficient product information to your customers at the right time.
- UI Engineering, 2001

The magnitude of usability improvements is usually large. This is not a matter of increasing use by a few percent. It is common for usability efforts to result in a hundred percent or more increase in traffic or sales.
- Nielsen, July 1999

Convoluted e-commerce sites can lose up to half of their potential sales if customers can't find merchandise, according to Forrester Research, Inc.
- Kalin, 1999

At HomePortfolio.com we monitored site traffic, observed consumers in usability studies and worked with internal business groups. This helped us make changes that made the site's purpose clearer and increased transaction rates measurably. The change increased the traffic up 129% the week we put it up.
- Interaction Design, Inc., 2001

More than 83 percent of Internet users are likely to leave a web site if they feel they have to make too many clicks to find what they're looking for.
- Arthur Andersen, 2001

What users want is convenience and results.
- Jef Raskin

Bad design can cost a Web site 40 percent of repeat traffic. A good design can keep them coming back. A few tests can make the difference.
- Kalin, 1999

In a 1999 study of Web users, respondents were asked to list the five most important reasons to shop on the Web. Even though low prices definitely do attract customers, pricing was only the third-most important issue for respondents. Most of the answers were related to making it easy, pleasant, and efficient to buy. The top reason was "Easy to place an order" by 83% of the respondents.
- Nielsen, February 1999

The importance of having a competitive edge in usability may be even more pronounced for e-commerce sites. Such sites commonly drive away nearly half of repeat business by not making it easy for visitors to find the information they need.
- Manning

The repeat customers are most valuable: new users at one e-commerce site studied spent an average of $127 per purchase, while repeat users spent almost twice as much, with an average of $251.
- Nielsen, August 1, 1997

A study from Zona Research found that 62% of Web shoppers have given up looking for the item they wanted to buy online (and 20% had given up more than three times during a two-month period).
- Nielsen, October 1998

In Jared Spool's study of 15 large commercial sites, users could only find information 42% of the time even though they were taken to the correct home page before they were given the test tasks.
- Nielsen, October 1998

A major computer company spent $20,700 on usability work to improve the sign-on procedure in a system used by several thousand people. The resulting productivity improvement saved the company $41,700 the first day the system was used.
- Bias & Mayhew, 1994

To build a model intranet, Bay Networks spent $3 million and two years studying the different ways people think about the same thing. The result: all think alike about the $10 million saved each year.
- Fabris, 1999

Inadequate use of usability engineering methods in software development projects have been estimated to cost the US economy about $30 billion per year in lost productivity.
- Nielsen, August 28, 1997

When systems match user needs, satisfaction often improves dramatically. In a 1992 Gartner Group study, usability methods raised user satisfaction ratings for a system by 40%.
- Bias & Mayhew, 1994

In Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, author Robert Pressman shows that for every dollar spent to resolve a problem during product design, $10 would be spent on the same problem during development, and multiply to $100 or more if the problem had to be solved after the product's release.
- IBM, 2001

At Microsoft several years ago, Word for Windows's print merge feature was generating a lot of lengthy (average = 45 minutes) support calls. As a result of usability testing and other techniques, the UI for the feature was adjusted. In the next release, support calls 'dropped dramatically'; Microsoft recognized 'significant cost savings'.
- Bias & Mayhew, 1994

Usability goals are business goals. Web sites that are hard to use frustrate customers, forfeit revenue and erode brands.
- McCharty & Souza, Forrester research, September 1998

The benefits of usable technology include reduced training costs, limited user risk and enhanced performance.
- Vice president Al Gore, 1998

A recent study found that 46.1% of the respondents considered a site's appearance important when assessing a website's credibility; information design/structure was considered only 28.5% of the time.
- Fogg, Soohoo and Danielson, 2002

One thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse.
- Jack Handy

Design changes due to usability work at IBM resulted in an average reduction of 9.6 mins per task, saving $6.8 million in 1991 alone.
- Karat, 1990

Design changes from a usability study at Ford reduced the number of helpdesk calls with resulting savings of $100,000.
- Kitsuse, 1991

Design changes due to usability work in one project at IDS/American Express resulted in savings of $45 million.
- Chalupnik & Rinehart, 1992

Don't make me think.
- Steve Krug

Make it as simple as possible. But no simpler.
- Albert Einstein

If the user can't use it, it doesn't work.
- Susan Dray

To err is human, to really foul things up you need a computer.
- Paul Ehrlich

Supposing is good, but finding out is better.
- Samuel Clemens

Right now you are a prisoner of each application you use.
- Theodor Holm 'Ted' Nelson, October 2001

Usability is critical for any application, but for mass-market software, usability spells success or failure more clearly than any other feature.
- Dr. Jerrold Grochow, CTO, American Management Systems

Fortune 1000 companies each spend an average of $2 million per year on site redesigns, without knowing if the redesign made the site easier to use.
- Forrester Research

Know thy user, and you are not thy user.
- Arnie Lund

Learning is remembering what you are interested in.
- Richard Saul Wurman

When asked to set fire to the logs in your fireplace, a friend will oblige cheerfully. Asked to set fire to your house, the friend will at least say, "Are you quite sure?" Is this kind of behaviour too much to ask of a computer?
- John Shore, 1985

Because every person knows what he likes, every person thinks he is an expert on user interfaces.
- Paul Heckel, 1982

Bad news travels fast. A dissatisfied shopper tells around 10 other people about the shopper's bad experience.
- Albrecht & Zembre, 1985

The average look-to-buy ratio on the Web is a paltry 2.7%
- Kadison, et al., 1998

Based on data gathered for over 40 clients, the average proportion of development budget spent on usability-related activities was only about 2.2%.
- Usability by Design, 2002

77% of users return to content and information sites because of ease-of-use. Only 22% return because the site belongs to a favourite brand.
- Forrester, June 2001

Most websites today fail basic tests of usability.
- Forrester

By the middle of this decade, 4 to 8 percent of all retail sales will take place online.
- Fischer, 2001

World-wide productivity loss due to bad intranet usability is about one trillion dollars per year.
- Coyne et al., 2003

In the everyday world, we want to get on with the important things in life, not spend our time in deep thought attempting to open a can of food or dial a telephone number.
- Don Norman, 1988

People have not changed fundamentally in thousands of years. Technology changes constantly. It's the one that must adapt to us.
- Michael L. Dertouzos, 2002

66% of all IT projects either fail outright or take much longer to install than expected because of their complexity.
- The Economist, October 2004

Employees waste an average of one week a year struggling with their recalcitrant PCs.
- The Economist, October 2004

IT complexity will cost firms world-wide some $750 billion.
- The Economist, October 2004

Microsoft in a recent survey found that most consumers use only 10% of the features on offer in Microsoft Word. In other words, some 90% of this software is clutter that obscures the few features people actually want.
- The Economist, October 2004

Call centre 'problem related' calls dropped by 50% overnight when a redesign was done with usability as a priority.
- The Usability Company, 2004

Traffic to 2nd level areas of the AOL site was increased by 120% due to an improved sectional architecture thanks to usability testing.
- The Usability Company, 2004

The great strength of computers is that they can reliably manipulate vast amounts of data very quickly. Their great weakness is that they don�t have a clue as to what any of that data actually means.
- Stephen Cass, 2004

If there is a choice, test early, because more than 50% of all defects are usually introduced in the requirements stage alone.
- Edward Kit

Based on data gathered for over 40 clients, the average percent of development budget spent on usability-related activities was only about 2.2%
- Usability by Design, 2002

Most software needs to be spanked.
- Alan Cooper

One survey of 6000 computer users found an average of 5.1 hours per week wasted trying to use computers. More time is wasted in front of computers than on highways.
- Ben Shneiderman

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling---the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration. Possibly this trend results from a mistaken belief that using a somewhat mysterious device confers an aura of power on the user.
- Niklaus Wirth

What most separates firms with a disciplined approach to customer-experience management from their peers? The use of primary user research. 68% of the disciplined firms report using primary research to understand customers compared to only 21% of the undisciplined firms’ the largest [gap] that we found.
- Forrester Research

Mobile Ad-Sense

Long time since my last post.Though I was aching to write one, could not motivate myself enough to do so, not because I was extraordinarily busy,but for getting sucked into the recession whirlpool.Now that I learned to live on the bench and started taking things easy and as my friend said,'hang in there', blogging this one.

I see great potential in mobile domain and tuning myself accordingly...

I was thinking of a product, how to make users earn through ads on their mobile phones.
The product would be like:
Premium ads, Non-Premium ads
Users subscribe to the service for a monthly fee, the fee structure would vary depending upon the type of ads user wants to place, upon which the ads will be played in place of CRBT. The earnings by a user typically depend upon the number of calls he/she receives. In order to make sure the ad is played to its full length, the service provider will allow the phone to ring for the specified time, which means there would be a lag of few seconds for the user to receive the call in real time.
With the potential to earn, the user may not mind this business model.Thereby, the mobile usage goes up which is a win win situation for everybody involved in this cycle
and would be a run away success as everybody wants to earn that extra dollar.
This is the basic idea and needs to be fine tuned to come up with the final product.
If there's a similar product already existing,please let me know.As usual, appreciate your invaluable comments and suggestions.
Thanks for stopping by and reading.

Designing for meta-cognition

There are two types of cognition. The first is normal cognition. This is the ability to retrieve knowledge from memory. When you are asked a question on a test and produce an answer, that’s a display of cognitive ability. The second type of cognition is meta-cognition the ability to know whether or not you know.

Have you ever been asked a question that you knew the answer to, but you couldn’t find the right word? This is called the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon and I’m sure we’ve all experienced it. You know that you know the answer, but you fail to produce it. If someone said an answer, you would know instantly if it was correct or not. In these cases meta-cognition exists without cognition.

In short, cognition is knowing, meta-cognition is knowing if you know or not.Both can exist together, but many times they don’t.

Therefore, web-sites designed for tapping meta-cognition helps it's users complete their tasks more effectively and efficiently and accomplish goals easily as there is less load on their memory. Because, recognizing is much simpler than recalling!

Christmas Shopping Woes

I am peeved about my experience with one of the online shopping sites recently. I set off redeeming my gift voucher and trust me it was a can of worms.

The shopping home page is miserable(cluttered), I bet my 8^th standard daughter would've designed an intuitive and superior one!

Online shopping is a big deal and I am surprised to see how recklessly and callously it’s done, playing with those silly animations on the home page around navigation is just unforgivable and ridiculous.

I am one who doesn’t give up easily, therefore I search for a couple of items through the chaotic product listing by going back and forth and try to add them to my shopping cart but can’t find the add to cart option upfront! So… I click on the product details(new page renders) and find the ‘add to cart’ option there, great God. Now how do I add the other item to the cart I’ve chosen to buy? You guessed it right, I have to hit the back button on the browser couple of times to reach the page, because there’s no option to go back to the page from where I started, I only have the option ‘Shop More’.

One hilarious thing about this site is that you find yourself signing in a couple of times though you are already signed in.

Well, I went through the rigmarole to complete the purchase and promising myself never to use this site ever in future. I give my gift certificate number in the text box and pay the balance amount through my credit card, you think am done with the transaction? Sorry boss, NO.

The transaction processing page shows up and gives a message ‘OUP Waiting for Gateway Response’ and I wait there for the message to show up ‘your transaction successful’ or something to that effect, but that doesn’t happen.Reluctantly, I call the customer support, and they sweetly tell me that the application has some problem and my money and gift certificate will be credited back between 48-72 hours.

48-72 hours? Holy cow! Why should I wait? Their inefficiency can’t be my inconvenience, right.

This is one classic example of losing business and customers because of bad design. Usability matters a lot for sites which do business online, when will the folks understand this simple truth and wake up to the fact?

Focus on Users

Making a great website or an application is not just enough, you have to deliver what your users want in a way they want.

How do I figure out what and how my users want? Well, there are many techniques and methods through which one can easily find this out.

If you are coming up with a new concept then you can achieve this through market research, individual interviews and FGD (focus group discussions). The data collected through these techniques and methodologies helps in understanding the user needs and wants and above all helps in creating the persona. Persona help us to create tailor made applications for our users, unlike one size fit all. Giving more than what user is looking for boosts the UX factor of the application when it is simple to use, non obtrusive, intuitive and without arrogance. If, our intent is to invite beginners with a great initial experience while also attracting power users whose excitement and expertise will draw others to the product, then we can achieve this feat without much ado by ensuring good User Experience.

In case you are coming up with a product which is already in use and has competition, then the technique used to gather data is more or less similar to the ones we have discussed above, however, in this case we will conduct extensive user tests with the similar existing applications to find out the usability roadblocks, pain points and user satisfaction of the said product. Once we have this invaluable data in our hand designing our product becomes pretty simple. What we are doing hereafter is just improvising the competitor’s product ensuring it is user and usage centered. Because there’s no point reinventing the wheel!

To design a great product and be best in the trade is not a child’s play, however, it’s neither impossible too.

Right from concept to commissioning stage, the product stake holders should have the clarity of the product and stick to that without deviation. Define product guidelines, abide to them, and follow the best practices and standards for coding, design etc to make the product a benchmark standard for others.

All said and done, end of the day, if we understand the users and focus on them, all else will follow on it’s own.

Being best is not an end point, but a starting point....

What is 49-O in Constitution of India?

49-O in Constitution of India

Did you know that there is a system in our constitution, as per the 1969
act, in section " 49-O" that a person can go to the polling booth,
confirm his identity, get his finger marked and convey the presiding
election officer that he doesn't want to vote anyone!

Yes such a feature is available, but obviously these leaders have never
disclosed it....
This is called "49-O".

Why should you go and say " I VOTE NOBODY"... because, in a ward, if a
candidate wins, say by 123 votes, and that particular ward has received
"49-O" votes more than 123, then that polling will be cancelled and will
have to be re-polled. Not only that, but the candidature of the
contestants will be removed and they cannot contest the re-polling,
since people had already expressed their decision on them.

This would bring fear into parties and hence look for genuine candidates
for their parties for election. This would change the way; of our whole
political system....... it is seemingly surprising why the election
commission has not revealed such a feature to the public....

Please spread this news to as many as you know...
Seems to be a wonderful weapon against corrupt parties in India ... show
your power, expressing your desire not to vote for anybody, is even more
powerful than voting.... so don't miss your chance. So either vote, or
vote not to vote (vote 49-O) and pass this info
on...

Use your voting right for a better INDIA

Don't make users think

Even Google can commit silly usability mistakes!
Recently they've launched Themes for GMail, the placement of information was prominent on the page, catches the user attention,Usable enough. But, when the user clicks on the 'Hide' and tries to revisit the Themes at a later time he/she has a mental load to figure out from where to access it.After spending a couple of minutes frantically searching for the link on the GMail, realizes that it could be under 'Settings', lands on the 'Settings' page and starts scrolling down the page to look at the term called Themes, doesn't find it.Finally, a smart colleague sitting next to him shows the Themes link on top of the page clubbed alongwith other links. The typical Usability problem here is the Placement, it's obvious to have it as top link,but lacks the prominence hence loses the Users' attention. Users would look for the information bang on page, rather than going through the navigation,because the teaching has not happened yet.Best way to teach users about a new feature is to display a call-out sort of message above/below the link which would improve the prominence to a great extent.

To support the above observation, I have done the User Testing with few colleagues of mine,including myself, we were actually scrolling down the page to look for 'Themes'.
Don't make users think!