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.
Diversion?
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Danger! High Voltage
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
Unsubscribe me from this hell!
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
The design of a confusing light switch.
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
Auto-generated passwords.
When you create a new account on a computer, some software or a website, you will normally be asked to create a password at the same time. On occasion, however, the system will automatically generate a password for you without asking if you would prefer to do this yourself. There are a number of reasons for this and one, for websites at least, can help to reduce spam as automated scripts would have a great deal of difficulty discovering this new password, thus preventing the script logging in and pasting adverts all over your forums, comment fields or messaging other users etc. Continue reading
The usability of trains.
This morning I was travelling to a client site and, as it’s Friday and I really could not be bothered with the traffic over the Kingston Bridge in Glasgow, I decided to take the train instead of drive. This is quite a normal option for me these days as I find it more relaxing and get some time to read. This morning was no different to any other journey. I parked my car on a side street near Lenzie station and enjoyed a pleasant walk in with the warming sun at my side, bought my tickets from the automated machine on the platform (which is going to have an entire article on its own one day soon) and boarded the train when it arrived a couple of minutes later. After approximately twelve minutes and several pages further on in A Project Guide to UX Design, the train arrived at Glasgow Queen Street and I began to walk to Glasgow Central for the train to Giffnock where my clients are conveniently located just around the corner. Continue reading
Pondering the usability of a credit card.
I find myself wondering at their simplistic design while carrying such an important and complex function. A small, thin, rectangular piece of plastic with a few punched out words and sequences of numbers, a magnetic strip and, increasingly, a small almost square chip embedded within their upper surface layer. It seems like such an incredible feat of design that they provide such functionality and carry such a large amount of information while remaining such an unobtrusive object so easily carried by so many people.Yet it would seem I’m not quite so easily won over. I look at these plastic wonders and think “what a poor design this is… how have they managed to continue to be used for so long without making any attempt to improve their usability?” so it seems only reasonable that I lay out my primary concern for your consideration and, with a little bit of luck, to get you thinking just that little bit more about how the design of an everyday object affects how you use it. Continue reading