Sep 15 2008
Everyday Usability – Help! I’m Lost!
As I mentioned in my Usability at McDonald’s post a couple weeks ago, usability goes way beyond websites. We encounter it everyday – in grocery stores, in restaurants, in forms we fill out at the doctor’s office, on street signs, and everywhere else.
It’s so important for website creators (whether you’re the designer, developer, content creator, marketer, or tied to the website in any other way) to constantly think about usability … and think about it from an *outsiders* standpoint.
“Is my website usable?”
“Is my website usable for people who know nothing about my website?”
Of course usability is important for your current users, however, the true test of usability is when your user knows nothing about your website, your school, your company.
So how can we get better at thinking about usability? How about thinking about usability outside of the web. Think about it in your everyday life.
Example. Imagine you have never been to Happy Valley before (perfect example right there – do non-Penn State people even know what “Happy Valley” is?). So, let’s say that again. Imagine you’ve never been to Penn State, University Park campus before (or anywhere near it). Heck, imagine you’ve never even been to Pennsylvania before. Maybe some of you (hopefully I’m reaching beyond Pennsylvania and Penn State with this blog!!) don’t need your imagination here.
Now imagine you’ve been invited by a friend to the University Park campus for a Penn State football game at Beaver Stadium. You know that the university park campus is in State College, PA.
You’re driving down a road, come to a light and see this sign directly in front of you. For those of you at Penn State, this is a real sign at the end of Porter when turning onto College Ave.
Quick, in 1 second or less, do you know which way State College is? Now imagine it’s night time.
Imagine you’re in the same scenario and you come across this sign:
Better?
Bad usability or bad design isn’t necessarly something that you completely don’t get. Remember Steve Krug’s book, Don’t Make Me Think? That’s exactly what I mean with this sign. If you look at the first sign for a few seconds, sure, you know which way the arrow is pointing. But, the point is that you shouldn’t have to *stare* at a street sign to read it. You should know by glancing (even in the dark, even when moving). Visual cues are as important as words. Even if those arrows weren’t arrows at all. If those arrows were just straight lines, you’d still know by the second sign that State College was to the right. Not so with the first.
On our websites, are we making people think? If users stare at the navigation for a couple seconds, they might get it, but that’s not good enough. How many of your users are staring at your navigation wondering which way to go?
The usability study I’m constantly asked about given my academic background is about voting booths. After the “butterfly ballots” and “hanging chads” of the 2000 US Presidential election, the United States turned to technology to solve the problems of determining voter intent. In the 8 years since, the problems have not completely left the voting booth and government leaders have not done enough to solve a problem that our local convenience store has achieved.
At Sheetz, a convenience store and gas station chain in PA and surrounding states, you can order made-to-order meals (aka MTOs). You go to the counter, select the items you want (pictures associated with each), the ingredients on those items (pictures again), the quantity of the items, and a printout of the specified order with a UPC to be scanned at the checkout. Foolproof? No. Good to way express and confirm intentions? Yes, and it comes with a reliably correct yummy dinner.
In Pennsylvania, ballot machines are electronic with no paper ballot. By law, there is not to be a paper record of the ballot. However, this raises concerns by citizens and civil rights groups that a networked system of electronic devices can result in vote manipulation by hackers and political miscreants. Also, the booths are text-only machines. The machines allow for a confirmation at the end of the ballot steps, with a final “Submit Vote” button blinking brightly in your face. Press it. Get an “I Voted” sticker. And that’s it.
While voting is politically satisfying, I don’t walk out with the satisfaction I’d like contextually. Sure, the “I Voted” sticker is great community guilt device and the numbers scroll on the TV later in the evening. I know that when Oregon’s votes are posted in November in wee hours in the morning that they cast their ballots online or by mail.
I don’t doubt my vote is counted correctly. What I think I miss is the feeling of sliding the ballot into the ballot box. That is the usability I think is now missing that technology hasn’t solved.
During the first post-Saddam Iraqi election, voters were widely televised celebrating and waving their purple ink covered fingers in the air. The first State of the Union address featured (largely Republican) Congressmembers waving ink covered fingers in a sign of solidarity with the Iraqi people. The public celebration of this low-tech voting method is, again, the usability I feel is now missing from our own voting process.
What I wish we had was a Sheetz MTO-like process. Vote for candidates, with their pictures associated with their names, color coded parties, and office. Confirm at the end, again with candidate pictures, names, parties, and office. Press vote, but also get a print-out with a UPC you take to the ballot box. The randomly assigned UPC is unique to the certain combination of candidates selected. In the event of a recount or electronic ballot tampering, the paper ballots are what’s counted by using a laser reader on the UPC. And, as a voter, I get the humanizing experience of democracy by getting to place a ballot in a box. And the all important “I Voted” sticker.
Matt – what a great idea! I hadn’t really thought of the MTO touch screens, but it makes total sense. Pictures, text, *and* an actual ballot to hand in. It’s so frustrating that a) we can’t figure this out and b) we can have consistency across states.