Quick!  Match the following menu items to the type of food.  Your choices are: Burritos, Fajitas, Quesadilla, Salads, Nachos and Tacos.  GO!!

• Alfredo Garcia
• Art Vandalay
• Billy Barou
• Close Talker
• Fat Sam
• Homewrecker
• I Said Posse
• Joey Bag of Donuts
• John Coctostan
• Pinky Tuscadero
• Ruprict
• Sherman Klump
• The Full Monty
• The Other Lewinsky
• The Ugly Naked Guy
• Triple Lindy

So, how’d you do? 

Beyond the fact that these names say nothing about the food items they represent, I don’t even recognize several of them from American popular culture.  Imagine now that you’re a foreigner that has never been exposed to TV. 

To be fair, this menu has descriptions of each item categorized by type of food. But the point is that if you were just looking at the name of the item, you’d have no idea.  To top it off, you have no frame of reference for Pinky Tuscadero if you’ve never seen Happy Days.

I noticed this the other night when I went to order Chinese food.  I was using the menu I pulled off of my mailbox and noticed that they only had the title of the dish.  I have to tell you ‘Happy Surprise’ doesn’t sound like something I want to eat.   Sticking to what I know – beef with Broccoli, I may have just missed out on a yummy dish. 

Same goes for websites.  You may think that your product names or site navigation names are cute and ‘hip’ - but do they have meaning?  If they are cute and funny, is there some kind of context?  Does your audience understand the language you’re using?  Be careful what you call things on your site, you don’t want your customers missing out on that ‘Happy Surprise’.

Design and usability are to many “form and function” - the chocolate and peanut butter, and also the difference between an amazing product and a soon to be forgotten one.

I would like this blog post to be Round 1 of the debate over the design interface, the overall product design and its usability among the public. What this is not is a place to complain about Apples’ battery life issues from previous technologies or how Apple will be creating yet another design movement that will effect everything from toasters to toilets. (see iMac)

(Enter and exit Ring Girls and the sound of the bell)

iPhone Advertisement (use in action)

Product Shots:

You are a marketer. You send a promotional email - time-sensitive, special deal - only to find that the click-through rate was abyssmal. As you begin the witch-hunt for why the message performed so poorly, you discover that Your ESP and their email server are found to be innocent. 

What if your creative piece is responsible? In this age of image-blocking, the importance of email usability is magnified. To illustrate my point, I submit these three samples:

Exhibit A:  The worst case scenario and truly the default view in Outlook 2007 (and the way this email first appeared in my inbox).

Exhibit B: What happens to the email when it is delivered to Outlook 2007 with a common preview pane size and images turned on (today’s lowest common denominator for email software due to it’s MS Word-based rendering engine)

You see who it’s from, but you’ve probably seen other stuff from them.  You’re probably still left thinking, “So what?”

Exhibit C: The designer’s intended creative execution of a promotional email.

Bottom Line:  Send emails designed like this one back to the kitchen every time. Your emails will perform better and you’ll know that you’ve optimized for usability. 

Recently, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the first phase of an exciting new era in its web presence:

• Radical redesign of its home page.
• More ways to find information–by topic, A to Z list, popularity, lifestage, and more.
• Improved search engine.
• New topic “gateway” pages, such as Healthy Living. 
• 2.0 touches such as RSS, tag clouds, and blogs.

It holds great promise to make science-based health information easier to access than ever.  And I daresay it’s revolutionary for a federal government website. Remarkable when you think about the staggering amount of useful information that CDC houses–everything from outbreak updates to AIDS prevention to swimming safety. 

CDC 2.0 takes public health to the next level, indeed.

A few weeks ago I was talking to my insurance agent on the phone and I mentioned that I was going on vacation.  At the end of the call, she said to me “Have a great vacation”.  I automatically replied “You Too!!”… then laughed.  I was so used to hearing someone say “have a great day” or something similar that I reacted first and thought later.  Any of you that are Brian Reagan fans will recognize why I thought this was so funny.  He’s a comedian that does a bit about saying the wrong thing at the right time (audio clip in QuickTime.  Seriously, listen to it – it’s worth it!).  It got me thinking about saying the appropriate thing to the appropriate people.

I’m currently taking classes online at Drexel and they constantly send me emails about ‘on campus’ events and parking passes, an announcement obviously meant for people that live in and around Philadelphia.  It would be so easy to just create a database of people who obviously don’t live in PA and filter out those folks when they send these emails.  All they need is a zip code!  It often baffles me why more companies don’t take the time to clean up their data so they’re not saying something ‘inappropriate’ to their audience.  I’ve started ignoring all emails from Drexel – and every once in a while I miss something important.  But, it’s just not worth my time to have to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Drexel should do that for me – at least to some extent.

Actually, I prefer Spiderman. Or Batman. Or Wolverine… superheroes who are humans with some special powers born from a tragic event. Not some alien who just happens to look like a human being. Mostly, though, it drove me NUTS that people (namely Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen) couldn’t tell that Clark Kent was Superman. Puh-lease! They look exactly the SAME - save the curly cue hair, the glasses and the ridiculous speedo-y outfit.

Clark Kent = Superman (CLEARLY)

I highly doubt that if I took off my glasses and donned some spandex that people wouldn’t recognize me. Granted, the actual comic book version adds a few muscles to Superman, but it’s still pretty obvious. So – annoyed by the sheer stupidity of the folks of Metropolis, I refused to partake.

Then I realized that I’m contradicting myself. I have long rallied against calling the same thing something different – it confuses people. Case in point: Holcomb Bridge Road and Route 140. This road is an exit on Georgia 400 north of Atlanta. I’m driving up to Roswell on GA 400 for the first time and I see a sign just past exit 5 that says ‘Holcomb Bridge Road Exit 7’. Perfect. I’m at exit 5, Holcomb Bridge is at exit 7 – do the math. I pass exit 6 and I know I’m on the right track. Then – a sign – “Route 140 East - Norcross Exit 7a : Route 140 West - Roswell Exit 7b”. WHAT? Where’s Holcomb Bridge Road? Where’s just plain Exit 7? I’m going to Roswell… do I take A or B!!?? Luckily, I had the forethought to actually look at a map before we left and I knew that my destination was east of 400. The point is, I didn’t know that Route 140 is also Holcomb Bridge. Same Road, different names. I didn’t know if I was in the right place.

Now, I could see how people miiiiight not pick up that Clark Kent and Superman were one in the same. If they’re called something different and dressed differently, it makes sense that people wouldn’t necessarily see the connection – especially in different contexts. I had some context for Holcomb Bridge Road… I had seen it on a map. I had seen the sign back at exit 5 telling me it was at exit 7. I had enough information to make the connection. But, for a few seconds I almost panicked and caused an accident because I couldn’t decide if that was the right exit. For Superman and Clark Kent the situation is a bit different.

If the average citizen sees Superman during a daring rescue, then sees Clark Kent a few days later in the supermarket, they may not make the connection at all. How many times have you seen a neighbor or coworker out somewhere that you never expected to see them? Did you recognize them right away? I exit 400 at Holcomb Bridge every day, and the sign –while it still bugs me to no end – doesn’t impede my ability to do so. Of course, I still can’t resolve how Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen can see Superman and Clark Kent all the time and not make the connection! Ok, I’m back to being annoyed at Superman. I’ll stick to Spidey. No way you can tell he’s Peter Parker. AND – he has better tights.

Peter Parker = Spiderman

The point is, when you name something on your site or on any signage (say in a building) the navigation or signage should match the destination. If you click on Shoes, the page shouldn’t say ‘Footware’ (you clicked ‘shoes’, the page should SAY ‘shoes’). People need context and a sense of ‘where they are’ and ‘who and what is around them’. They may take a chance and see if it’s the right choice, then they’ll know that what they clicked is the same and won’t need the connections anymore. On the other hand, they may just decide that what they’re looking for isn’t on your site and leave. Are you willing to take that chance?

In a recent trip to the Bay Area, I had the pleasure of visiting a friend, who happens to also be a game designer and technophile. At some point I tried to use his computer to check my email and found, to my surprise, the most bizarre-looking keyboard I had ever seen.

Not only were the letters all out of order, but the space button was the size of a normal shift button, and placed only on one side! Being somewhat curious, and more than somewhat addicted to email, I decided to give it shot. After a few painstaking misspelled sentences, I began to feel perturbed. I realized my frustration was tied to the fact that I know how to use a keyboard, but this keyboard was simply not doing its intended job.

Later in this same trip, I had the mixed-pleasure of driving a Toyota Prius. Without any guidance, I plopped into the driver’s seat with the key, only to find there was no ignition, simply a power button . To make things even more interesting, the gear shifter was actually electronic and pushing the lever up puts the car in reverse, while pushing it down puts it in drive. Though I was excited by the new technology, I never really became accustomed to driving this car, even after several outings.

Certain mental models - like typing and driving, are so ingrained into our psyche that they become second nature. Forcing users to break these habits can actual cause physical discomfort. When does the benefit of a new technology outweigh the cost of frustration to the user?

The answer lies in the user’s human condition. The ergonomic keyboard is actually a source of relief for carpal-tunnel sufferers. The Toyota Prius, with its 60 mpg potential, is a huge relief to drivers suffering from the high gas costs (currently $3.30 in California). New technologies which break such ingrained conventions as typing, driving, or even clicking are more likely to be adopted if they are not forced upon the user, but consciously chosen by the user. As interface designers, it’s easy to get excited by new technologies such as AJAX, but if we want users to adopt, we have to find a way to make users see the benefit. How can Ajax relieve user pain?

My wife was perusing Art.com the other day looking to fill the walls of my 9-month old baby’s room.  As I was looking over her shoulder, I couldn’t help but notice how well certain aspects of their interface were designed from a usability perspective.  But then I thought…is it that the page is “usable” or is it “persuasive”?

It’s both really.  But the thing that caught my eye the most was how simple the visual layer was and how it created a perception of usability.  Are there only a few items on the page that make it simple?  NO.  And that is the beauty of it.  In a recent blog post, I talked about the Misconception of Clutter and this site does a great job of illustrating my point.  There are actually a lot of items on each page.  But Art.com has done a great job of stripping away fancy creative elements that don’t serve a purpose and uses the power of visual design to create not just a simple, usable page; but one that subtly persuades users to follow a path towards making a purchase.

They use lots of white and very light grey tones as the base color for the site.  What this does is allow the color they use for their primary calls to action to really pop.  It really makes the eye focus on the primary action, which is Add To Cart.  There is something about that shiny orange button that creates a gravitational pull towards clicking it.  Something about it brings me back to the old dot-com days where anything that looked interesting, made me want to click it just to see what would happen. But the reason why the button brings attention to itself is not just the shiny gradient color, but the absence of color around it.

My point with all of this is that I think the role of the creative designer is often underutilized when it comes to website design.  Everyone wants the site to look good and be consistent with the brand, but the creative designer plays a much more important role in User Experience design.  How information and interaction elements are presented visually are critical in helping the user clearly understand them, as well as persuade them into taking the action we want them to take.  Designers aren’t there just to make things look pretty…although if it’s pretty enough, it might make me want to click it.

The other day, I finally did something I’ve wanted to do for a while now.  I bought The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell.  I had first read his book, Blink, which talks about the power of the human subconscious and I had heard The Tipping Point was one of those “must reads”.  So I read it.  Well, I didn’t actually read it, but I listened to the book on CD. 

It was pretty interesting.   If you haven’t read it, the basic premise is that there are a few key factors that cause all epidemics in the world.  These epidemics can be viral diseases, the explosion of a popular product or even the adoption of a new technology.  The factors he talks about all tend to work together, but he explains that epidemics all tend to start with a collection of little things that have a compounding effect and collectively make a big difference.  Eventually when an epidemic spreads, there is a “tipping point” in which the small movement becomes a large one, seemingly overnight.

In my opinion, usability issues can have this same progression. One issue is no big deal; a second issue adds to that. But as the number of issues a user encounters increases, the rate in which they get frustrated and leave grows exponentially.  As a business, we may not put much stock in each individual issue because, isolated, it is “not that big of a deal”.  Often, however, it’s not that one issue causes a user to have usability problems.  It’s the compounding effect of small issues that builds and burns a negative impression in the user’s mind. 

As these issues compound, they eventually come to their own “tipping point”, when a user will decide that the cognitive effort involved in utilizing your website or product is too great to provide a positive return on their time and mental investment.  This tipping point can occur early in a session (i.e. if someone’s patience level is already low) or mid-way through.  They may even complete a transaction with you this time, but when contemplating a return to your site, they will recall that negative association and chose an alternative.

So the next time you’re thinking of dismissing a simple usability fix because you don’t think it’s a big deal, you may want to consider the full impact it can have.

I’ll try to handle this as tactfully as possible …

Out of the blue one day, a friend of mine declared – with index finger extended – “isn’t it amazing how your finger fits perfectly in your nose?”.  Uh, well, sure.  Not that I’ve ever tried it, of course =).  Finger-in-nose activities aside, he’s right.  I had never thought about that before.  This divine design is no accident.  It’s only until you break your finger and it swells up or you have a splint on it that you notice how perfectly it was *designed* in the first place.

The same holds true for web or interaction design – or any design for that matter.  We walk through doors every day, but we don’t realize how well most doors are designed until we pull on a door that should be pushed, because it had a handle on it (which affords pulling).  As user experience architects, our designs probably won’t ever earn outward praise from users, because ‘good’ simply means it works as it should – seamlessly and to the users’ expectations.  There’s also never one *right way* to design something.  It’s only when something doesn’t work (or something breaks) that design gets noticed.

So, the next time you pull on that push door, or you can’t figure out which way to go at the airport then stop and think about why the design is broken, and what could be done to make it better.