Category Archives: Usability Analysis

Jul 5 2011

Elevator Confusion

By: Manna Navai | Category: Fun, Usability Analysis | Leave a Comment

Too often I have observed visitors struggle with the elevator panel in our building. After a few seconds of watching them push a button, the light not staying on, pushing it again, them looking around confused and flustered I jump in and say: “You have to push 2R to get to the 2nd floor”.

The confusion continues…
They freeze and stare in dismay…
I push the button for them…
The elevator takes off…
… and then I point to the sign in the elevator hoping that it will clarify the issue.
(I don’t think it does, but the visitor gets to the floor they need to, and hopefully they’ll remember how to get there again next time.)

So what’s the problem?

Our elevator has two doors – front and rear – (hence the ‘R’ in 2R, 3R, etc.). That’s not really the problem. But it doesn’t make things easier either. Here are the main issues:

  • Expectation Typically the rear doors of elevators are used by people who live or work in a building. Rear doors are often ‘service entry’s’ (i.e. used by custodians, security guards, and all those people that make the building function), and they lead to storage spaces or garages. The everyday person rarely uses the rear door of an elevator, especially if they are a new visitor to a building.Interestingly enough, a colleague mentioned a situation where someone entered the elevator from the rear door, and unsuccessfully tried to keep the door open by pushing the ‘front-door open’ button. The problem was that it was actually the rear door that they wanted to keep open. Apparently they were very confused about which door was the rear door and which was the front door, possibly because their most frequently used door of entry, in their mind, was their ‘front door’.
  • Labeling When a visitor searches through the building directory for an office’s room number, they find a number ranging from 100 – 500. There are no ‘R’s involved. For example, Theatre Ontario’s number is 210. Under usual circumstances that would mean that by pushing the ‘2’ in the elevator, you would get to the correct level and find suite 210. Unfortunately in our building, they must press ’2R’, leading to many confused and frustrated individuals.Sadly, that’s nothing compared to what happens when you are trying to find a room in the 100’s. There is no ‘1’ button. You have to push ‘GR’ to get to the 100’s. (What??).
  • Organization The elevator panel does not help matters either. In the above example, even if the visitor realizes that the 2 doesn’t work and that they need to push ‘2R’, it will still take them a while to find the ‘2R’ button because it is not directly next to the ‘2’ button.
  • Signage In order to accommodate for all this, the building managers have placed a sign in the elevator, hoping that this will ease some of the confusion. Unfortunately the sign adds to the problem. It is difficult to scan, has too many words and the most important pieces are not highlighted in a way that stands out immediately.

So what’s the solution?
Get a new elevator panel!

If that’s not possible, then here are some other things that may help in the mean time:

  • Cover up/remove the buttons & respective labels that no longer function (i.e. : 2, 3, 5R)
  • Cover up the ‘R’s in the remaining, functioning levels.
  • Put a little label next to ‘GR’ indicating that it is ‘1’.
  • Remove the current paper sign and instead place a sign next to the 4 for ‘Center for Social Innovation’.

Ok, so I admit it’s not the prettiest panel, but I think it might help minimize all the confusion and frustration.

Sep 2 2010

Steven in Dubai

By: Steven LeMay | Category: Cross-cultural Design, Usability Analysis | Leave a Comment

We’ll go to just about any length to improve a user experience, but Dubai in the heat of summer? That’s crazy!
Working with a client to launch a new business in the Middle East was a great opportunity to explore cross cultural design and rapid prototype testing in a completely different cultural climate.

Dubai is a terrific launching point for cross-cultural design efforts in the Middle East / North Africa region. In one sense it is not so different from Toronto’s multicultural climate and predominance of English as the language of commerce. At the same time, it is very attuned to the individual cultures of its neighbouring countries. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey et al. are entirely unique but all have a strong presence in Dubai. As a global commerce hub, conducting business with its neighbours is Dubai’s reason for being and finding expatriates from all of its neighbours to ensure a broad cultural perspective is easily accomplished.

It was actually the meteorological climate, not the cultural climate,  that was the real challenge: at night it would cool down to 36° or 38° and during the day it would reach the upper 40s with very high humidity. To my astonishment, my glasses would fog up when I stepped outside and ditto for my camera lens (check out the ghostly final photo in the gallery above for a night-time example).

Nov 6 2009

Designing Online E-Book Readers

By: Meredith Noble | Category: Usability Analysis | Leave a Comment

I have heard more about digital books in the past six months than ever before! CBC’s Spark (one of my favourite radio shows) has recently discussed the future of books,  the concept of open text books, Harlequin’s approach to e-books, and the Toronto Public Library’s Digital Bookmobile, which promotes the library’s e-book collection. CBC’s Ideas also recently ran The Great Library 2.0, a documentary about Google Books’ massive digitization project as well as its “competitor”, the Open Content Alliance. I’d highly recommend a listen.

After hearing e-books swirling through my podcasts, it was exciting to get the chance to work on an e-book reader interface. If more and more content is being digitized, it’s going to be critical to have good interfaces to help find these books, and to read through them.  Usability Matters is currently helping Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) design a tool for doing just that. Over the course of the last year, we have helped OCUL run regular exploratory and evaluative user studies to better understand student and faculty needs with regards to e-books as well as online journal articles.

Part of our work has been to look at various online e-book readers (allowing books to be viewed with an internet browser on a desktop computer). Most online readers are nothing special, but when I encountered the Internet Archive‘s newest reader (released in April 2009) I did a double-take. This was the first e-book reading experience that actually felt fairly comfortable to me. The question is: why? I’ll look at an example using an old Eaton’s catalogue to explore more.

ia_ebook_reader_eatons_catalogue

Although there is a lot worthy of discussion on this page (some positives and some negatives, in my opinion) there are two features that stand out:

1. Ease of Paging Through the Book

Moving from page to page in the book is done simply by clicking on either facing page. Click the right page to move forward in the book, and the left back to go backward. This is a huge improvement over other online tools I’ve seen, as it uses direct manipulation, instead of forcing you to use paging arrows in a corner of the interface. (Note that this tool has paging arrows available as well — giving users options, and ensuring users who don’t discover directly clickable pages can still navigate the book.)

This “click to flip a page” mechanism is strong on its own, but is augmented by an animation of the page actually flipping over. One might argue this animation is unnecessary, but I find it provides a very strong sense of place: it is an elegant way of providing feedback to the user that their action was completed correctly.

2. Browsing Through the Book

The trouble with many online book readers is their precision. You must go through the book linearly, page by page, or else enter a page number to jump to directly. For me, however, a key activity when I pick up a book (particularly a non-fiction book) is flipping through it, getting a sense of its structure and content.

This reader is the first I’ve discovered that makes this browsing activity possible on the computer. Note that much like a regular book, you can see the edges of pages behind the pages you’re reading. You can mouse over these page edges, and flip to a different section of the book. You can’t go to a specific page this way, but you could flip roughly to the middle of the book, or close to the end. The lack of precision is the charm here. I of course could type a random number into a “Go to page” widget at the top of the page, but that takes work: both work to type, and work to come up with a random number. In this interface, I just click randomly. I love it.

ia_ebook_reader_eatons_catalogue_flip_pgs

The movement of these pages also helps create a sense of place for the user as they read the book. They can tell at a glance that they are halfway through the book, instead of having to process a series of page numbers (like “page 63 of 194″).

One of the most interesting things about my love for these interface elements is the fact that the eight users we studied were either uninterested in or ambivalent towards a two-page view of a book. This is likely because they are reading in an academic context, whereas my goal with the tool so far has been to browse interesting old books. Still, I am extremely curious how they will react when they see this version, and if it will change their minds about the merits of facing-page e-book designs. I’ll let you know how it goes!