I use an audio editing program called Audacity for various audio editing tasks. Most recently I used it to edit a sound file I created from a screen-cast I made using Camtasia Studio. I needed to be able to listen to a sound bite offline via my iPod.
I created the file but when I went to export and save the mp3 file, I was confronted with this:
I added a "Title" and an "Artist", but was overwhelmed when I had to decide a genre. I did eventually find "Vocal" (it was an interview from the web that I saved to listen to later). I had to scroll three times and read each and every genre name. Shouldn't this be in alphabetical order?
Once the file was complete I imported it into iTunes to add it to my iPod. When I checked the iTunes information I saw this:
All the genres in alphabetical order!
Should I really be this critical? Should I really compare and open source software to a software created by a multi-million dollar company? Well...yes. As far as any user is concerned, both software products are "free" - one can use them without having to pay for them. (Although a donation to the open source developers is accepted. If you use an open source software, make a donation in time or money. I do.)
If open source software developers want their software to be taken seriously they need to pay attention to the details. Looking for the genre in Audacity is hard; looking for a genre in iTunes is easy.
"Its just a check-box, that should be easy." This was a rallying cry from some of my fellow UI designers. "Oh, yeah. We can fix that in the user preferences. We'll just add a check-box." It never turned out that way. One check-box turned into two which turned into another tabbed panel, which turned into a wizard with a link to the company's web page... Well you get the idea. Design creep. If we had just stuck with the original check-box which was, actually, the best solution to the problem for this iteration of the design.
I've found that some of the most puzzling usability errors (for the user, not the designers) come from the simplest, but least thought out designs. Take, for example, the image below:
This log in screen is from a much anticipated and publicized portal I was required to use for an employer. We had been hearing for months how wonderful it was going to be, how useful, the answer to our prayers and then some. Trouble was, nobody could access it.
On the day it went live, we all got an email bright and early that morning encouraging us to log in, complete our profiles, add a picture, explore its features. Thousands of employees tried. And failed. I don't know first hand as I wasn't in either of these departments, but I suspect the HR department and Help Desk phones lit up like Christmas trees. I think the calls went something like this:
"It won't let me type my D# in." "I can't type anything. I tried to click in the box but nothing happens." "I can't log in."
About an hour later every HR department in the company had to send out an email explaining how to log into the new employee portal. Really? Anyone who uses a computer logs into dozens of web sites, applications, banks, etc. One can ask the generic question, "How do you log into a computer?" The most likely answer would be, "You type in your name and then your password." Simple enough. But that is not how the interface pictured above works.
Before we could type in a "D#" (user name/employee number) we first had to agree to the terms of use. Why would we assume that the last item, in what appears to be a list of items to complete, should be the first item we must complete? And don't forget that the first two items do not look disabled. They look as if someone can actually start typing in them.
And it get worse. We had to agree to the terms of use every time we logged into the employee portal. Not just the first time we used the portal. Not just the first time every day we used the portal. Every time we used the portal. This is an application that was connected to and sponsored by the Human Resources departments. Didn't they know we agreed yesterday? They know our job grades, our salaries and our manager's names, but they can't record that we agreed to the terms of use just five minutes ago?
I also do not know how many persons with disabilities worked for the company, but they would have an even more difficult time using the system. There is no logical tab order, in fact some controls don't have tab stops (the "Enter button") and the controls are not identified textually for screen reader users.
Guess what happened to the portal of our dreams? Very few people actually used it for its intended purpose. (The log-in wasn't the only usability issue, nor was the content so fantastic that people just ignored the usability issues.)
How much time was wasted by the Tech Support explaining that one must check the check-box first? How much time was wasted because the HR department had to write, then distribute the explanation email? How many customer calls were dropped because the phone system was over-loaded by employee calls?
I went to a local coffee shop this evening. I was going to get a cuppa joe, then sit outside and read my book. But first, I needed to use the restroom.
That's the problem. For the second time in four days, both the women's and the men's room were closed for cleaning. I understand that; the restrooms need to be cleaned. However, there was only one person cleaning both restrooms. Like me, she can only multitask in the vitual world. She cannot split herself in two and clean both rooms at the same time. Then why were both restrooms closed? (If the women's room is closed or occupied, I have no trouble using the men's. I just ignore the extra fixture.)
Well, long story short, one of the staff got a little snippy with me and I decided to send a note to the corporate headquarters of the coffee shop. I went to their website and started filling out the form. Name, no problem. email, no problem. Address, no problem. Then I ran into this:
"date of visit" Two things wrong here. Exactly what format should I be entering the date in? Is it "mm/dd/yyyy" or "mm/dd/yy"? Secondly, why am I "cleaning" your data for you? If I enter 8/16/10 and your database requires 08/16/2010, why can't you just parse the input text and format it for me? It is possible to do that - I've written code that parses text myself, and I'm not even a code monkey. (I'm a User Experience Professional - we don't write code, we just draw pictures of software. Hence the usability rant here.)
"time of visit" I'm not in the military, but I respect those who are. I admire them and not just because they know what time 21:00 is. I always have to do the math, and I don't do math well in my head. I always get it wrong. So why should I enter the time in military time?
I'm already rippin' mad, don't tick me off any more with your poor usability.
As you have probably read from my profile, I work for the online division of a large university. (I don't know if I can say publicly, so I'll let you guess.) One of my jobs is to determine how usable our online courses for accessibility for persons with disabilities.
I fell into this job; it isn't something I would have selected as a speciality. When I was a student at DePaul University in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) program (Note: it appears DePaul no longer offers an undergraduate degree in HCI - interesting), I debated taking the "Designing for Disabilities" course, but it didn't fit into my schedule when it was offered, so I passed. I finished the program and graduated in 1999 and was off to the work force with my newly minted degree.
Now, at the time, I didn't know much about accessibility, neither did my department manager. We had to learn. Fast. Very fast. Extremely fast, as the product was already about 60% complete.
Accessibility Tip #1: The time to think about accessibility is at the start of the project, not at the end. Long story short, learned fast, finished project, became a victim of the tech down-turn and got laid off, went to grad school, took the "Designing for Disabilities" course, graduated, got a crummy job, got a better job (the one I have now).
So now I determine if our online courses are accessible.
So how does a person who has a visual impairment use a computer? He or she uses assistive technology, in this case either a screen reader or a screen magnifier in addition to some of the built-in features of the operating system the person is using.
Accessibility Tip #2: It the person using the computer cannot see the display or cannot see the display very well, he or she is probably not using a mouse. People with visual impairments ("users" - the official term we UX people use) are more like "power users" as power users tend to use keyboard shortcuts instead of mouse-centered commands like menus and toolbars. This article is from The Onion, but I know it was written by a usability person: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-knows-all-the-shortcutkeys,1566/ .
I created the video below using JAWS, the screen reader I use at work. In it I show how a person could create a Word document, complete with font changes.
My mouse pointer never moved. I'll reiterate tip #2, people with visual impairments rarely use the mouse. I worked on a project in which I had to look at the accessibility of an eBook reader. The developer insisted that the screen reader would read the menu bar of the application. I found it didn't work. The problem: the menus were read when the user hovered, with the mouse, over the menu items. I know this as I was testing the application with only the keyboard. Ask a visually impaired user how to copy something from one document to another and he will say: "Hold down the shift key and use the arrows to select the text you want to copy then hit control and c. Then alt tab to the document you want to paste into and hit control v."
Screen readers users are honorary computer geeks. The screen reader tells the user she is in the "font dialog" on the "font page". A user who doesn't use a screen reader and who hasn't done any computer programming may not know what a dialog box is. (Trust me, I was helping a friend once, a pretty novice computer user, via the phone, and I told him to "Just close that dialog box." There was a silence then he said "Close Internet Explorer?".) A screen reader user knows a dialog box is a window, a check box is a window, a list box is a window. (They even know what a list box is.) Technically, they are windows as they all inherit from the "Windows" class. If you are writing Help files for a screen reader user, go ahead and call it a dialog box, they know what you are talking about. Oh, and include that "Accessibility" help topic. Many software companies do, including my former employer SPSS.
Sloppy interface programming is inexcusable. There are standards. Both Microsoft and Apple publish them online for Windows and MAC developers. I haven't read them, but I'm sure there are JAVA, Unix, Linux and Web standards as well. Use them. The colon at the end of a label means something. The ellipse; it does as well. A tab order is important. Text boxes are not buttons. It is amazing to me to see software that is so sloppily written. Would we buy a book full of typos? Would you buy a CD full of badly recorded out tracks? The eBook reader I tested followed no known programming standard.
This is Verdona in RGB (255, 0, 0).Don't make assumptions about what someone with little or no vision can do. Don't make assumptions about what any person with any disability can do. Heck, don't make assumptions about what any user can and cannot do. I repeatably hear things like:
"Well, a blind person can't take a graphic design class." They can. Open up any Adobe Illustrator document in notepad. You can create images by editing the postscript.
"Would you go to a doctor who was dyslexic and couldn't read?" Well, actually I would. I know she isn't going to stop and check her old textbooks while I'm on the table in the ER.
"How can a deaf person edit a sound file?" Open up a sound file in an audio editing program and get back to me.
In the video I was able to change the font face (I'm sighted and even I don't know what Adobe Castelon Pro looks like.), change the font color thanks to accessibility information programmed into Microsoft Word (RGB values), and change the style to "Small Caps".
