Part of the road at the office complex where I work was repaved this week. This would not normally be anything worth commenting about, were it not for the fact that the paint used to re-line the roads is white instead of yellow (as it was previously). And while I can’t say this with absolute certainty, I am relatively sure that the standard in this country for road paint is yellow to seperate lanes going in different directions and white to seperate lanes going in the same direction. That being said, I find it extremely strange to see a double (or single in some cases) white line seperating a road that has one lane in each direction. It just isn’t right.

Granted, I don’t expect people to start driving on the wrong side of the road. There haven’t been any accidents (to my knowledge) since the switch. Still, don’t they want to do it right? I find this comparable to someone who says “That’s a mute point” or “for all intensive purposes” — I understand what they mean, but their credibility surely takes a dip for having said it that way. In addition, not doing or saying something the correct way, in many cases, can cause confusion.

This same concept also applies to designing interfaces for the web (and beyond) — many times designers feel the desire to “paint yellow lines white”, but in most cases it is better to stick to standards that users understand and know. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule — the elevators at the Marriott Marquis being a prime example — but for every time that changing the standard is effective, there are plenty of mistakes, such as the flash-based site I saw the other day that had scrollbars on the LEFT side of the page.

The moral of the story — be careful when changing established standards in any design.

On a semi-related note, here’s an interesting site that addresses some of the grammar issues I just mentioned.

NOTE: Shortly after I wrote this, the white was changed to yellow. Perhaps it was just temporary, perhaps they realized the absurdity!

It is becoming relatively common for ecommerce websites to offer a “view all” (or similar) link on product listing pages hat will show all of the products in said category or search results (or, in cases with many products, far more than the default view).

The reason for this is that, a few years ago, a lot of time was spent trying to address download speed concerns, and etailers were worried about the wait time for a page filled with product images to display. So, each came up with a number they thought made sense, depending on their product type, image size, etc. Recently however, with the explosion of broadband, it is becoming increasingly important to have a way for a customer to see all the products on one page, for the simple reason that it is much easier to actually browse products this way. Taking that idea a step further, if a customers chooses to “view all”, they are inherently more willing to wait for a larger page to download. I know I am — I’d rather wait an extra few seconds to see the entire inventory than have to click from page to page.

That said, it annoys me that none of the retailers (at least that I have seen) who offer this feature use cookies to remember that I like to view all. Every time I go to Zappos, Eddie Bauer or Gap, for example, I have to select “view all” anew. I do this every single time. Why not write a cookie when this choice is selected and store it locally? If a customer changes the view, change the cookie!

This is the very essence of customer focus — determine what each customer wants and deliver it to them.

After successful visits to UI9 and UI10, plus another trip to Kendall Square for a Forrester Boot Camp, I’m starting to get pretty familiar with the area. If you’re thinking of going to UI11 or any future UIConf put on by UIE, here are some recommendations for non-conference related activities: Read the rest of this entry »

I recently attended User Interface 10, the week-long conference put on by Jared Spool and the good people of User Interface Engineering. Although one of the more expensive conferences, it is one of the few fully focused on User Interface Design and is highly recommended for anyone in the field.

The highlight of the conference for me was the opportunity to meet and network with a ton of great people in the industry. Thanks to Kyle, Philly-area folks met up on Monday night for dinner and established some great connections for the rest of the week (and hopefully beyond!). It is invaluable to attend skill-specific conferences such as this one — networking with people who think about and do the same things you do on a daily basis is not always this easy to find.

As for the conference itself, it consisted of three full-day workshops and one day of 90-minute workshops. Attendees selected full-day workshops in advance and could pick from a variety of 90-minute sessions Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

The Marriott Marquis in New York City (where I recently stayed for the 2005 Forrester Consumer Forum) has an elevator setup unlike any other I’ve come across. But before I get into what made them so special, I need to get this out of the way: The elevators were widely seen to be a complete nightmare by everyone staying at the hotel. At times, you could wait 20 minutes just to catch one, and when it finally came it would be so packed that you couldn’t even get in. On one occasion, people had to actually get out of an elevator because it was so overloaded, it could not work properly. This, however, seemed to be less related to the design of the elevator “interface” and more related to the fact that only a couple elevators (out of 12-15) seemed to be working at any given time. The Marquis is a huge Times Square hotel — two or three elevators can’t possibly support that traffic.

Anyway, the big difference between these elevators and every other one you’ve ever been in is in the order of things: One who wants to use the elevator must enter the destination floor BEFORE getting on. If this is done correctly, the computer behind the scenes spits out which elevator to ride (labelled by letter). Once inside an individual unit, there are no buttons — it will stop at your floor if you have pre-entered the number and followed the instructions correctly. I’ve included a photo of the keypad itself at right. To operate, you enter the floor number on the numbered keypad, then wait for the chosen elevator to appear on the little screen. Read the rest of this entry »

ipod.
blog.
blog.
ipod.
nano!

(convergence)