currybetdotnet Usability archive
The UX of moving house: Part 8 - BT's customer service on Twitter
Over the last two weeks I've been writing about the user experience of moving house when trying to utilise online tools to do a lot of the work. On the whole, whether it has been poorly optimised estate agent search, registering for council tax, or appalling customer service from Sky, it wasn't a happy one. It is sometimes a lot easier to be critical of things rather than constructive - and I make no apology for that. In the recent...
The UX of moving house: Part 6 - Officialdom
In part 6 of this series, I turn my attention away from estate agents, and towards the user experience of dealing with Haringey and Waltham Forest councils.
The UX of moving house: Part 5 - A more native web experience
Globrix and Rightmove are two 'digital native' websites that illustrate that the user experience of searching for a new home online need not be as painful as most estate agent websites seem to make it.
The UX of moving house: Part 4 - Transport links
In the fourth part of this series, based on a presentation given at 'London IA in the pub' in October 2009, I look at different online interfaces to help you determine the transport links surrounding your potential new home.
The UX of moving house: Part 3 - Experimental interfaces and 'the curse of the tiny image'
Not all estate agent websites follow the same formula. In this part of the 'UX of moving house' series, I look at an experimental flash search results page, and ponder why so many estate agent sites make such poor use of images.
The UX of moving house: Part 2 - Estate agent search results
Looking for a new home is essentially one long search process over a set of structured data - location, price, number of bedrooms etc. You'd therefore expect most estate agent sites to be heavily optimised around the search experience. You would be wrong, as part 2 of this series illustrates.
The UX of moving house...with a pregnant spouse: Part 1
Last year my wife and I bought a house for the first time. She was heavily pregnant during the process, and so I did much more of the leg-work that I'd usually expect to. Naturally, I tried to do everything online, and document the good and the bad about the information architecture and user experience as I went along. This is the first of a series of posts based on a presentation of my findings, which I originally gave at 'London IA in the pub' in October 2009.
The curious case of the enterprise software design from the nineties that just would not die
Several presentations of enterprise software I've seen recently have made me wonder why we tolerate interfaces and interactions in this sphere which would never make it into production for web tools.
Notes and quotes from Ecommerce Expo: Part 2 - "Persuading users to buy & eliminating checkout drop-offs"
Last week I started blogging about my visit to the Ecommerce Expo in Earls Court, where I attended some of the free seminar sessions that were on offer. If you can pick your way through the more obvious sales pitches, then there are usually a few worth visiting. I first posted about a case study from British Airways on multi-variant testing. Today I wanted to write about Trenton Moss from Webcredible, and his presentation on optimising the checkout process. "Persuading...
Notes and quotes from Ecommerce Expo: Part 1 - "How little changes made a big difference at BA.com"
Last week I made my annual trip to the Ecommerce Expo in London. Although in my current role at The Guardian I don't generally deal with Ecommerce day-to-day, I've done plenty in the past for people like Sony. The exhibition had a four-track two day programme of free seminars running alongside it, and if you can pick your way through the more blatant software and service sales pitches, you can find some really interesting case studies from some big (and...
London IA Mini Conference III: UX London Redux
It seems an age since it took place, but a couple of weeks ago we held the third London IA Mini Conference. This time the venue was a space near London Bridge donated by The Team, and the theme of the evening was a redux of the UX London conference organised by Clearleft. The event was kindly sponsored by Zebra People. Andy Budd on the future of UX London Andy Budd of Clearleft opened the evening, talking about how the...
Social media unplugged: Part 4 - Google Bookmarks, Fark and Mixx
During the course of this week I've been studying the user experience when you encounter social bookmarking services for the first time. This has varied greatly, from something like Yahoo! Buzz with a comprehensive registration process which ends up asking you to confirm your 'buzz up' for the article that started your journey, to Newsvine, which just seems to throw up a browser security error if you are not logged in. In today's final part I'll be looking at Google...
Social media unplugged: Part 3 - Newsvine, Reddit and Facebook
This week I've been writing about 'social media unplugged' - finding out what the user experience is like when you approach social bookmarking for the first time via using an icon on a content site. I contend that having detected an attempt to share by a user who isn't logged in, these services need to provide an opportunity for an existing user to log in, for a new user to register, and they should take the opportunity to showcase their...
Social media unplugged: Part 2 - Yahoo! Buzz and Delicious
This week I'm looking at 'social media unplugged', finding out what the user experience is like if you click one of the multitude of share buttons that litter the web without being logged in to the service you are attempting to use. In yesterday's first part I examined Digg and StumbleUpon. Both of these put the novice user through a registration process, only at the end to have not captured the URL that they were hoping to submit. Today I'm...
Social media unplugged: Part 1 - Digg and StumbleUpon
Social media unplugged
A series of posts looking at the user experience of social bookmarking sites when people first visit them via clicking an icon.
Sale Water Park making audience research fun for kids
One of the things I advocate when trying to do user-centred web application design is to take every possible opportunity to talk to real users to get their input into the process. That can range from running focus groups, carrying out online surveys, undertaking controlled testing in lab conditions, or just plonking myself down next to people in cafes and 'ambush' user-testing them with Silverback. I'm always on the look-out for ways that other organisations carry out this kind of...
Daisy dares you to be young
I can't remember who pointed me to it, but earlier this week I was directed to a free download of a track by Daisy Dares You - the project of 15 year old Daisy Coburn. In order to get your free mp3 you need to sign up for some permission marketing. I always like to see a well optimised form, and so it was good to see 'United Kingdom' and 'Ireland' head the list of territories. There had obviously been...
London IA Mini Conference II: Notes, facts and take-away quotes - part 1
"London IA Mini II"
My write-up of the recent London IA Mini Conference at the Sense Loft in London.
Carzone.ie and Euroffice at the Endeca e-Business Forum
Yesterday I posted some of my notes from a trip to Endeca's Richmond office to attend the "Endeca e-Business Forum". They covered Ashley Freidlein's keynote talk about "Beautiful Basics". Today I wanted to look at some of my other notes from the event. Most of the presentations had a dual format, with a presenter from Endeca demonstrating some of the features of the platform, followed by a customer case study of how they had implemented them. It is always intriguing...
"Beautiful Basics" - Ashley Friedlein at the Endeca e-Business Forum
Last week I was at Endeca's offices in Richmond for their "Endeca e-Business Forum". The keynote was being given by Ashley Friedlein of econsultancy.com, and was about "Beautiful Basics - The things you need to be doing really well online to succeed". What I liked about it was that Ashley used lots and lots of real world examples and live demos. Instead of just presenting bullet point lists of 'must do' website features, he showed excellent user experiences in action....
Functional 404s - Do beautiful 404 error pages still help users?
London IA Mini Conference review - Part 2
London IA Mini Conference review - Part 1
Jakob Nielsen on usability for journalists
"Beyond the browser: Usability in mobile interaction design" UX Corner meet-up
5 essential Google Labs features to improve your Google Mail experience
Hard to have 'no comment' about this BT email survey
'Kind regards, your Scottish Power robot!'
Will last.fm ever ask for the last time?
A painless way to file your tax return
Popcorn triple feature - Roxio's inconsistent labels
'Real World Usability' Chinwag Live event
Take-away facts and quotes from the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona - Day 2
Take-away facts and quotes from the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona - Day 1
Heraklion airport doesn't quite live up to the BA online check-in promise
Orange could do with a usability upgrade
Why doesn't the BBC iPlayer system tray icon use native Windows UI elements?
5 quick usability wins for the BBC iPlayer beta trial installation process
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 5: Eurosport / Yahoo!
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 3: France 24
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 1: LeTour.fr
'Cancel' just doesn't seem to mean 'Cancel' for iTunes 7.2 on Windows
National Television Awards vote seems wide open to multiple vote fraud
Add nothing to your basket at MyDailyMirror.com
Sony Connect music download store relaunches in Europe - part two
Sony Connect relaunches with improved information architecture for browsing
The Sun's MY Sun registration systems and odd date range behaviour
Too many statistics? The National Statistics site runs out of memory
Patchy interface localisation in Salzburg Airport's touch-screen customer satisfaction survey
Playing with the Virgin Radio player beta
Why not be accessible Instead - trying to buy Onetwo's new album
The Sun's sexiest barmaid vote goes a bit tits up
Five Years of Information Architecture in the Free Pint newsletter
A lesson from Ibis in making your email addresses un-marketing friendly
Struggling to buy music from U-MYX
Managing 'Glue' at the BBC: Classification - part 4
Managing 'Glue' at the BBC: Search - part 3
Managing 'Glue' at the BBC: Navigation - part 2
Managing 'Glue' at the BBC: Introducing the BBC - part 1
English Heritage forced redirect for Firefox users
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"Journalism in the digital age"
I'll be appearing on a panel with Sarah Hartley and Iain Hepburn at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on Sunday April 11th. More details...
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Day of the Triffids
If everyone suddenly went blind, how long would the Internet survive, and could you still publish news on it?
With professionals of this quality, who needs 'citizen journalist' enemies?
It is hard to argue that ethics and quality set the 'professional journalist' apart from the amateur blogger, if the 'professional' keeps publishing articles so wrong that they have to be deleted.
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Contact: martin dot belam at currybet dot net. © Martin Belam where appropriate.
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