Quick Examples of My Process or Caught In the Act!
Quick Problem: Inadequate Required Form Controls
Web Site: PayPal (sorry I can't give you the actual address because the problem is on a secure page. Click here to view a large screen capture.)
Quick Description: Before you can send an email to PayPal technical support you are required to select a primary category and then a secondary category.
Quick Explanation:
- I have a client that does not want their phone number to print on the customers receipt. They are a very small company and the phone number is for their home. I understand that.
- I could not find where I control this feature when I was logged in as an admin. OK, it happens.
- I did a search trying to find an answer. Nothing. OK, I get it, it happens.
- I attempt to generate a technical support email. But, I order to send the email I am presented with a two-tier list of radio buttons to select a REQUIRED primary and REQUIRED secondary category.The problem is none of the categories match how the user (me) thinks.
Quick Suggestion:
- Provide them (me) with an "other" category as a bailout; otherwise your frustrated user could pick a category (possibly on purpose) that has nothing to do with their request and defeats the very resource saving reason of the required fields which is to presumably funnel the request to the right department.
- Revisit a card sort exercise.
- If however, the lack of control to display the phone number is a legal requirement, then tell the user (me).
Quick Solution: Hire Art Zippel, 1.714.357.7578
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Quick Problem: Inconsistency of Controls
Web Site: https://ocapps.occourts.org/ejuror
Quick Description: Forcing manual entry of year introduces several problems.
Quick Explanation:
- Takes the user out of the mental model of the already established drop-down control mode
- Forces the user to to expend additional cognitive resources
- Allows the user to enter a non-valid date generating an error message
Quick Suggestion: Reconfigure the year control to be a drop-down rather than an open text field. There are a host of other problems on this page like:
- "Juror Badge Example" is blue and underlined. The user's mental mode is, if the text is blue and underlined, then it is a link. OK, I get the concept, someone wanted to explain what the below image was. That's great, I completely support captions as being user-friendly. But don't choose a method to achieve that goal with visual affordance for a link if it is not a link.
- Stay away from body copy in blue. Blue is reserved for links (although that is changing) the same way that electric wall receptacles are reserved for electrical cords. Don't use blue text and don't put fingers in a wall receptacle. Just don't.
- Don't center body copy, research has shown that in most cultures justified left is the easiest to cognitively process. OK, I get it, maybe they thought just a few lines of text in a very wide format would be difficult to read. Fine, center a new DIV with a confined width, say 400 px.
Quick Solution: Hire Art Zippel, 1.714.357.7578
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Quick Problem: Inconsistency of categories
Web Site: http://www.purepro.net/products.htm
Quick Description: On this product page they list four categories of systems:
- Economy RO Systems
- Typical RO Systems
- Pump RO Systems
- Countertop RO Systems
Quick Explanation: I understand Economy, Pump and Countertop. But how does Typical relate to Economy? If I as a user have my "mental model" set-up by the first category being Economy then if the next category is related but different give the user a category name that is also related. This is an example of not paying attention to your ontology and taxonomy. And then the second problem, labeling a category "typical"? What does the word typical do for brand value? Also, what would encourage me to pay more for something that is typical?
Quick Suggestion: I think that a positive or at least neutral category name could be "standard" or "basic". At the very least, drop the value associated with typical, standard, basic and adopt a naming convention of EC series, RO series. Better yet, don't leave money on the table and hire a usability analyst.
Quick Solution: Hire Art Zippel, 1.714.357.7578
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