syrinx

ABSTRACT:Technical folks (Hardware and software designers) often look down at users who experience usability problems by responding with "RTFM" (Read the finely-written-by-our-top-notch-information-development-team-of-technical-writers Manual). Badly designed hardware is not helped by inadequate documentation, however.

This is a short first-person usability case study regarding one tiny aspect of one model of one cell phone made by one manufacturer.
Hardware:Motorola c261 cell phone
Users: Household of two mature adults, 1 male and 1 female.
Narrative: We got a c261 recently as part of a move away from the worst rated cell phone provider (Sprint, for those too lazy to look it up), towards a pay as you go service more suitable for our usage patterns.
One small USABILITY problem kept us from being able to activate it, though. Even after charging it for 12 hours, 24 hours, 32 hours, it still didn't work.

tags: technical usability writing information

Just posted an advertisement for myself over at my blogspot blog, pimping my usability skills.
Seems you can't go down to the store to buy cheap household items without running into egregious examples of poor interaction design (described in full at the link).
Oh yeah, I get in my usual poor social interaction skills dig at the emperors without clothes who make so many dollars peddling usability "knowledge" without having solved the problems of human-computer interaction.

tags: usability human computer interaction consultants designers

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. - Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

Software Engineers might forget that the set The Universe includes the sub-set Idiots which includes the sub-sets Bigger Idiots and Better Idiots, and that within the overlap of these sub-sets is included the sub-set of Software Engineers.

tags: software idiots usability engineering programming computers

After holding a glass of water against a form fitting lever that actuated a faucet that delivered cold water into my glass (just like in a refrigerator door), I paused to observe a small commotion nearby.

A small group of ruthless and impatient older women gathered around two cofee urns at the IKEA cafeteria.

How does the hot water dispenser work? they wanted to know. They poked and prodded, looking for a button to push, lever to turn, anything to manipulate to get hot water coming out of what looked like a dispenser.

tags: life usability design clueless real experience

What's the use? I used to care about usability, but when the world's most famous usability guru blames the victims of bad usability, what's the use of trying to improve things?
According to the BBC's reporting of usability guru Jakob Nielsen's annual report, web users 'are getting more ruthless' and selfish when they go online.

tags: nielsen usability jakob web users getting more ruthless