Archives for UI
Intelligent Defaults Save Time
Have you ever been a regular at a coffee shop? The barista knows you by name, and every morning when you come by, she’s already got your Triple Non-Fat Sugar-Free Vanilla Latte waiting for you. That’s an intelligent default. She doesn’t know for sure that’s what you want, or even that you’ll come in today, [...]
Making Amazon More Actionable
I’m an Amazon junkie. I’ve bought everything from books to power tools on Amazon. I’m a prime member, meaning I pay $70/year for the ability to get items shipped to me in 2 days or less, every time, rather than paying for express shipping every purchase. Suffice to say, I use the site a lot. [...]
Free Advice for Adobe Acrobat Programmers
I often find myself making PDFs to send our design work over to clients. Acrobat is a great little program that nearly everyone has, and is rarely blocked by corporate firewalls. It’s generally very easy to use, too. Here’s how I make most PDFs for client presentations. Make comps. This takes some time. Drag files onto Acrobat icon [...]
Quick Shopping Cart UX Tip
Most web checkout forms collect credit card information in this order: Card type (e.g. Visa, Mastercard) Card number Security Code (three digits on the back) Expiration Date Name on Card (e.g. DAVID R SELDEN JR) If you go through this process, you’ll note that steps 1, 2, 4 and 5 require information from the front of your credit card. The information [...]
Bugzilla’s Reset Password Page Sucks
Frequently, my coworkers will forget their Bugzilla passwords. They come to me, because I manage it, and I always send them to the reset password page. Inevitably, they come back a few minutes later and tell me that it didn’t work, and I just reset their passwords by hand. Well, I finally figured out the [...]
The Truly Friendly Skies: Southwest Airlines
I love Southwest Airlines. In a time when nearly every other airline is bankrupting themselves, exacerbating their problems with underhanded pricing, starving their customers, and providing Soviet-era customer service, Southwest is expanding their offerings in their typical friendly, easygoing way. If you’ve never flown Southwest, try it sometime. It takes a bit of getting used to, [...]
Mac vs PC Firefox 3 Add Bookmark Dialog
One major annoyance between the Mac and PC versions of Firefox 3 is the position of the “Done” button on the Add Bookmark dialog. On a Mac, the button is on the right. On a PC, it’s on the left. I won’t comment on which is better, just that the difference breaks my muscle memory [...]
The Door-Close Buttons in Most Elevators Don’t Do Anything
When we first moved into our new building, Dave wrote “Door-Close button in elevator does nothing” on the maintenance list, and the handyman replied “Button functions as intended” or something along those lines. Well, turns out they’re BOTH right. I was reading an article that Kottke linked to about elevators, and there was a little bit in [...]
It’s Just an Error Message
Raymond from The Old New Thing has written a great article to remind us that "The Default Answer to Every Dialog Box is 'Cancel'." He includes many examples, but what it boils down to is that average users are frequently intimidated by dialog boxes, and if given the choice, will avoid them. The solution is [...]
