Chris Hanrath » Usability

Windows 7 Tray Progress Bar

Chris — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:46:03 +0000

Windows 7 now visualizes progress right in the system tray even when the window is minimized. I like it!

Silent Contextual Google Toolbar Update

Chris — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:13:07 +0000

I just opened a blank new Tab on my browser and Google presented me with a context sensitive page suggesting most visited pages, recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs… uhm, Thanks! …I guess…

I wonder about the missing thumbnail screenshots, why an icon of a broken camera? Did i break something, or do i have to get my digital camera out and take a picture of each screen so that Google can post it? I am also not sure what the recent bookmarks are, since i don’t bookmark pages or click on bookmarks…

Really? …I mean seriously Microsoft?

Chris — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:56:54 +0000

Today i experienced an absolute showstopper even though I have been pretty satisfied with Windows Vista so far. For the past time as long as i remember the “Off” Button to the left of the “Lock” Button has been setting my Laptop to Standby.

Today – when leaving the Coffee shop – the same button suddenly decided to shut my system completely off with all my applications running. What would Nielsen say? Where is the Consistency, Recognition and Error Prevention?

Yahoo! OpenID Usability Study

Chris — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:24:36 +0000

Tom Allen from Yahoo! Membership posted an article on the Yahoo! Developer Blog about the “OpenID: One Key, Many Doors” usability study that was conducted to uncover usability issues associated with enabling OpenID on 3rd party sites and using it for subsequent logins.

[ Found via 25hoursaday.com ]

Information Visibility in Screen Readers

Chris — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:17:08 +0000

Access Matters conducted an interesting test on how information is visible to screen readers using different approaches in hiding content from being displayed on the actual page. The provide a table or matrix to compare the different test cases with different screen reader products and versions.

[ Found via access-matters.com ]

Expedia Labs

Chris — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:03:57 +0000

Yesterday i attended a presentation of Expedia on the University of Michigan Campus. They came to recruit Software designers and Project Managers. I was positively surprised to see how much they focus on usability and user-centered design to improve the user experience of their website. The presenter showed the audience a very interesting and promising take on booking your next vacation using expedia. Instead of using the traditional “day, time, destination” input, she showed us a very interesting wizard that selects vacation packages using other inputs such as an interactive map and vacation activities.

Unfortunately this is only visible to random users visiting Expedia.com who fall into the right category of the bucket test. But you can get an idea of Expedia’s attempts to improve the user experience at labs.expedia.com

Verizon 411 Improvement

Chris — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:28:00 +0000

I was calling Verizon 411 the other day, they connected me to the desired phone number and as it has happened before nobody picked up the phone… So i repeated to call 411 to get the number once again. This time i was positively surprised, because as soon as i dialed, i was asked if i want to be reconnected to the last number. Great! This is what i call user experience.

International Address Fields in Web Forms

Chris — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:33:27 +0000

Luke Wroblewski has a great article on web forms with suggestions for internationalization. He has also just released a book on how forms make or break the most crucial online interactions, that according to Alan Cooper “will help you every day”!

[ Found via uxmatters.com and rosendfeldmedia.com ]

Accessibility Practices

Chris — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:46:32 +0000

J. Nielsen, Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities

75 Best Practices for Design of Websites and Intranets, Based on Usability Studies with People Who Use Assistive Technology.

The report contains:

Results of usability tests of 19 websites with users with several different types of disabilities who are using a range of assistive technology:
- blind users using screen readers
- blind users using Braille readers
- low-vision users using screen magnifiers
- motor-impaired users
Test data collected mainly in the United States, with some additional studies in Japan to ensure the international applicability of the recommendations
- A total of 104 users participated in the usability studies:
- 84 users with disabilities
- 20 non-disabled users who served as a control group
75 detailed design guidelines

Download here: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility/