Case in point: European vs. American home appliances

American: uses WORDS to say what happens

European: uses these icons with NO words.

What?

I can personally attest to the confusion of having these icons on appliances when we lived in Europe. A constant source of frustration.

“What’s that ‘P’ with the lines around it mean?”
“The BIG ‘P’ or the little ‘P’?”
“Is there a difference?”
“I don’t know”
“Neither do I”

(via Slate)

Put this on your list of "Never Ever Do This. Ever. Ever!"

Ouch.

The thing that I DIDN'T expect when I got the presentations together was how many people would love my PowerPoint presentations themselves! (I use the term "PowerPoint" only because it's become a ubiquitous term for "digitally projected presentation" although I don't use PowerPoint - read below) I have yet to give a talk without multiple people telling me how much the PowerPoint itself was awesome. Questions like "How did you do that?" and "Can I hire you to do my presentations?" (at least 5 people have asked that one) are common. I recently got an email from someone in Vancouver asking me for tips on good PPT presentations, so I thought I'd copy/paste what I emailed him to give other people a place to go:

There's so much that goes in to a good presentation it's hard to distill it down into a blog post, but here are 3 steps that will help.

• Step 1: Read Seth Godin's eBook: "Really Bad Powerpoint and How to Avoid It" (click here to download it - it's free) It will cover a LOT of things such as limiting the amount of text on a slide, using big images, etc. This will help you way more than I could in a short post.
• Step 2: Don't use PowerPoint (if you can avoid it). I use Keynote, which is a Mac only application. (If you don't use a Mac, click HERE and BUY ONE - you'll thank me later). Keynote is vastly superior to PowerPoint in many many ways: better built-in themes, better transitions, and better overall design to name a few. It makes it easy to look polished and slick.
• Step 3: Have very good content (this should go without saying). If you don't have well thought-out content that's well organized, you're not going to have a good presentation.

Hope that helps! Feel free to ask any other questions you may have, but no - I won't do your presentation for you. If you don't do it yourself, people will know.

1. The "close / minimize / maximize" buttons are now VERTICAL!? WHAT? Every, and I mean EVERY app in OSX has them horizontal. Why would you do this? A central theme of good UI design is that you keep things consistent and strive to meet the user's expectations. This just confuses people. ESPECIALLY if they're COLOR-BLIND. Big fail here. Not to mention that putting the buttons here makes the top bar of the app super skinny, thus making it hard to grab and move around (same problem Google Chrome has). Luckily, there's a fix for this one - and it works great!
   
   
   
2. The color has been completely sucked out of the UI. So many people navigate using those colored icons. People don't look at whether it's a little "gear" or "music notes" - people look for "green" or "blue". Plus, from an aesthetic standpoint, it's all boring and monochrome. I have a COLOR monitor for a reason. Looks like there's a fix for that as well.
   
   
   
   
3. In the podcast section, the checkboxes have been moved into their own column, thus putting them outside the hierarchy of the dropdown. This is a BIG no-no in UI design. Things that relate to each other need to be NEXT TO each other (see Gestalt Law of Proximity). I see what they're trying to do (put the checks in their own column so they're moveable), but I can't figure out why that's needed. There's no reason to move the checks away from the actual item they refer to - it only confuses and makes me think. DON'T MAKE ME THINK!
   
   
   
4. This isn't so much a UX complaint, but they sure missed an opportunity with the new iTunes app icon. They removed the CD, and I get that (I haven't bought a CD in YEARS), but it's still just music notes. There's so much MORE in iTunes than music. But, then again, maybe they would have needed to change the name of the app. Here's an iTunes icon that at least matches the iTunes icon on the iOS devices.

Here's a SMALL sampling of quotes from around the Twitterverse:

"whichever vampire drained the color from iTunes 10 should be taken out back behind 5IL and staked to the basket ball court." @rudyrichter

"the only thing worse than iTunes 10 is Ping. #justsayin" @timschraeder

"What do we hate! ITUNES 10! Why do we hate it! BECAUSE IT IS UGLY! <chant>" @sh

"my computer is asking me to dl iTunes 10.0 but I don't think I want to cuz I don't want the new ugly logo." @jb140

"Is it just me, or is the new iTunes 10 73% more ugly, cluttered and unnecessary? More ugly" @sirhcllenrad

"Every version of iTunes has had it's own 'unique' UX. And it's horribly inconsistent with their OS." @studuncan

Needless to say, people aren't happy. I have to wonder how much testing is actually done on some of Apple's internal stuff, or if they just let designers have their way with things. Either way, I sure hope they'll do something about it eventually. For now, I'm going to go see how much SPAM is on Ping...

Then I asked myself, "Steve, what's the most effective way to increase conversions on a website?" to which I responded, "A killer user experience!" to which I agreed.  I checked with Whitney Hess for permission to use the 4 steps she outlines in her "DIY UX" talk, to which she kindly agreed, and the presentation turned out pretty good (if I do say so myself). I also borrowed a couple slides from my DIY Usability talk, to which I also kindly agreed. (Oh, and I stole the "Zune vs. iPod" idea from Jared Spool)

If you'd like to see me give this presentation in person, stay tuned for an announcement of where and when (hint: Art Lab, Fort Collins, Colorado - sometime in the future).

We recently got rid of our dinosaur of a roaringly loud microwave, and got a nice & shiny new one. The number of options for microwaves out there are stunning, especially when you think about the fact that 87% of the time you use it for reheating your coffee, and 10% for thawing frozen chicken breasts because you forgot to take them out this morning and the wife wants you to grill them and everyone's hungry (that other 3% is, of course, popcorn).

The other annoying thing about a new microwave is that you have to learn a whole new magic combination of buttons just to do the coffee thing! The first microwave we had (that I can remember) when I was a kid was the kind with the dial. Turn it to 1-minute, it cooks for 1-minute and *ding* you're done. Easy. Then everything got all digital and fancy, and now I could choose between 44 and 45 seconds, but I had to press "Clear"+"Time"+"45"+"Cook"+"Power"+"10"+"Start" when ALL I wanted was "45"+"Start".

So imagine my joy and delight when I went to warm up my coffee the first morning we had this new microwave and ALL I had to press was "45"+"Start". That's IT!! *[insert sound of angels rejoicing]*

Bask in the simplicity

Okay, okay, it's just a microwave (as my exasperated wife reminded me when I took the above picture), but the SIMPLICITY of the basic function is a thing of beauty. Sure, there are all KINDS of other options like cooking temp, a fancy defrost feature, blah blah blah, but I'm most concerned with that 87% of my time.

The lesson here: Simplify. If you have a website (or product) that has a bunch of different functions, fine. But figure out which of those functions is most used, and make it DEAD simple to do THAT. The other stuff is useful and necessary, but people want and need to do that ONE thing more than anything else.

What's that ONE thing for you?

And, on the advice of the wonderful Whitney Hess, here's a sampling of the Twitter responses to my talk at WordCamp Boulder. Thanks again for all of the kind words:

Website usability is like a virus. You go along for most of your life, happily (or not) clicking through websites, finding (or not) the stuff you're looking for, never really thinking about the usability of the sites you encounter every day. Sure, some websites are hard to use, but you think "it's probably just me" or you simply click back to Google and go to the next site, hoping you can figure it out this time.

Then someone comes along and, in their most helpful and innocent voice, teaches you all about "Usability" (with a capital "U"). They explain that, no, it's NOT just you - these offending sites should know better or at least should do something about it. They even show you how easy it would have been for these sites to be tested to find problems, and how easy and cheap that really could be!

Now you're in trouble. You've got the virus, and there is no cure.

Basic symptoms include:

• inability to visit a website without silently critiquing its usability issues
• complaining (often loudly to those in the room with you) about how "HORRIBLE 'Brand X's' website is, although they've OBVIOUSLY spent tens of thousands of $$'s on it!!"
• emailing examples of bad websites to the person who gave you the virus in the first place
• lying awake at night worrying about the usability of your OWN website, and if others with the virus are secretly laughing at you

Advanced symptoms:

• a voice in the back of your mind telling you that you can't rest until all existing usability problems have been remedied
• your obsession with "Usability" bleeds over into the "real" world, and you start to stay things like, "The button on that coffee maker is REALLY not in the right place. Where's that customer service number?!"
• your spouse tells you to "get over it" and "just change the stinking diaper and quit griping", etc.

So yes, Solomon, the more you know about Usability, the more annoyed you're going to be with the web. But do not fear: Together we, the infected, can make the world a happier and more usable place to be. We shall overcome!!

I started off the day at the "Creating a Blog Community" panel, then moved on to the "WordPress Consulting Discussion" which was really good, then hit the "WordPress Development" session which was WAY over my head. After lunch with Steve & Josh I got to the Techstars building early to set up for my presentation but the DOOR WAS LOCKED. No biggie - we still got in with 2 minutes to spare.

My presentation went AWESOME (if I do say so myself). It was a full house, and everyone told me they learned a lot and had a good time to boot! Mission accomplished. We did a live usability testing session using the Deep Rock Water site, and it turned out to be a perfect choice: serious OBVIOUS issues right out of the gate, many things to change (boy does that company need my help!), and everyone got a good feel of how a testing session works. Several people told me afterward that they had always WANTED to do testing, but weren't really sure how it looked & worked in real life, so watching a test live helped immensely. Glad I could help :)

After my presentation there was only one session left, so I went to "What’s Next for WordPress" which was a presentation by Jane Wells, UX designer for WordPress. Good stuff. I even got to talk to Jane a bit afterward - super cool and super smart woman.

Many asked both at WordCamp and after about the slides for my talk, so here they are. I TRIED to upload them to Slideshare, but my fancy animations and stuff were too much for it to handle, so I've exported everything to a Quicktime Movie.

Feel free to email me or leave a comment if you have any questions.ENJOY!!

CLICK HERE to download the full-res version (53MB .mov file).

****UPDATE**** : I finally got Slideshare to accept my Keynote file. (Don't get me started). The full video version linked above is still there, but here's a more USER FRIENDLY version (with notes and everything!).