User Centered

It's a simple matter that just about any modern smartphone can do, but it's the fit & finish that make a great user centered experience.

The HTC HD2 (which I'm impressed with) uses its accelerometer to silence the ringer when the user picks up the device. Great for those that fumble around in their purse or computer bag because they forgot to switch to vibrate (use Locale on the Android platform!)

Our office building recently upgraded (eye of the beholder I guess) to the Dyson Airblade. It's pretty novel the first couple of uses, although it doesn't exactly communicate its function as clearly as possible.

It operates using sensors and timers. The timer really needs one of those countdown displays you find at the automated car wash dryers. You know, as you're driving out of the carwash a big overhead/side dryer kicks in and a countdown begins letting you know how long you have? Well, it's the same idea here. In fact, the hand dryer works in pretty much the exact same way. You stick your hands in there and slowly pull them out, the airflow "squeegees" off the water from your hand as you pull them out.

The biggest gripe I have with it is in the sensors used to detect a hand is in there. I must have particularly small fingertips, because the Dyson Airblade will ALWAYS cut off just right as I get to the end of my hand (fingertips) causing me to walk out feeling like I just dipped my hand in a glass of water.

After talking with my coworkers, I've found that this is not an uncommon situation (thankfully, my fingertips are normal). In commiserating, we've all shared our workarounds for getting fully dry hands, all are a variant of the (thusly defined/coined) "Dyson Shuffle" and the "Dyson Flap."

• Dyson Shuffle: This action involves keeping one hand fully inserted into the Airblade while the other dries off, this allows one hand to dry while keeping the sensor active. Then, while dry, you move it back into the Airblade to dry the other hand. This looks a lot like a DJ working the ones and twos.
  
• Dyson Flap: Same idea, but this has both hands moving up, then you quickly move your hands in from the side before the sensor shuts off the device to repeat the process. This move looks sort of like Michael Phelps doing a butterfly stroke. Logic- two quick dries equals one full dry
  

Of course, all this is to illustrate the silliness of the whole matter. How about just repositioning your sensor to accurately detect the hand? or perhaps extend by an extra second or two the airflow before shutting off?

Cooking by numbers takes a neat approach to dishing out recipes, you check off things you have on hand in your fridge and cupboard and it will pull recipes based on what you've got laying around. Neat idea when you: feel like cooking something, don't want to shop, would like to try something new.

Admittedly, the available inputs (things you can say you have on hand) are pretty limited, and some of the recipes are a little condescending (an apple on its own? A cup of coffee?), but it's great to have this little service available for when you're stumped and pressed for time.

Like most of my posts, this post is illustrating a corner case of design that often isn’t considered. In other words, it’s probably not going to effect a large number of people, but my goal (if you haven't noticed yet) is to take a good attempt and see if we can't make it better.

I was trying to find my way to a Stadium here in my home of Saint Paul MN to watch a Saint Paul Saints baseball game. I fired up the homepage and clicked on the ”Directions” link and was slightly annoyed to see directions given to me according to where I’m coming from, a trend that's pretty common for pages giving directions.

On the surface, it's a good idea; something I talked about doing before. They just happened to have a textbook illustration, complete with all the things you shouldn’t do if you’re going to provide this to your customers.

The most important thing is that they do not provide the address of the stadium on the directions page. At all. Not even in the directions. It’s kind of hard to miss a stadium, so that alone might be forgivable.

The other oversight is where the “corner case” that I mentioned comes in to play. The site gives you directions based on what direction you’re approaching from…but you don’t know where the stadium is so how can you know the direction you’re coming from? If you’re coming from another city, it’s likely you’ll be able to guess what direction Saint Paul is relative to your approach, and if you're familiar with all the freeways in the city, you might have an easier time to figuring out which direction to approach from based on the freeways listed. But then you'd have to read each one to figure out exactly which of the four sets of directions would work the best.

They should have included the address on the directions page, as well as an small map showing the stadium to take this from a "good attempt" at user centered directions to a great one.

Bonus: the "click here to see a map of Saint Paul" at the bottom of the page is completely worthless for finding the stadium. You have to cross reference it to the freeways and streets in the directions.

Bonus Bonus! The "Still need directions?" link at the bottom bottom of the page links to somewhere (literally) in the middle of the US.

When Opera interviewed me in March, one of the things I mentioned was that I wanted to do more Opera interviews for this site. It took a couple of quick emails to long time User Centered contributor Kenneth Maage to get the ball rolling which got me thinking... "why the heck didn't I do this a long time ago?"

Six members of Opera involved with Usability, User Experience and System Testing all took the time out of their busy schedules (providing you all with the best internet experience) to answer some questions on Opera and usability.


Usability and Systems Testing for Opera: (back row) Huib, Wolfgang, Kenneth
(front)Yenny, Gerður, Tami

Opera typically grows with the user, the more you use it, the more features you will discover, enable or customize.

Please click through to read insights from Opera UXP professionals discussing favorite usability features, challenges, accomplishments, and things that could be improved.

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