User Centered

This post brings up a good pointers; it is focusing on the technology, and I'd like to focus on the usability that it implies.

I’ve only had Netflix for over a week now and I’ve already rated 207 movies. You log in, and they throw a bunch of movies at you one page. Once click and you're done. No page refreshes or form submissions (that you're aware of). You can change it back as you see fit.

I bet I’ve rated oh.. maybe three Amazon items. When I logged into Amazon, I see "write a review" I click on that and get a form with 4 items to fill in and a preview button. It's not that I don't care. It's just that I don't want to take myself away from the task at hand. I've found these are only useful if rating the items is the task. In otherwords, you're either way happy or really pissed off enough to log into Amazon just to write a review. Polls are the same way. They are put on the side of pages, and you “click to see the result” but nobody want’s to divert from what they are primarily focusing on.

I admit, there is a distinction that needs to be made. It is very clear in Netflix that your ratings are used to generate your recommendations- so it's in the users best interest to rate as much as possible. Amazon, I'm not sure if the ratings have any role in the recommendations it makes. I assume not, but I would not be surprised if I was wrong. In either event, it's not obvious to me, and in most cases, since I already have the product, there is little reason why I would be continuing to look it online.

Pretty obvious stuff really. I say update that badboy right there, don’t even have a submit button. that extra click makes it twice as long…and the anecdotal evidence speaks for itself Oh, and yes I realize this is contrasting with my "real good reviews" posts. But of course, there is a difference between a review and a rating. I don't put much stock in the ratings by themeselves unless it's advantagous for me (like in Netflix)- but if you're going to have them, make them easy to use!