Browser Bruises Really Hurt...

Wow, I have been using Opera 9.x more frequently for the last week or so -- it's an amazingly powerful browser -- but, goodness grief it's amazing how quickly the User Experience can degrade!

Yes, IE6 is broken, and Firefox 2.x can be a challenge but using Opera is a real eye-opener. Give Safari a whirl on Mac and it gets even better...

It's important to design with all of these issues in mind from the outset, and attempt to deliver a positive User Experience for all. It's far more important for the user to have a positive experience than for everyone to have an identical one.

Much of the creamy goodness of Web 2.0 just doesn't seem to work as it's supposed to in Opera. It's a real eye-opener indeed. These days, a small percentage of your customer base can actually be a large number of people, so it's hard to just write it off as "1 percent of our visitors" when that number can represent thousands or even millions of users or potential customers. I believe the term is "micro-niche" and folks have built very successful products and services just by attending to these 'small' niche markets.

The problem for developers is that customers tend to attribute a "less-than-optimal" user experience with the products, services, and companies that deliver them -- rather than technical limitations, or some other related factor. Budgets and deadlines don't necessarily account for this, and it quickly becomes a lose, lose, lose situation for all involved (i.e.: customer, designer/developer, product/service). Even worse, it's difficult to rectify or fix a bad User Experience after the fact.

Here are some examples... When I Drop a site into my Plum, I have to do it more than once -- even after logging in to my Plum account for that session. I also wind up with a bunch of windows that don't seem to relate to the Drop and things get messy quickly. Even worse, I could not even log in to my Blogger account to create this post in Opera because the login form didn't even show up!

What ever happened to the idea of graceful degradation for browsers that don't work the way things have been designed? Are we missing opportunities by just counting numbers when we segment off and alienate portions of our customer base because of technical limitations or design oversight? I think it's something like seven times more expensive to get a new customer than it is to keep an existing one happy.

Got thoughts? Got a pulse?

What Side Is The Gas Tank On?

Well, is there any correlation between dashboard icons and your gas tank? NO! And why do we put up with this kind of poor design as consumers? Unfortunately, this kind of lackluster and "broken" design is commonplace and is frequently overlooked, and accepted — if it's even noticed...

I stumbled across this post on Core77 (a great design blog) the other day, and had to check my car just to be sure. As many of the comments show, this is just wrong.

The iconography on the dash has little or nothing to do with which side of your vehicle the gas tank is on. Unless it's a Ford. My Ford Explorer has an arrow to indicate which side you fill-up on which is really helpful.

At least on many computer systems, web sites, and software applications — the iconography is far more consistent, conventional, and helps the consumer use the product — and isn't that the point?

It's ALL about the USER, right?

I just stumbled across an interesting article (Yahoo! News) that seems to focus on the issue of the importance of UX (User Experience) and customer satisfaction. Take a gander at the article and see what you think...

> > > Yahoo edges Google in user satisfaction survey

The article is proof-positive that these days attending to the user experience is critical to product success and user adoption. User satisfaction and a positive user experience can separate your product from it's competition, give you immediate as well as long-term advantages in the race towards success, and build a strong foundation for customer loyalty.

I use both Yahoo! and Google's products, and I feel there are benefits to both. I am loyal to, and use both both of them daily -- but for different reasons. Which is better? For me it depends on what you're trying to achieve. I think Google's better from the stand-point that they have a "suite of tools" that work together well. I can get a lot done in a short amount of time using my "Google apps". Whereas, I prefer the look and feel of Yahoo!'s email client, but the general process-flows are kludgey and tend to drag because of their onslaught of advertising. Both Yahoo! and Google tools tend to pop me into far too many windows. Google's got a far better account creation flow, and the process is simple, painless -- and it works. Yahoo!'s account creation can be painful. I recently tried to help my daughter set-up a Flickr account (owned by Yahoo!) so we could share photos, but we were left scratching our heads trying to figure out why we weren't able to do so (we kept getting errors), and we were left with a less-than-optimal user experience.

It's becoming increasingly clear that a positive user experience can be an obvious differentiator when traveling the road to product adoption and long-term success. Customer satisfaction can also have a direct effect on the bottom-line.

Ultimately, it's all about the user. What are your thoughts?

New tools, and a spankin' fresh new look...

Okay, so far I'm really impressed and today isn't awash with wasted efforts. I need to run some errands now, so I'll have to take a quick break from being productive here.

So much to do... anyway, I'll take a shot at some of my more efficient productivity methodologies and see if I can churn out some stuff, and get some of the ideas out of my head and onto this weblog.

Wow, I'm really loving the new features, and noticing more as I use the new beta blogger -- it really kicks butt for sure! I figured I'd better think about and possibly upgrade my blog's design and general look and feel, so I started by creating another instance of me (this "user icon") and next I'll look deeper into the new CSS, and templating I now have access to with this recent upgrade. I chose one of Jeffrey Zeldman's templates to start with.

Please be patient, I have a lot on my plate. My advice to other folks using blogger is to upgrade if you're given the option.

Hello, hello, hello... Is This Thing On?

Now that I'm trying to put some real effort into my weblog and make it visit-worthy, I'm getting publish errors... What a bummer this is since I have a topic in mind that I'd like to write about and a few that come to mind that somewhat related to the error. Let's see if this thing's on, and I'll keep trying!

Okay, seems like this is related to an upgrade. Here's the error...

001 java.net.ConnectException: Connection refusedblog/53/15/13/latentdesign/archives/2006_10_01_latentdesign_archive.html

Ah well, hmmn there's an "upgrade" note mentioned -- no, that was for last year, and it seems the upgrade went smoothly. Nothing specific in the online help (which by the way is usually really good). Perhaps I've broken some kind of rule or violated an agreement -- I'll look into that as I get more time. Okay, well I'll keep trying in the hope of getting things running again.

Thanks for giving me some of your time. :-)

UPDATE: Seems there's always a work-around! Here's what I did... Logged-out and then back in to my account, and then upgraded to the new version of Blogger at beta.blogger.com and I have to say I'm liking it a lot so far for sure. Oh, and did I mention that it's lightening fast?

This is an example of the creamy-goodness surrounding the way that Google quietly and pleasantly adds value and new features without disruption to their customers. This is a standard others should follow. You go Google/Blogger! And thank you for your excellent service and products. This is how you maintain customer loyalty...

Battered-User Experience. Oh my goodness, are they serious?

Okay, I know it's kinda early on a rainy Saturday morning, but this one deserves a post for sure. I noticed an email from someone who is in my network on a particular web service. I clicked on it to read, and investigate what the deal was. In short, my visit to Ecademy[dot]com was a time sink at best. This is a classic example of poor user experience -- and quite possibly "abuser experience" would better describe my visit.

As I waded through their sign-up "process" I began to get an uneasy feeling... Was it the poor interface design? Maybe all those blinking advertisements -- which seemed to have little or no relevance to me as a user -- were putting me in a hypnotic trance? Wow, this thing is just painful, and seemingly designed to shove as many ads down a user's pipeline as is technically possible, and still have a bit of room for content on the screen. Hmmmn, radio buttons strewn about, check-boxes placed after text and in a disorderly fashion, at least 35 items in the left column navigation, and on it went...

Possibly the worst abuse of them all was this: user's have to opt out of the smorgasbord of crap the site has signed them up for (these folks have been "invited" by the way, and are guests the service wants to turn into loyal paying customers), and then comes the big one -- you are forced to choose one of their paid subscription services (which by now you probably don't want). By this time, I was frustrated and heated up enough to realize what was going on... So, despite that fact that I was given a free month of service at their mid-level price, I chose the "Free Trial" which apparently (and conveniently?) only lasts for two weeks before timing out. Okay, so now these losers have my email and want me to be associated with this crappy service? Wrong!

My brain had now warmed-up enough to quickly figure this out. I changed my email account to one I no longer use, which they then logged me out and forced me to log in and then verify. This will be changed again to a phony email shortly -- I'll beat them at their own slithery game. It's funny that I can't find any way to quickly cancel or delete this account...

If this is how they plan to "entice" new customers to sign up, I've got two words for them and they're not, "good luck". Save yourself the headache when someone invites you to a sip of their snake-oil-like service, and push the invite to your spam and blocked senders list.

Oh, and by the way, stay out of my inbox.