Usability – the usual pit-falls
Everyone has seen them – every developer has fallen in at some point – the common pit-falls that are usability no-no’s. But how they are perceived varies. Developers with enough time under their belt will be at least partially blind to them – for some reason, active development will make you unable to judge usability unless you educate yourself.
This may sound a bit harsh – but it is actually true. When you know at least part of what is probably going on under the hood – you take a lot of things for granted. Of course that functionality is in the menu under Tools -> Settings – that’s the garbage can for any developer… but of course you should just right-click, hold control and drag it across the screen waiting two-thirds of a second for Windows to update the UI before moving out of the listbox.
And the things that annoy developers are unlikely to be the things that annoy Joe the Plumber and vice versa. Developers will complain – “But I have 47 controls – and if I don’t use up three rows in the tool-panel, the user will never see my brilliant functionality and I’ll spend hours explaining how to reach them”.
So, what to do? It’s actually quite simple, start looking at things that you don’t remember using – without looking, tell me how you activate the rear-view wind-shield viper? Most cannot. They will still be able to do it, when they sit in the car, but they will be unable to tell you. It is a combination of placement and icons incl. mapping. Cars must meet certain usability demands for drivers not to endanger themselves and everyone else on the road. All critical functions must be doable without taking your eyes of the road.
So, what does the car manufacturers do better than your average software developer? They spend a lot of time and energy on making sure buttons are where people expect them to be, make them of varying size and texture to allow the driver to find them without looking. And they place all the controls you need the most (steering wheel, gear stick, the horn and light-controls) at the most convenient positions. The less-used controls are not hidden away, but placed in secondary positions and less convenient to avoid taking the focus from the critical ones. (And of course, the car stereo designer still has not learned anything – I count 34 buttons on mine – 33 of them identical in size, colour and texture with tiny icons with made-up acronyms on them).
And they don’t start switching the brake-pedal with the accelerator, because it just seemed more aesthetically pleasing! Nor do they start making the car turn right when you turn the steering wheel counter-clockwise. (So, for goodness sake, stop placing the cancel-button to the left of the ok-button) In other words – they follow conventions even if it might conflict with other goals.
To sum up – to make better UI-designs – stop trying to invent the new and better wheel – and rely on already established conventions and use the hard-earned lessons other people have learned before you.