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Home | Passionate people get it right? >>
Usability Seminar with Jeff Johnson
Computer Society of South Africa
Earlier this year I was afforded the opportunity to attend a seminar on User Interface Bloopers and Software Usability from a Business stand point. To start with I have to say that I was quite impressed with my company sponsoring me the attendance fee. Should there be any programmers out there that are looking for a Job in Randburg, South Africa, look them up.

The seminar was presented by one of the “names” in usability studies. At this point I have to admit that there were previously only two names that I knew in the usability circle. These being: Jacob Neilson and Gary Marsden. I know the first because the second lectured about him during the honours computer science program at UCT.

I feel that I need to take a moment to mention that I have a soft point for software usability. I think deep down a lot of people do and I am sure all of the mac users out there would be roaring in the stands (if mac was still usable). I love using systems that “just work”. You are able to do what you want to easily. You don’t end up shouting at the computer or pulling a ZooLander on the screen.

Back to the seminar: To be truthful I was rather unimpressed but the content of the seminar and feel that for a slightly larger fee (yet not too large), one could have gained a lot more information, perspective, passion and an Honours degree in Usability! but, we are professionals and do not have time for those sort of things any more, so we are left with seminars such as this one.

Hopefully my feelings are not a reflection on the state of the study of software usability. It seems that there are still a finite set of general guidelines that most development companies choose to ignore and therefore provide the research community with little need to move forward with research. If only people had to realise (and this is where the seminar made sense) that putting effort it User Centred Design would save you money in the end. ROI (return on investment) is the catch phrase here.

Here one needs to mention that it would not make sense to conduct User Centred Design/ Usability Design on all systems. One needs to conduct a risk assessment on the software you are writing to realise the benefit.
  • Are the users Internal or External
  • Are the users Homogeneous or Diverse
  • Is the use of the software Required or Optional
  • Is the impact on operations Low or High
  • Is the software Informational or Transactional
  • Is there Little or Lots or completion
  • Is the competitive advantage Low or High
  • Does the software have Low or High strategic Importance
If having answer the above questions you are left with a lot of red (risky) attributes then you need to look into Usability Design. Remember, it is not the time to market that matters, It is the time to profit!

For those that have not looked into the guidelines of designing usable systems I seriously suggest that you should. For those who do not think in usability terms, you must! It is interesting to look at the form you have just designed and wonder who is going to be using, how they are going to be using it and if they can actually use it!
  • Don’t use the wrong control for the function it is performing.
    • Don’t use a checkbox to display progress or entry success
    The View for Sandton Convention Center
    Here's a short list of design flaws that you should be able to take home with you:
  • Non-editable data should never look operable
    • Don’t use disabled text boxes to display data
  • Don’t use dynamic menus
    • New users scan the menu structure of a system. If this changes it will confuse them… further.
  • Don’t use negative checkboxes
    • “Do not check this box if you want to win”
  • Let the user know where they are on a web page
  • Do not let developers write the text on an application
    • “user password is incorrect” -> “Your password is incorrect”
    • “Select and item from the drop down box” -> “Select a country”
    • ….
  • Do not give users a list of 1000 steps to follow and then close the screen that displayed that list on step 1.
  • Design for all users
    • Is you application colour blind friendly?
      • 8% of males are colour blind!
GUI Bloopers 2.0
That’s probably enough for you to get some of the point. If you want to learn more, Jeff has a new book out in which he discusses them all.


1 Detail in the above entry was taken from Jeff’s slides
2 Johnson, J. GUI Bloopers 2.0, Morgan Kaufman 2007
posted on Monday, March 10, 2008 9:56 AM Print
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