Sunday, December 28, 2008
How to Find the HP TouchSmart Website: Another Example for the Usability Hall of Shame
I came across the following post about HP's marketing snafu regarding the SmartTouch on the LandorCom blog:
"I saw a commercial for HP’s new multi-touch computer. It looked cool, so I tried to look it up on HP.com. Instead I was treated to a marketing disaster of biblical proportions."
I don't know the author of LandorCom, but I'll have to agree with the comments! If you go to HP's home page, as pictured above, there is no hint that the TouchSmart PC exists.
If you do a search for "HP TouchSmart", you will find a link to the following page:
A quick glance at this page certainly doesn't give the user a feeling of what the HP TouchSmart is all about, which is a sharp contrast to the HP TouchSmart interactive webpage, which takes more time to find.
Link to TouchSmart TV ad videoclip. If you look carefully, you will find a link below the videoclip to the HP TouchSmart interactive website. From there, you can link to the TouchSmart Community site.
If you dig even deeper, you'll find some videoclips about the TouchSmart. It would be great if these videos could be easily accessed from the first pages a user might come across after doing a search for the PC!
Note: Although the videoclips have an embed feature, the clips would not embed into this blog post!
Monday, December 1, 2008
Usability & User Experience, A work in Progress: "Ubicomp is like a 5-year-old wishing for a pink pony"; "Ubiquitous Computing and UX Design"
I came across a post from the Near Future Laboratory's blog:
Ubicomp is like a 5-year-old wishing for a pink pony -Julian Bleeker
"Complete Ubicomp fail. I mean..they can't even get this most simple of scenarios straightened out and they want to put my refrigerator and toaster oven on the network?"
The author of the post was a guest at an upscale hotel room that featured sensors that turned on the lights. Unfortunately, the lights turned on at random times, resulting in a sleepless night, and a grumpy, resentful blogger. A great example for the Usability Hall of Shame.
Via Thomas Purves: "Apparently no one really wants to reboot their socks."
To learn more about about UX and ubiquitous computing, see Mike Kuniavsky's post, "Ubicomp UX Design at Dansk-IT" and the link to his keynote presentation, "Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design".
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Airport Technology for the Usability Hall of Fame, if only it worked!
Albrecht Schmidt is the director of the Pervasive Computing and User Interface Engineering Group at the Universitat Duisburg Essen. When he was traveling in Seoul, he took some pictures of embedded information, which he uploaded to his blog post, Embedded Information: Airport
I was excited to see the pictures that Dr. Schmidt posted of an active computer display with a list of names of people who should contact an information desk, right in the middle of the baggage on the luggage belt.
This ALMOST made it to my Usability Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, the display was broken!
High-tech example
Low-tech example
I will give this an "A" for the concept, "E" for usefulness, since it the display wasn't working at the time it the picture was taken.
I think that Dr. Schmidt's key criteria for embedded information are important components to consider for information systems encountered in public spaces:
- Embedding information where and when it is useful
- Embedding information in a most unobtrusive way
- Providing information in a way that there is no interaction required*
Related:
[1] Albrecht Schmidt, Matthias Kranz, Paul Holleis. Embedded Information. UbiComp 2004, Workshop 'Ubiquitous Display Environments', September 2004
I especially like the following quote from the Ubicomp 2004 article:
"We investigate how information can be provided to users – exactly when it is needed. Our approach is based on a variety of information displays unobtrusively embedded into the user’s environment. We place the information displays in context."
Pictures and a discussion of airport technology I've recommended for the Usability Hall of Shame can be found on my previous post:
Off-the-desktop musings about future interactions: User experience, user-driven design, Universal Usability, Airports, and the "Internet of Things"
(I came across Albrecht Schmidt's blog, "User Interface Engineering: A blog on novel user interfaces, mobile applications, pervasive and ubiquitous computing- I use the blog as a note-pad" . It is interesting to note that I blog about similar topics, and use my blog as an on-line filing cabinet.)Sunday, February 17, 2008
Technology-Supported Shopping and Entertainment User Experience at Ballantyne Village: "A" for concept, "D" for touch-screen usability
There is a relatively new shopping and entertainment center, Ballantyne Village, in Charlotte, N.C. that was developed in partnership with Cisco Systems Connected Real Estate and Intelligent Buildings. The goal of this project was to use innovative technologies to plan, implement, maintain, and update a customer and tenant-focused environment. This concept is sure to catch on.
Free WiFi service is available to visitors in and around the center, even at the fountain. The video security system is networked. In the movie theater's bathrooms, an e-mail is automatically sent to the manager's computer when the paper towel dispensers are low on paper. There are several interactive large touch-screen displays located around center. The displays can be easily updated to provide visitors with information about the various stores, sales, and types of activities available at Ballantyne Village.
I first learned about this center last year, when I was taking Human-Computer Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing. Since part of my work focused on large interactive touch-screen displays, I was interested to see if the screens at the Ballantyne Village center would hold up to usability standards. I had previously watched a promotional video about the center, and was hoping that the displays would prove to be "useful, usable, and used".
The promotional video will show you why I was excited about Ballantyne Village.
Purpose of my visit:
Since I was new to Ballantyne Village center, my primary goal was to quickly learn more about the shops, all located outdoors, and target my shopping around sales. Since it was a gray, cold, and rainy February day, I didn't want to spend my time exploring the center by foot. I also wanted to take a quick peek at the layout of the center to learn about other services, such as restaurants, coffee shops, and services, in order to plan ahead for future visits.
Critique
To get the full picture of my experience, first view the unedited video-clips.
Note: The narrative is what came out of my mouth as I interacted with the screens, and the perspective is first-person. This is NOT a polished voice-over.
First experience: Fade to red
Second Experience: Chasing the Red Ball
Third experience: Difficulty with navigation
The large interactive touch screen displays I found at Ballantyne Village didn't live up to potential, nor did they help me achieve my goals as a first-time visitor who happened to have some time and money for an after-work shopping session.
They displays were attractive, but they weren't very useful. They were difficult to use, and during the time I spent exploring the displays, I was the only person who interacted with the screens or noticed the other forms of digital signage in the area.
As I approached the first screen, I noticed that in order to activate the display, I had to chase a red ball around the screen. The migrating red ball attracted me to the screen, but it wasn't always functional. On the first display, as soon as I managed to touch the ball, the screen faded to red, and did not reactivate. I chased a ball on another screen, but it did not activate at all.
I was able activate another screen which allowed me to navigate and find more information. Unfortunately, the content wasn't well-organized or as interactive as I'd expected.
The display performed as if it wanted to be both a video infomercial AND an interactive website at the same time. Web-like navigation conventions, such as a back arrow and navigation bars did not always activate when touched. This might have been related to a screen calibration problem.
There were many on-screen items that were puzzling. There was a rotating map of a large view of the Ballantyne Village area that didn't seem to provide information when touched. There was another image of the main building, with small billboards displayed that looked like they were navigation tools, but did nothing when clicked. Some menu items activated when clicked, but the sub-menus that displayed did not link to anything. I never found out about the sales!
I gave up:
I wonder if the same people behind the touch-screen application at Ballantyne Village were also responsible for the user-unfriendly interactive touch-screen map I experienced at the Cleveland Clinic:
User Unfriendly Information Kiosk Map
I'm still looking for user-friendly, useful examples of large touch-screen applications in public spaces, so if you know of any, please leave a comment and a link!
In my opinion, more work needs to be done to ensure that touch-screen interaction in public spaces is truly user-friendly. For more about interaction and usability, read my post, Reflections on Interaction: Update.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Usability Hall of Shame Update: Accessing Road Runner web-mail when you are away from home and have forgotten your password.
This is a short video of slides I created for an assignment for "Privacy and Security: A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective" last semester. The video shows it all!
Other posts with examples for the Usability Hall of Shame:
Touch screen interaction and usability in public spaces
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame
A list of links to books about usability and interface design can be found on the Isys Information Architect's website, on the "Interface Hall of Shame" section.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame (In a Hospital)
What were they thinking?
Here is an example of a user-unfriendly interactive touch-screen map on an information kiosk at a large hospital:
An information kiosk that looks like it was torn up by a frustrated hospital visitor:
Here is a picture of a hospital bed/TV remote control in my dad's hospital room. The TV channels could only scroll up, so if you were on Channel 6 and you wanted Channel 5, you had to go up through the remainder of the stations! If you hit a button, different hospital room lights would turn off and on without warning.
For more information about good (and bad) usability design, take a look at the World Usability Day 2007 website.
The following excerpt is from the "making life easy" website from World Usability Day 2006:
"Confusing cash machines, unclear signs, frustrating websites - poor usability is everywhere and it gets in the way of life. Sometimes it is just annoying. At other times it stops us doing what we need to do.
It can even be dangerous.
World Usability Day is an international event promoting the message that people have had enough of things that are hard to use."
