November 18th, 2005 — 12:00am
In the overview of the new “results oriented” UI planned for MS Office 12, our friends in Redmond offer:
“The overriding design goal for the new UI is to deliver a user interface that enables users to be more successful finding and using the advanced features of Microsoft Office. An additional important design goal was to preserve an uncluttered workspace that reduces distraction for users so that they can spend more time and energy focused on their work.”
Let me get that straight. Your first goal is to make it easier for me to find and use advanced features that the vast majority of people employ rarely if ever, and didn’t need in the first place?
And something else that was also important – but not as important as access to all those shiny advanced features – was to make the workspace uncluttered and allow me to focus on my work?
Isn’t that… backwards?
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Comment » | User Experience (UX)
October 9th, 2005 — 12:00am
Usability issues pop up in the strangest places. For example, Monday night, while I was sitting in the Lisbon Tourist Police office, filling out a report on how I’d just been robbed. The officer handling my report took a moment to apologize for how long it took him to complete the process. He said, “We have a new internet based system to fill out all the forms, and its very confusing.” Seems that Accenture created a .net based environment for the Portugese police to record assaults on travellers, but they didn’t pay proper attention to user experience and usability concerns. The officers use all the classic workarounds: composing text in a word-processor before pasting it into input fields, post-it notes for shortcuts and passwords all over the workstations; and they live in fear of hitting the wrong navigation button and losing all their in-progress work.
It’s not as good as getting my wallet back, but it might make a good anecdote at the next IA cocktail hour.
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Comment » | Travel, User Experience (UX)