Forgiveness is an important feature of good design. You should help your users by minimising the impact of mistakes or, ideally, prevent them from happening at all.
One way you can make your interfaces more forgiving is by employing a ‘forcing function’ (aka confirmation). This technique makes the user verify that what they requested is [...]
Author Archives: Ashley Towers
Forgive your users; even when they are drunk!
Posted in Web Interfaces Tagged Confirmation, Forcing Function, Forgiveness, Gmail, Google 3 Comments
Site News: Usability Friction Amazon Store
I’ve added an Amazon store to the site today. There’s not a vast quantity of stuff in there, I could have just added to the store by Amazon category, but I’ve hand picked everything on there myself. Everything in there I’ve either read (or am in the process of reading!), so if you are interested [...]
Site News: Post Titles
I had a bit of an epiphany today about the way I title my posts to this blog. I think most of them are the wrong way up. I have been titling them based on the example – rather than the lesson that can be learnt from it. So unless anyone objects strongly (not sure [...]
Verbose seat reserved LED signs on Virgin Trains
I travelled to Leeds to visit a client on a Virgin Cross Country train last week. Above each pair of seats on the train is a small LED sign that says if the seat is reserved or not (see the picture – sorry about the quality it was taken on my phone in less than [...]
Why Google’s Chrome Browser Tabs get it spot on
Google’s Chrome Web browser was released to much fanfare last week. One of the touted features was their redesign of the tabbed interface. They got it spot on, it’s exactly how it should be.
Here’s how Apple do it in Safari (click to enlarge):
Here’s how it’s done in Firefox (click to enlarge):
And here’s it done [...]
Learning more about CRAP
I posted yesterday’s tutorial to hacker news and I must say I’ve been overwhelmed with the response I got; so a big hello and thank you to everyone who clicked through! A few people were interested where the term CRAP came from and if I invented it. No, I didn’t invent it; all I did [...]
How to make your user interface CRAP
Graphic design has 4 basic principles that appear to varying degrees in all well designed works; Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. They are there to help guide you in making attractive designs, but I think they can (and should!) be applied when designing user interfaces. This post will show you how. Anyway, I like the [...]
iPlayer on Virgin Media Cable
Usability Friction reader Nick Wright emailed this week to tell me about the frustrating design of the BBC iPlayer on his Virgin Media Cable TV set top box.
The Virgin set top box has a common look and feel throughout the user interface which makes the system feel nice and unified. However, the BBC decided that [...]
Posted in Physical Interfaces, Software Interfaces Tagged Consistency, Conventions, Reader Suggestions, Set top box, Virgin Media Leave a comment
Hollywood Studios Encourage Piracy
Don’t steal this car!
Imagine you’ve just bought yourself a new car, let’s say it’s a Volkswagen. You’re excited; you’ve been looking forward to this moment since you first saw the advert. You get in, and turn the ignition.
Over the car speakers a stern voice starts speaking:
“Have you stolen this car? Stealing cars is a crime [...]
How am I supposed to know I can tilt the iPhone?!
A good friend of mine told me that he was showing off his new iPhone to his dad over the weekend. Obviously, his dad loved it; but when he showed him how you can tilt the phone over and get the cover art for albums his dad said:
“How do I know to do that?”
It’s a [...]
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