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[supercooleve-blog]

Please comment on our UI/UX and general product idea! (The Bizlet) • /r/UI_Design

Hey everyone! We need feedback (anonymous, we've been told) about our design and general idea for class. Care to help us out? Leave your comments...

[superblyannoyingpaper-blog]

Post #10 When2Meet

I would like to comment on the when2meet user interface.

When2meet is a fantastic website that does its job perfectly. It has a easy and intuitive user interface, where each participant of an event/meeting just fill in his/her availability by drawing out blocks of time that they are free. The chart on the right is intuitive in that more people is free, the greener the time block appears. The only one possible improvement to the design is that when the user mouse over the time block, it currently shows the available people on the left – it would be more more intuitive to display the available time right next to the time block, as first time users may take a long time to realize where the information is displayed.

[supercooleve-blog]

It is truly a user friendly website as you described. It doesn’t have any dubious elements such as lots of ads in the webpage and the entire website is clean enough that only essential elements are shown to user. It has good interaction with user and the guidance is clear enough for new users like me who is barely know nothing beforehand. The color scheme is also intuitive. If no one responses, it will be grey out and the available time for most participants are represented by different colors in green. However, it might be better for visualization purpose, but I do want to see the form of the availability of each person if no obvious available time is suggested by the bar above.

[superblyannoyingpaper-blog]

Post #9 TV Ports

I was in a hotel in Austin, Texas when I discovered this wonderful User Interface! 

Excuse the reflection but focus your attention on the beautiful ports that are placed facing the users. I believe many of us have faced the struggle of trying to connect the HDMI/composite cable to your computer/game console. It is always difficult because these ports are on the back of the TV, which often is attached to the wall. This beautiful design improves the usability and effectiveness significantly, allow users to quickly plug in their cables. Wouldn’t life be much easier if all ports are facing towards you?

[supercooleve-blog]

I do like this interface idea that bring the manufactories and designers’ attention that the ports are hard to connect for most of the people while keeping them in the back for the aesthetic purposes. However, the TV set is used more often as a larger screen for extensive displaying purpose. For example, people may extend the screen from mobile devises to TV for larger visibility. The designers could borrow the idea of audio port from computer case that it has extra port in the front for easier use purpose. Similarly, they could have the extra ports for the HDMI as well as other common use port in the front while keep the power port in the back for aesthetic.

[supercooleve-blog]

Post #10

We did a new way of getting credit card information when making online payment by taking a photo of the front side of credit card on an assignment.

 It seems so dubious that most people shared concerns of insecurity. I do think this would be a trend in the future since it saves a lot of time typing the credit card number in and the current technology do support it. In the most of the flights company, you can take a photo of your passport when doing the online self check-in.  As for the credit card, it will save the information for you like the way amazon did for saving credit card. For the security issue, it asks you to type in CVC code manually.

[superblyannoyingpaper-blog]

Post #8 Snapchat Facial Recognition

I’m sure most of y’all who have snapchat have seen your friends sending you snapchats like the rainbow coming out of your mouth. Example Photo:

However, I would like to comment on the lack of intuitiveness in this brand new feature. When I received these snapchats from others, I wanted to send back snaps with rainbow coming out of my mouth! However, I had no idea how to use this brand new feature and there were never any popups that teaches you how to use this brand new feature. A better user experience would be to have a FTUE guide that walks through the user on this feature.

[supercooleve-blog]

I totally agree with you. It would be better if there is a guide for any new features adding on no matter how the users’ learnability is. I don’t think there will be any function that is intuitive enough and everyone on earth doesn’t need to learn about it and know how to use it in the first glance. 

In addition, the user will think about other things from their metal model when they see the facial recognition interface coming up.  We definitely know the facial recognition is for finding where the people’s mouth is to put the rainbow animation on. It would be obscure if we didn’t know the functionality in advance.

[supercooleve-blog]

Post #9

Pray For Paris. After the Paris terror attacks, Facebook activated its rarely-used Safety Check tool called “Safe Check”.

 It was used for natural disasters before and the functionalities are pretty simple: This function will be activated automatically if users are near a disaster, and the system will push a notification asking whether you are in safety currently. 

In this case, your family and friend will receive the notifications right away and know you are safe.  Users can also check the safety for their friends. This is really a trivial design, but it is really social good design and it focuses on users’ real needs.

It is also easy-to-use (user friendly+of good learnability, memorability and efficiency) and neat.

 However, I kinda hope there is no need of such tool.

[brownbrooke-blog]

#Post7

When I click the expand button, the page display the hidden information. However the button don’t change. When I click the button again, it hide the page. 

Surely, this is not a good user interface. There is no way to tell whether it’ll display or hide the information before click the button again. The efficiency is low and the learnability is not satisfying. 

[supercooleve-blog]

I totally agree with your idea about the misinformed “expand” button and it will confuse the users if they spend some time on reading the content below and want to do further navigation. They might not get confused when they first click the expand and feel the interaction works since the hidden contents popping up. However, it feels like there is more to expand after first click indicating by the down arrow in the button. It would be better to fade away the expand button, change it to “shrink” button or grey out the button.

[supercooleve-blog]

Post #8

The UstTwo team is a digital product studio, designing products that make the whole world astonish.  If you still don’t recognize the team, here is a hint: they are the designers of “Monument Valley”. It is puzzle game with brilliant user interfaces and use the visual illusion to solve each puzzle. The interaction is simple: switch/ turn around the modules and tap to go forward. The plots in each chapter fluent enough and people get admire to the beautiful scenes. It also can be defined as revolutionary since it emphasizes the significance of the user interfaces/experience on games for entertainment.

The new chapter “Forgotten Shores” is also available now.

[supercooleve-blog]

Post #7

The design of Yale University School of Art website is truly surprised me!

 The layout is soooooooo awful that this is a textbook of bad design! I guess the background of the home page is a photo of Art building but why not using a high resolution as well as big enough shot? It is horrible for people with trypophobia. 

The alignment for the content in the home page is also terrible. It is aligned on the left part of the page first with waste of space in the right and suddenly aligned to middle in the end. 

The backgrounds for each individual tabs are not relevant to the content and some are even gifs which might distract people from main content.

Reference: http://art.yale.edu

Gifs is in the current students tab:http://art.yale.edu/CurrentStudents

[superblyannoyingpaper-blog]

Post #6: iPhone Language Selection

Apple Products are known for its user friendliness, and I am surprised by my frustration with one particular function of my iPhone. Below is the interface when I type a message.

The globe icon at the bottom is for users to change language to type in, but more often than not, rather than changing the language, this appears:

This is extremely inconvenience for users who have to change languages often. The key to avoiding this is to hold the world icon for a second or so, before scrolling up. But this is so unintuitive and low efficiency and is causing so much frustration whenever I wish to type in Chinese. Step up your game Apple.

[supercooleve-blog]

I tried in my phone about this problem and I agreed with you about the user unfriendly if you are typing fast. This problem may be caused by mismatching of user-interaction with the corresponding model the phone has embedded because it is hard to tell whether it is a tap of certain key in the keyboard or you are doing a swap to invoke the “control panel”. May be they need to train the iOS more about these corner invocation cases (like the reinforcement learning). I don’t think the holding on icon for several seconds will be a better idea since the mismatch in model does not always happen, but users will invoke the icon with low and doesn’t match the mental model.

[superblyannoyingpaper-blog]

Post #5: Xbox

Today I would like to talk about the usability of Xbox.

Although it is my favorite game console, it actually has pretty low efficiency  and learnability in terms of its user interface. The system only receives one type of input, from the controller, and nothing else. Suppose the controller runs out of battery, there are no way for the user to interact with the Xbox and watch Netflix for example. Furthermore, for a first time user, users have no idea what each button means as they have no intuitive meaning, and thus may be very difficult for a new user to get used to this game system.

[supercooleve-blog]

Totally Agreed! Probably that is the reason I don’t believe the investment of the XBOX is well-worth. The learnability as well as the memorability is so poor that as a beginner, I prefer the PS4 more because the controller of that is much more matched with my mental model.

[supercooleve-blog]

Post #6

Jeff mentioned the “mode” concept should be avoided in the user interactions. He used the vim, which is a text editor most programmers are using currently. However, compare to EMACS, which is another text editor and doesn’t support modes, vim is much more user-friendly in special commands, such as search for specific text.

 The following is the screenshots for part of the EMACS commands and the capital “C” means the ctrl key. You can see that almost every command needs to be activated by pressing at least 2 keys in the keyboard, while the vim literally solve the problem by using different mode and these commands can be invoked by just one key.  

[meanhippo-blog]

An underrated interface that I recently noticed is the personal scale. The personal scale not only does exactly what it is expected to do, but it also does it in the simplest fashion possible. The user simply has to step on the small platform, stay on for a few seconds, and then step off. The actions are intuitive, as it is natural to step on to raised platforms, and there is little room for the user to make a mistake. Designers could have made this device with more features and intricacies, but the lack of additional buttons, the plain black on grey text, and compact shape make it a seamless and flawless tool. No other interface requires less from users.  

[supercooleve-blog]

I agree with the idea you said about the intuitive and it is so nature that even the first time users knows how to use it! However, the scale I use currently is a little bit complicated than yours. May be we didn’t refer to the same kind of the scale? Mine looks like yours, but every time I use it I have tap it first to do sort of “activation” step and then do the same process you described above. It is sort of make sense since you have to “tell” the tool that you are going to use it, but it seems a little bit unnatural and it’s degrade the user experience if we don’t take the weight mechanism into count.

[supercooleve-blog]

Post#5

YouTube TrueView Video Ads is a product of Google in 2010 and it gives viewers choice and control over which advertiser’s message they want to see and when. Also, YouTube only charges advertisers when a view has chosen to watch the whole ads, rather than pay every ad they played in the traditional way. 

 It is actually a win-win situation for both advertisers who pay the money and the users who use the watch ads. The advertisers will pay the fees for those who actually get attracted while those aren’t interested can skip the ads 5s later. It is truly user-friendly and the data (the numbers of attracted users) can be further used to improve the quality of the ads.

[supercooleve-blog]

Post #4

The USB cable seems to be have three different orientations, like this:

“First time you try to connect: Ahh, doesn’t work.

 You flipped, try the second time. Failed as well.

 Then you flipped again. It worked. $#@$#@%$#@#&^%^&”

This problem happens to most of the USB cable we use today. Would it be better to redesign the connector to be inserted both side like what Apple have done to their USB cables? It is so frustrated to most people when trying to plugin in the right way. Or if it has to be in one direction, would it be better to make it asymmetrical?

Reference: The photos are from google images.

[cbinterfaces]

Post #3

I don’t think I can think of a more painful design than the airplane seat. I recently had the pleasure of flying in coach on Spirit Airlines. I had never flown on Spirit, so I was unaware of the situation I was getting myself into. I had to force my carry-on under my seat; to put it above me cost money. So I didn’t have leg room. I am 5′ 4″ and my knees touches the back of the person’s seat in front of me. I have no idea what a person who is taller than me could do. I went to look for the button to recline my seat, and there was none. They do not allow you to recline in the section I was in. However, for some reason the people in front of me could. So they, of course, reclined and left me staring at their head rest all flight. I was so uncomfortable the entire flight, and I had back problems for days afterwards due to their designs. 

[supercooleve-blog]

This is truly an awful design; especially the seats space keeps the same while the person in the front can decline their seats. I believe the designer doesn’t give enough thoughts about the person sitting behind the last declined seats. The primary design goal of seats on airplane must be comfortable for most people. I cannot imagine how the people taller than you could endure this trip.

Next time maybe choose to not fly with this company? lol

[brownbrooke-blog]

#Post2

It took me sometime to figure out the direction of the elevator in science library before the note “GREEN UP, RED DOWN” posted out. Just using the color to indicate the direction is not straightforward. People have to map the color with the direction. It needs time to learn and memorize. Just a simple up or down arrow will help. 

[supercooleve-blog]

I definitely agree with your idea about the elevator, in fact this is hard to learn for the new users only with the color of the light. However, it can also be tell on the “up-down” buttons when you press to use the elevator. For example, if you want to go down and press the “down” button, when the light of the down button is off and it shows the elevator for down is coming. However, there is no indication of which elevator is going down if more than one are coming. You idea is actually better in this case.