Archive for the ‘UI blurbs’ Category
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12
Feb
2010
Dear Facebook
Dear Facebook,
Generally I don’t care when you mess with your UI – for the most part I like seeing that changes are being made. But seriously there are a few things that SUCK with your new interface – and for once, I don’t blame the 1000′s who have changed their status updates to complain and rant about the fact that you changed a site they probably spend half their days stalking people on.
For starters, when I attempt to lurk through people’s pictures I loose the entire left-hand navigation. SO when my user flow is to select ‘Photos’ and then some random album – the only navigation I’m left with is a contextual menu back to that person’s profile and their other albums.
What if said album isn’t worth creeping through and I want a quick way back to the main ‘photos’ section – hell I may not even know this person if it was just a tagged image. So now, I have to click back through on the Facebook logo to return to the homepage and select ‘Photos’ again. Thinking of it from the use case of a professional lurker that is A LOT of clicking just to look through 4 or 5 albums.
While we are on that note – why can’t I filter down by tagged images v. new albums? Lame, give me my filtering back.
I’ll give you points for moving notifications up to the left hand corner – but then take them immediately back for leaving the chat box floating in the bottom right-hand corner, even though you list my online friends when chat is on over on the left-nav, it doesn’t matter cause you take them away when I look at an image! Why repeat the functionality? Just do it once and do it right.
I’ll end my rant on your search box. I cannot tell you how many times I have attempted to do a search and accidentally put it in the status field. Hmm that could be embarrassing – imagine, creepers everywhere accidentally publishing the names of people they are looking at – all because you moved a search box into the middle of the freaking page above another element with the same functionality.
Now, I know you have money, and I know you hire UX professionals – because I’m pretty sure that I applied for a job with you once… but seriously – maybe you want to look at investing some more of your money into user testing before you start adding more features. Just a thought.
Sincerely,
Loyal Facebook Lurker
2
Sep
2009
A little bit of work promotion…
So I don’t like to write about work much… mainly because I have no filter and I am not always 100% sure where to draw the line… and where crossing lines would cause HR to knock at my door because I published something on a little thing I like to call the intra-web….
Anyway, one of the first projects I started working on when I started at Fjord, was a site for the BC Cancer Agency. It was a bit of a tricky project to wrap our heads around because we were asked to bring an art therapy program that is currently conducted in group settings – online. The site was to be geared towards young children with older family members suffering from cancer and provide them with a place to express themselves and explore.
So we started sketching out two concepts, presented them to the client, selected a path, created the interactions, hired a cartoonist, spend some time coding and came up with this:
So if you have some time, go and check it out!
27
Jul
2009
The day greyhound drove me to drink…
Last time I had an experience with Greyhound was back in May 2006, feel free to click here to read all about my crack-filled adventures from Windsor to Indianapolis…
Tonight I had another experience with Greyhound as I attempted to book a trip from Vancouver to Kamloops for this Thursday. I started out trying to book it online, no matter what I tried it wouldn’t work… and their error messages suck… this makes me rethink every e-commerce error message that I have had to come up with.
So then I called to figure out what the heck was going on – ps Don’t tell me to try closing the browser and then try again – I ALREADY DID THAT… so I hung up and called the number to book via phone. But that didn’t end well when I hung up because they were charging an extra $12 for me to book it over the phone.
$12 extra dollars for a 4 minute phone call? Umm I don’t make that much per minute so why should they? And I wouldn’t be calling them if they had better error messages online so they should be paying me for the 30 minutes I have now wasted.
So I hung up.
And made another attempt online. FAIL.
So I called back and was willing to suck up the fee to get this gongshow over with. The lady on the phone then proceeded to tell me that I clearly didn’t know my own address and that the card wouldn’t work for her – explaining that their ghetto system was the only one in the past 4 months that wouldn’t accept my card witht he address that they currently mail my bill to, so out of frustration I hung up on her.
Then I called Cornholio. He kindly lent me his credit card to book it online – sweet, I was going to save the $12 service fee.
HA, wishful thinking!
It costs $18, yes, $18 to purchase a ticket using a credit card different than your own. They call it the ‘gift ticket fee’. You have got to be kidding me, it costs $18 to buy someone a ticket on the greyhound?
I have no words as I look forward to my white trash trip up to the cabin. Greyhound has now been added to my shit list along with the drunk drivers at Yellow Cab.
26
Mar
2009
Pecha Kucha Vancouver – Volume 5
Went and checked out Pecha Kucha – Volume # 5 tonight with some folks from work. For those who have never heard of this (which was me about 24 hours ago, even though I had signed up for the event through facebook… which obviously resonated deep into my thick skull) the format of the night was a series of 6 minute and 40 second presentations.
Why 6 minutes and 40 seconds you ask?
Well, because each of the 10 presenters was given 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide to get through all that they had to get through. I have to say I am a HUGE fan of this format… mainly because I have the world’s shortest attention span, and seriously a 30 minute presentation where someone repeats their point over and over again… really kills me.
So for these 10 presentations they either had to get to the point or let their slides do the storytelling for them. Which meant for me, every 7 minutes I got to focus on something new… meaning that if I didn’t care for the presenter’s topic or if the presenter was too quiet to hear… I wouldn’t have to suffer that much longer.
Highlight: Rex Weyler and his photos of a colleague and himself on a zodiac while reporting the Russian whaling ships in the pacific ocean.
30
Jul
2008
Web design for non-profits…
So over the past few weeks I have been working on Melanie’s foundation’s website and a few other related projects I had on the go. For research and out of interest I started looking around the web to see what kind of look, feel and functionality other foundations used on their sites.
Sadly, I found maybe two sites that I found useful. Most of the sites had three different layers of navigation, users were generally forced to dig through a few pages before they could either figure out the purpose of the foundation or to make a donation. Donations are how most of these foundations survive… why make it so hard to do?
I’d assume that if foundations really wanted to they could pair up with HCI and comp sci programs to get some free wireframing/development done… most students would love some hands on projects to add to their portfolio and even get college credits for. Med students spend unpaid time in hospitals, teachers have to volunteer in classrooms… why shouldn’t computer nerds donate their time to change the world too? (yes I just referred to myself as a computer nerd.)
