Patents take awhile…
Over three years ago, I was designing a interface for the Bosch Automotive group (as a consultant for Cynergy). Those interface's were rolled out to the public as part of ENCORE, an integrated diagnosis tablet powered by Android. Today I received the notification that the first patent has been granted (it was actually 10/6/2015). I have been eager for this day as this has been a long process and this is my first patent. I am listed with James Fish and Kevin Gray, both incredible partners when working on this project. As the process continues, I am hoping that the pending patents that I know about are approved and issued.
This patent, number 9,153,078 is for "Graphical user interface capable of changing units of measurement.
A graphical user interface is provided that can be used on a diagnostic tool. The graphical user interface allows a technician to operate various functions of the diagnostic tool including searching for additional information on the Internet, receiving weather information that is relevant to certain diagnostic tests, and displaying in certain formats the retrieved vehicle data and when certain vehicles were last scanned or diagnosed.
Pandora anti-patterns disrespect its users and ruin its experience. Shame on them…
If I was advertising on Pandora I would be very concerned that the design of their controls, the placement of those controls and the presentation of ads on their platform were designed to cost me (as an advertiser MUCH more than they should. Pandora is using anti-patterns to drive unintended interactions. Eventually this will backfire, but in the meantime we as customers, are forced to deal with very poor user experience.
Today I was listening to Pandora. Its my go to service for streaming music. I used to be a pro user but decided to reduce spending on little things that were adding up to see if the free versions would cut it (sorry Evernote, you got cut too). The reason I had a pro account with Pandora was the ads. There were some Farmer's insurance ads that were terrible AND would run as video. Nothing like streaming video on an older iPhone + paying for data for "free" music. The couple of bucks a month for Pandora was worth it to avoid Verizon's insane overage charges.
And now another anti-pattern is back with Pandora. The tiny tap zone. And I mean tiny. I suspect this interstitial/pop over ad is intended to appear to perform well (boosting sales for Pandora). It achieves its goal but… it also frustrated me and reminded me that there are still designers out their that are not making the world better. No shock really, but its annoying and disrespectful.
What do you think happens when you tap just off that tiny X? My expectation it that the target actually larger than the visible UI and that you will still close the add if you are a pixel or two off. Tapping in that area should dismiss this ad… I was wrong. If you miss that tiny, tiny target, the app creates a new Mumford & Sons station and changes your station to the newly created station.
I had to delete the station (sorry Mumford & Sons, but I miss that banjo) and then go back to my Black Keys station. And try again to remove the ad, and of course, I missed the target and recreated that Mumford and Sons station and deleted it… and gag. That combination of anti-patterns pissed me off, cost Mumford & Sons (they are paying for taps I assume?) and has me looking at other streaming options.
Devil in the details. Label placements matter.
Which form design is better, top label or left label? It depends on what you want to achieve. For an enterprise payroll application speed, ease of use and the ability to localize the user-interface later won out.
Make it easy…
I was working on a massive enterprise payroll application redesign and a focus of the experience was efficient data entry. We knew that a payroll professional (think clerk, HR pro or Payroll Goddess) would have to interact with data entry daily and that over a year we estimated that they might encounter 3,000,000 inputs. Making those interactions as simple, quick and painless as possible was a key goal for the design and engineering team. Where we could, we reduced or removed inputs, but there are some things in payroll that will likely always be inputs. We started looking at best practices and I was surprised at how a design decision like this could have a massive impact on not just user experience, but the bottom line of a company.
Make room for German, French, Spanish and others.
In addition to wanting to make the application as easy to use, the client needed to prepare for localization in non-English markets. Target languages included German, French and Spanish. A general rule of thumb is that the area for input labels will require about 30% more space.
What's best?
I compared “Top Label” and “Left Label” research and recommended “label top” for the interface. User testing showed it was faster and the "top" position supported the localization goals. In the middle of the project, additional voices were added to the team and the idea of “label left” started showing up in the wireframes. I challenged this decision and was met with strong convictions that the switch was for the better.
A debate ensued and eventually all parties (myself, the new in-house UX pro, the project owners, managers and engineering) were asked to join a meeting to discuss what direction to take. As a consultant, I knew I needed a quick, visual way to convey why one choice was better than the other. Unfortunately, we could not deploy both ideas and test the decisions with our users.
I created the infographic below to help the broader team understand my position and more importantly, the reasons why. The team debated going in a new direction (left label) and it's merits but, in the end, decided that "top label" was the better choice.
The 10x faster read speed was easier for the users of the app, easier for translation later and saved the business a week per employee per year in time that might have been wasted with the left label. I love it when the user experience and the business need align.
One Final Thought
After making the estimation on how much time was spent looking at forms for on professional in one application, I started to wonder which design pattern is the most common in our lives. I would love to hear from you in the comments on what you see the most, what you prefer and why.