Posts Tagged ‘hci’

User’s Bill of Rights?

April 21st, 2008

Why did I never get this taught at university, college, school, work?  I think it needs to be!  Too often the user is blamed and condemned as the source of all the industry’s ills!

1. The user is always right. If there is a problem with the use of the system, the system is the problem, not the user.

2. The user has the right to easily install software and hardware systems.

3. The user has the right to a system that performs exactly as promised.

4. The user has the right to easy-to-use instructions for understanding and utilizing a system to achieve desired goals.

5. The user has the right to be in control of the system and to be able to get the system to respond to a request for attention.

6. The user has the right to a system that provides clear, understandable, and accurate information regarding the task it is performing and the progress toward completion.

7. The user has the right to be clearly informed about all system requirements for successfully using software or hardware.

8. The user has the right to know the limits of the system’s capabilities.

9. The user has the right to communicate with the technology provider and receive a thoughtful and helpful response when raising concerns.

10. The user should be the master of software and hardware technology, not vice-versa. Products should be natural and intuitive to use.

IBM Flunked Their HCI Course

September 19th, 2007

IBM Symphony WriterWhile a mate was banging on about the new Half Life Team Fortress mod I was getting excited about IBM’s new Lotus Symphony office app. I know – I’m one step away from slippers.But when I was trying to download it this morning I couldn’t! Why? Because IBM seem to want to make it as difficult as possible to download their new app. Scrapping the now common ideas of reduction and pulling back the veil so users can get to the meat of the matter – IBM stuck up an assault course of twists and turns to make life ‘interesting’.

Login or Register with your “IBM ID”
First you need an IBM ID. I had one from a few years back but couldn’t remember my “IBM ID”. After some routing around I find out the ever-cryptic “IBM ID” is an email address – well why didn’t it just call it that then?

Ignore the Internal Server Errors

I can understand a small-time developer or enthusiast beiung taken down by the Digg effect but IBM? IBM?! I was held off for a further 10 minutes while their server gasped back into life.

Download….. using DownloadDirector!!

IBM are clearly unhappy with the usual click and save operation so loved by virtually every organisation and site on the planet. So they force you to download and install a Java download manager. Which is presumptious enough to have a default download directory in your root folder. Great – another flaky app I plan on uninstalling once I get my download.

Verdict
Well I gave up this morning and left it until I got home. After finally getitng it installed my verdict isn’t much better than my downloaidng experience. Its….’nice’ I suppose. Considering IBM once had the full blown Lotus Office Suite I expected it to be packed with features but instead its more like a cut down open office with a very strange UI. One of the best moves OOo made was to make their interface more MSOffice familiar so as to not put users off. Thoguh IBM has chosen to do away with such fancy ideas and has completely re-written the office UI book.

So all in – IBM really, really need to sack their entire user interface team and employ a selection of aesthetically shrewd monkeys.