Web sites frequently make use of JavaScript’s onLoad event handler in conjunction with focus() to reposition the cursor once the page has finished loading.  Here’s a page full of search results on javascript focus.

Pages do this so that you can begin typing immediately without having to first TAB or click-focus on an obvious starting point: the “Wireless number” field in the AT&T login screen for example:

Take a quick look back at the screencap.  You’ll notice the characters “yz” in the “Wireless number” field.  That’s not my wireless number.  It’s the last two letters of my password.  I certainly didn’t start by typing my password given my familiarity with the login/password paradigm, so how did it happen?

When I’m halfway through my password, the onLoad event is fired and this helpful JavaScript kicks in, relocating my cursor and blanking out the fields. Even though most sites aren’t as aggressive in removing your previous values, they refocus nonetheless. In those cases, I would be left with “yz55555555555″ which is still a problem.

Here’s a quick suggestion: In the onLoad event handler, if focus has moved on to another field or if another field has fired key related events, don’t refocus.

Get to work AT&T! :-)

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…and they want their welcome screen back!

A 4.0 browser?  A lot of Solaris 7 users must eat at Round Table!

HTML only?  Maybe some of those Solaris users prefer Lynx? :-)

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The good news is that my computer was recently updated!  Everyone likes updates, right?

The bad news is that my development environment which consists of at least two DOS prompts running processes, my IDE, email client, browser with many tabs, draft emails I’ve left open as reminders to finish them and a handful of Windows Explorer windows… is gone!  Poof!

That Untitled-1 Word document or PowerPoint presentation you were working on?  Gone!

That Adobe Illustrator project you started right before you left, and had some creative inspiration on?  Gone!

This is infuriatingly computer-first behaviour.  Behaviour that says that we as people, our needs (a persistent workspace, an understanding that things will be where I left them) are less important than the needs of the computer (to be running the latest Windows code).

The chance that my computer, on a corporate network, is going to be affected WHILE IDLE (i.e. it cannot wait for me to return and click, “Yes, Reboot!”) is so staggeringly low that I’m surprised this is the default, recommended configuration of XP.  One way to know I’m “at work” is the fact that my machine is part of a Windows domain.  “Nobody” (quotes signifying not enough people to consider the average case) is hooked up to a domain from their home PC.

Pardon me, while I write an email to myself at work as a reminder to disable auto-update X-|

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Commenting on any dimension of quality of the Comcast/Motorola DVR feels lazy on my behalf.  It’s a product so riddled with usability and stability issues, I almost didn’t write this.  Nevertheless, frustration won out so here we are : )

Quick aside: One of the first things I did after “using” the DVR was pick up a universal remote.  When I say “using” I really mean “going to anger management classes after attempting to schedule a recording” but I digress.  My remote has one important button on it – “OK”.  Think of it as the “Submit” button or Enter key.

Last Sunday, I was killing time channel surfing and came across the quintessential time killing movie – Tomb Raider.

This is what should happen:

This is what actually happened:

“Oops, look like I pressed the “Info” button by mistake… although that’s pretty hard to do.  I’ll just back out and hit OK, correctly this time.”

“OK I KNOW I got it right this time, what the heck is going on?  No I don’t want info or to schedule a recording, I want to watch it!  Why isn’t it on?”

False Advertising.  The Ol’ Bait and Switch.

Tomb Raider isn’t actually on yet!  1-3 minutes before the next show starts, pressing “Guide” doesn’t show you what’s on now, it shows you what’s on next.

There are two fundamental issues here, revolving around the answers to these questions:

1. What is the Purpose of the Guide?

• Rob – What’s on right now.
• Comcast – Minute 1-25 (what’s on right now), minute 26-29 (what’s on next).

2. What Happens When I Press OK?

• Rob – Switch to selected channel (can never “fail”).
• Comcast – Watch selected show (“fails” during minutes 26-29).

Why would Comcast build in this failure mode?  Sometimes pressing OK does one thing and sometimes it does another?

Introducing Engineering Logic

To us developers, there are two states: true and false, 0 and !0, 0 and > 0, etc.

The engineers who built this device made no distinction between “a show starting 1-3 minutes from now” and “a show starting a week from now”.

In their world, the state of the guide is reduced to two possibilities:

1. What’s on now.
2. What’s in the future.

In our world, they represent the guide as having three states:

1. What’s on now.
2. What’s on 1-3 minutes from now.
3. What’s on in the future.

It’s this second state, the “1-3 minutes from now” state that needs to be handled differently.

One Possibility

The last 3 minutes of any show are either commercials or ending credits.  Wouldn’t you really rather know what’s on next?  That seems to be the underlying assumption made when designing the guide to auto-advance like this.

That sounds reasonable, but isn’t there a better way to handle my OK press instead of showing me the INFO screen and leading me to believe I’ve made a mistake?

What if, instead of throwing up the info window, how about this?

Success!  2 minutes?  That’s enough time to use the restroom and get a bowl of pistachios to enjoy the 2001 movie of the year – Tomb Raider.

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This morning on the phone with my insurance provider:

“Please enter your account number”

“123456789″  “#”

“You entered 123456789.  Is this correct?”

If it’s incorrect, I can see that it’s wrong (most phones display the numbers you’re pressing).   Alternatively, I just know that it’s wrong because my motor control has evolved for thousands of years to easily interact with things about the size of my fingertip, and I can directly observe the results of my actions.

If it really is incorrect, chances are people don’t pay attention to this message anyway, similar to the ubiquitous confirmation dialog.  In either case, you’re going to have to sort through it with customer service.

10000 calls a day into customer service, with an extra 4 seconds for confirmation, assuming you get the confirmation press right and don’t mistakenly re-enter their number “just to be sure”.  You are funding an additional 11 hours a day in the off chance that this message will succeed and the re-entry will happen online instead of via a CSR.

More $ and wasted customer time.

Now, I could be completely wrong here.  Call centers have metrics out the wahzoo and I’d be surprised if they didn’t have the numbers to back up the assertion that the additional 11 hours a day they’re spending in 800 funding is less than the cost of “wasted” CSR time.

Doesn’t seem to pass the sniff test though.

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My wife recommended adding my blog to the BlogCatalog the “Blogger social network”.  Registration was a simple process, really just a matter of some login information and my blog URL.

As with Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, BlogCatalog requires that you verify the ownership of your blog.  The easiest for me is adding a META tag, all I need to know is what tag to add.

“In order to verify blog ownership, BlogCatalog requires you to place a BlogCatalog Widget, link or meta-tag on your blog.”

Where is the META tag that I’m supposed to add?  I can’t find a mention of the META tag on this page, nor in their help section.  The rest of this page is dedicated to adding a BlogCatalog widget to my blog, which I don’t want to do.

It’s clear that BlogCatalog wants me added to their social network of bloggers (i.e. helping them grow) but how about returning the favour by not “requiring” me to add a BlogCatalog widget?  I say “required” because although I’m sure there’s a META tag I could add, I can find no mention of it on the BlogCatalog site apart from this one-liner.

This might have been a Speed Bump, but it quickly turned into a Road Block.  Instead of merely giving me pause, I can go no further.  A day later, I received an email from BC stating that my submission was denied because I failed to prove ownership.

And thus ends my experience with BlogCatalog.

This omission is so glaring, it almost seems purposeful.  Have they specifically left out META linking information in the hopes that I’ll take the most clearly defined and explained approach – adding a widget?

In Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, Norman discusses exactly this phenomenon.  When a quick read of the page gave me no additional information, I felt like they were hiding it from me on purpose and I chose to become frustrated.  In turn, my focus narrows and it’s even less likely I’ll be able to find the information I’m looking for due largely in part to my emotional state.

I’m a pretty laid back guy and don’t usually state things so bluntly, but here goes:  Don’t piss off your potential users.

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Encountered during a hardware beta survey… is this question really necessary?

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In his Microsoft blog, Todd Bishop highlights a 2003 email from Bill Gates detailing the frustration felt when attempting to update Movie Maker (c/o Compete On Usability).

Gates recently commented on this during a farewell event,

“One of the newspapers had some e-mail that I sent about how maybe Windows could have been better at something, and they said, ‘This is a shocking e-mail. Shocking!’ And I said, ‘What do you think I do all day? Sending an e-mail like that, that is my job. That’s what it’s all about. We’re here to make things better.”

My own comment on his response has nothing to do with usability, but everything to do with a comment made by Ledwell in regards to Gates’ email:

“…it takes a lot more than one-off emails to inculcate the cultural and corporate values needed to ship products with superior usability.”

I’ve nearly completed Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior, a terrific read from the team that brought us Peopleware.  One of those patterns is the “Film Critic”:

Film Critic: Team members or corporate spectators who have determined that the value they add to the project lies in pointing out what has gone wrong or is going wrong, but who take no personal accountability to ensure that things go right.

What really makes a Film Critic however, is the belief that one’s success can be separated from the success of the project in question.  Gates may be an exception, but for many of us whose entire office buildings can be cleaned by a single person each night, the luxury of purely spectating does not exist.

Film critics rarely have a positive effect on a project, and often a negative one.  A good friend once told me that you don’t have to reply to every email, and I took that to heart – emails from critics should get a quick scan and end up in the bin.

If you’d like to reply, here are some suggestions:

• Would they like to donate time to test new features?
• Can they provide resources (either $ or people or both)?
• Do they have any specific input from customers that would help?
• How about unique insight that their position affords them?

Do you have any film critics in your organization?  The next time someone berates the usability of your project, challenge them to constructively contribute.

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During E3, what used to be a massive entertainment software convention, I tend to search for a fair number of games over at Gamespot.  Usually I get it right, only searching for games I know are released.  Sometimes, though, I get it wrong.

Here’s the screen that appears when I search for “rob is cool”, a phrase I’m sure is at the top of Gamespot’s analytics ;)

My eyes shot down to the orange and white text below, which appear to be search results… until I read one.

“Robert Free?  Reduce De-… oh…  eww.”

The very first bit of information on the page is “Search results for…”, only to be followed by “No Results Found”, which because I know there are results, read as “X Results Found” and start scanning.

Percentage wise, let’s look at the amount of space dedicated this key bit of information.  In this tiny cutout featuring 237,500 pixels, a modest 850 (0.3%) are reserved for the word “No”.

Instead of using a Google-like “did you mean…?” to match text with games, you’re effectively searching for  advertising.  Type in “final fintasy” or “super marip brothers” and, although Google handles these quite effectively, a site dedicated to gaming does not.

I know of no better way to devalue your visitor’s time than to show them what amounts to junk mail after they make a typo.

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I’m a few chapters into Luke Wroblewskis’ Web Form Design and as with all good books, the first thing it does is change the way you look at the world.  While the book is about forms on the web, component layout and interaction is valid on the desktop as well.

Today, I happened to give the OS X Spaces app a second shot.  Have a look at the configuration screeen:

The number and layout of virtual desktops is specified graphically via interaction with what I would refer to as “non-standard” components.  They aren’t part of the shipping widget library, but I figured out how to use them immediately.  This is likely due to their similarity (in size and shape) with radio buttons.

The key design component is that it relies on pre-attentive variables to speed perception.  Arranged figures are of appropriate size and shape such that I immediately perceive them to represent desktops.  Before I parse a single word or component on the page, I know what I’m looking it.

On the other hand, this too would have been a perfectly acceptable way to prompt for Space configuration:

Among these, which presents a more compelling (and to be honest, “fun”) way to configure your desktop?

Of the two, it’s clear which would have taken much longer to develop.  This level of polish however, has come to typify the Apple experience.

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