Usability testing

So we had our first usability test of the new recognition web app I’m writing and things went swimmingly.

Imagine that,usability testing…with real users. It was a pleasant change for me. We got tons of great feedback and fortunately it tells me that I’m really on the right track.

This is a high visibility project and it can’t be bad when the CEO drops in to see how things are progressing and the Director of HR comes down to participate in the tests. The project sponsor told me today people are pressuring her to get things wrapped up because they want me on their upcoming projects. Not bad for 6 weeks on the job.

Ok,time to stop tooting my own horn and write something useful to somebody.

May 1^st Reboot

I saw a discussion somewhere recently about the May 1^st reboot. If I’m correct,the idea is that every May 1^st,designers and developers will unveil redesigns of their sites. www.may1reboot.com will serve as a focal point for people to find those creatives participating in the program. I think there might be prizes (besides Internet fame) for best design but I’m not sure.

One of the reasons The reason I don’t have more information to offer about the program is the god awfulness of their web site. I don’t want to mercilessly bash it but I’m not sure I have even one good thing to say.

I should preface the following by saying that I’m no Nielsen when it comes to usability. I like images,I sometimes deviate from #00f as a link color,and I hate to tell you Jakob but sometimes I don’t even underline them. That being said,the reboot site (for me anyway) is totally unusable.

First things first,you need Flash in order to view anything at all. I know,people will tell me that Flash has like 98% penetration…whatever. I’m using a new install of Firefox and I had to go download it. My mom isn’t going to go get Flash to look at any web site. Granted,my mom is not their target audience…but as a professional web developer,I would assume that I am their audience. People are doing ridiculously cool things with Flash but it should add something to the presentation that can’t be accomplished any other way. As near as I can tell,they didn’t use Flash for anything that a little intermediate level knowledge of CSS couldn’t pull off.

“As near as I can tell” brings me to my number two beef with this site. I can’t read anything on it. That’s right,I CAN’T READ ANYTHING ON IT. Ok,that’s a slight exaggeration but once I got Flash installed and actually took a look at the site,I found very little contrast between any of the design elements. Dark red,faded grey,or pale yellow text against a black background. To make matters worse,it displays in the super small font that only the really super über hip and in the know designers are fond of. The text can’t be resized because it’s all in Flash and my young eyes just can’t take it. The default display of the links is in a color that’s either the same color as the background or pretty close to it. To me they’re totally invisible until I stumble across them with the mouse and then they light up. Maybe there’s more contrast on Mac because the colors aren’t so dark but I have to figure I’m not the only developer working on a PC. Some of us might like to participate in the reboot but like me can’t get the information they need to do it.

Did I mention the annoying music that plays INCESSANTLY in the background? I couldn’t stand it and I had to keep opening and closing the tab the site was running in as I flipped back and forth for reference while writing this.

I understand art for art’s sake and even being weird just for the sake of being weird. I can understand if some of the submissions are experimental,cutting edge,and/or not entirely usable because of it. But in this instance,the site is intended as a tool to convey information about the event and in that regard,it just fails. Miserably.

Anyway,I’m not sure there was any point to this post other than a chance to rant like a usability fanatic and possibly as a general outline for what NOT to do when developing. I’m going to start work shortly on a redesign of my site and I was interested in participating but now I’m not so sure I want to be associated.