by Charles Florman

The importance of a user friendly interface is unquestionable today and few people can deny this. I personally think that we have the touch interface (and Apple) to thank for that. Developers have realized that a well-developed interface together with touch can feel very natural if it’s executed well. Even my 20 month old niece is swiping and tapping the iPad like she was born for it, and that is something extraordinary.

It is an exciting time we are living in, but it is also challenging. Over the years, user behavior has changed dramatically. If an app doesn’t look good and/or isn’t user friendly, then the user will delete it and move on to another app and you will never see that user again. The same phenomenon is true for Web sites today. If the site doesn’t make an immediately good impression, then the user will switch to another site quicker than the time he took to enter. And there, you get a bounce.

The vast array of options we have today has made users picky, and they ought to be. Today, there is no reason for them to settle for something that isn’t focused on creating that all-rounded experience. It’s not only about delivering content, it’s about delivering the right content in the best possible, most user-friendly way—that is the key to convincing your user stay on your site longer and to come back again.

It’s very cheap to discover mistakes early in the process and its very expensive to discover them late.

These are two important things that you can (should) do to improve the user experience and get your users to stay on your site:

• Understand the user when developing. Do research about your customers and the market! You need to know what your customers are looking for so you can give them the information that is relevant to them. Ask yourself: Is the content relevant and of quality to your users? This is especially so when the users come in to a site based on a search keyword—the user needs to find what he’s looking for immediately or he’ll leave as quickly as he entered.
• Never assume anything. You will truly realize how different users interpret the logic of the interface when you conduct user testing. In fact we did user testing on different airline sites last week. One of several things that we found was that some sites assume that the user will search for the city that they want to travel to and that is a dangerous and costly assumption. The test showed that users searched for the country and expected to see the available destinations for that country. Seeing no results, these users assumed the airline doesn’t fly to that specific country and ended up leaving the site. You can see in the screenshots below how easy it is to lose a customer just because you haven’t done user testing to find out how they actually interact with your site.

Poor search functionality on this airline’s site leads users to believe that the airline doesn’t fly to Thailand, which it does. Learn more about the capabilities of our Consumer Experience Lab at our Web site.

You should always do testing and you should start early in the development process. It’s very cheap to discover mistakes early in the process and its very expensive to discover them late. Do testing on simple prototypes and you will always find problems. Check out popapp to see how easy it can be to test an interface in an early stage.

There will always be issues that need to be solved. Finding the same problem in a late stage when the site is almost finished will cost you a fortune in both time and money. Do user testing right—and early—and you shouldn’t have to do anything more than refining small details in the late stages. Your users and clients will thank you for it.

How high is your bounce rate? Are you delivering a user friendly interface and experience to your customers today? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, please do get in touch. We have to tools, expertise and passion to help.

by Edalene Tay

How old are you now? How old will you be in say, 30 years time? Well, if you are going to be 55 years old or older – hello there, next generation senior citizens.

Sure, you are still young and everything is going well for you – having a well-earned steady income with a healthy body and I’ll-party-like-there’s-no-tomorrow lifestyle. But I kid you not, time flies and before you know it, your waist starts growing sideways, your body breaks down every now and then, your memory starts to fade and poof! There’s no denying, you are a senior citizen.

Gadget shopping with my mom these days isn’t much fun because we always seem to leave empty handed. It’s too small. It’s too heavy. It’s too complicated. It’s too ugly. It’s too old. It’s too old? Well, Mom, you’re just as old.  (Just kidding. Don’t tell her I said that.)

The thing is my mom is aging. Her eyesight isn’t as sharp, she doesn’t have the strength she used to have, her hearing isn’t as good and knowing all that, she still wants something that makes her feel like she’s still able to own and function something cool and up-to-date all on her own.

I can’t blame her, because that’s probably what I’d also feel when I turn into a senior citizen. The only difference is that I’d probably still be more digitally savvy than she is. But in 30 years time, how would things have changed digitally? Has the digital world done enough to cater for the elderly?

Just taking the iPhone as an example. I got one for my mom. She loves it. She likes how it has a big enough screen, how ridiculously big I’ve made the font in her SMS messages look, how she can easily check her emails. And the greatest achievement of all for her is being able to plan her traveling route by knowing how long it would take for the bus to come through a bus service app.

While Apple did a great job in catering for the elderly with the iPhone, most of the apps in the iTunes store don’t seem to cater for the elderly at all. While the phone came with customisable settings for the fonts, the fonts within the app don’t get changed together in the setting. Yes, there is the accessibility option for zooming. But let’s be honest, it’s quite a pain to use.

Then there are complicated remote controls with more buttons than what we bargained for. I’m sure you have seen some of your grandparents either randomly pressing the remote controls because they can’t remember which are the buttons to press, or just memorising where main buttons are because they can’t see the labels of the buttons or the icons are badly designed. And with the increasing release of interactive TVs, keeping the controls and navigation simple would be an uphill challenge.

Designing with the elderly in mind probably would give you an edge over the rest that either doesn’t or focuses exclusively for the elderly. Take the Spin & Go Pro mop for example, its appeal isn’t just that it’s a mop that cleans with very little effort, it’s also a mop that anyone can use. It no longer takes a lot of strength for one to mop the entire house. Was it designed specifically for the elderly? Not exactly.

The first design that Spin & Go Pro came up with had a foot pedal. It fulfilled its promise of hands-free wringing, but it required you to balance on one leg, using the other to step on the foot pedal. In the latest design, Spin & Go Pro managed to come up with a design that didn’t require a foot pedal, instead, you just have to push the handle of the mop down and it spins. Now the latest design is better suited for the elderly to use.

So app builders, web builders or anybody in the digital production team, my appeal to you is to start thinking about catering for the elderly. It doesn’t need always need to be a priority for sure, but it doesn’t mean that it should be disregarded entirely.

There is still quite a long way to go in designing for the elderly and we need to keep improving the situation because in 30 years time, I’m definitely not going to be happy with being stuck with the technologies of today and be denied the chances of enjoying the technologies of tomorrow.

(1) The User, (2) the User Interface; and (3) the Interaction between the two.

Identifying areas to improve sign ups, ease of use of forms and understanding the psychology of sign up (that’s the real problem, not the form).

From Joshua Porter, who presented at Webstock 2009 in New Zealand.