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Quote of the Week:

CoTrip.org has a new interface

For travelers in Colorado, the state's Department of Transportation has given you a little gift for your summer journeys: an updated user interface at their site, CoTrip.org. They've smoothed out user interactions for finding traffic cameras (something I look at when planning a ride in metro denver, or heading up to the mountains to go skiing), and the programming seems to have speeded up load times as well. At first glance, it's a great improvement over the functional but hard-to-navigate version I was looking at just a couple of weeks ago.

A few other items worth noting: all the most-accessed info is now right there on the front page, including latest road conditions/weather, traffic speeds, and alerts.

Labels: usability, visual information, web design

posted at 6:23 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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3.31.2009

Even God wants the Old Facebook Back:

From a Facebook Haggadah, by Carl Elkin. Check out the whole thing!


via hgm's twitterstream

Labels: humor, information graphics, interface, social networking, usability

posted at 10:20 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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3.06.2009

Web Interfaces: Not just about the hockey stick, people.

I love the variety of purpose-driven interfaces that you can leverage to deliver info on the web successfully:

This, and a heck of a lot more, here.

Labels: information graphics, interface, usability, web design

posted at 8:28 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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3.03.2009

The official Recovery and Reinvestment Act project logo

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has a logo, which will appear on all projects funded by the Act:

It's nice, I suppose. One interesting thing I noticed is the upper left borders of the two stars that intersect with the blue background border (in the upper left quadrant of the logo) aren't there. These two stars look like they've opened up, blossomed, perhaps, into the white space of the circular inner border.

Another nit-picky thing: the "RECOVERY.ORG" typography is very small. If you're using it at the size you see on this screen, it's about 14 points in size (nice use of old standby Trade Gothic, BTW. Is there a subliminal message to be had there, in the use of a typeface whose name reflects commerce?). When this mark is used in smaller sizes, the type is going to become illegible. I could see this happening when the ARRA money is being used along with other funding for a large project, and promotional roadside signs, posters, and web banners have to fit a lot of logos into a small space (they become, in PR parlance, "bugs".)

The little reverse swiss cross that forms the center of the big gear in the lower right quadrant of the mark...it alludes to the health plan reform, perhaps, as being integral to the recovery?

[3/3/09 22:24] UPDATE: This emblem, along with one specific to transportation projects, was designed by MODE in Chicago. Um, if you don't know by now, they did the Obama "O". (I can't wait for a Denverite to be President: more branding work for us Queen City designers...).

Other comments? Post them below!

image via abc news

by the way: looks like the folks over at recovery.gov are using Numbers for their charting:

Labels: branding, bug, design, graphic design, illustration, information graphics, politics, typography, usability

posted at 2:28 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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2.24.2009

A user interface straight from a 1990's German car radio

VW has been using this blaupunkt-style navigation menu interface for a couple of years now, and even when it was new, it looked pretty old.

Takes up a lot of space, too, and doesn't integrate with the look and feel of anything on the rest of the site. Wassup with that, VW? I love the chunky german radios in your older cars as much as the next guy, but what are they doing on my computer monitor?

Labels: branding, cars, interface, usability, visual information, web design

posted at 10:57 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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2.02.2009

Apparently, the Online Ticket Sales provider for the Denver Zoo Site Sucks

Shame on you, whomever built and tested and approved the registration component of the Zoo site for wasting my morning. Even more of a shame that you've subjected one of your clients to bad service. Especially one that has such high visibility. Here's the story:

We decided to take a few minutes this morning to register our kids for a summer camp at the Denver Zoo. Well, this process, which should take no more than 15 minutes or so, took TWO HOURS. TWO HOURS.

Let me say that again: it took two hours to sign up two kids for summer camp. Using the time-saving miracle of internet technology, which was so wonderfully leveraged for effective customer experiences by Whomever built and tested and approved the registration component of the Zoo site (hey, not Malenke Barnhart, as noted by the Zoo's Marketing Director, and others at the zoo. Thanks for the correction. For the record, they did build the rest of the site).

The summer camp, by all accounts, is lovely. What isn't lovely is the fact that:

• you can only sign up online. No phone calls or walk-up registrations.


• Each time we tried to register, you only have 15 minutes to complete the process. This wouldn't be an issue, unless


• the online ticket sales vendor takes so long to process the credit card information that the order times out, and


• you have to start all over again. and again and again. Because the system doesn't save ANY of your information.

Other notes on how craptacular this user experience was:

• Not very Safari-friendly. We did have better luck with Firefox, but you'd think that a whomever built and tested and approved the registration component of the Zoo site would oh, say, PLATFORM TEST THEIR SITES FOR USABILITY. Especially when the only way you're allowed to experience a client's program or service is via the web (like, say, when you HAVE to order online to get into a class/program/event). I would note to whomever built and tested and approved the registration component of the Zoo site's programming and QA staff that Safari browser share is above 8%. It's not exactly Internet Explorer in terms of numbers, but if you told your client you were going to give the finger to over eight percent of their audience (and I'm guessing Zoo visitors are even a little more in the Safari category than others), that client would either fire you or tell you to rethink that decision.


• There is no distinction between a billing and a shipping address on the website.This might be an issue if you are signing up your grandkids for a class, so the parent contact info might be different than the billing info you need to pay for it. More than half the Family Zoo Memberships my extended family and friends have are gifted from others.


• The error page presented by the site (when your purchase inevitably fails) doesn't tell you what went wrong. If, for example, we ham-fistedly mis-entered the credit card info, or failed to enter in a required field, we'd have no idea, because the site doesn't notify us. Bad feedback, site! Bad!

Now, I know that sometimes glitches can happen. I understand that. But as an interface guy who has also integrated merchant account transaction processing into client websites, I know that it's possible to build a site that works, provides feedback to the user if something goes wrong, and allows for testing beforehand to ensure smooth operation. None of that was done here. Well, the testing happened, but it was the users doing the testing, when the site was live, and we weren't being allowed to give the zoo money.

If I were the Zoo, that's the thing that would have me worried: this user experience was so bad, that it was preventing us from actually giving hundreds of dollars to them. What sort of customer service experience is that?

I'd love to submit an invoice to the Zoo, or whomever built and tested and approved the registration component of the Zoo site or to Vantix Systems (the online ticket sales vendor selected for the backend processing). The invoice would cover the two hours we spent trying to do this, including lost revenue, etc.

But I'm sure, that if the experience we had with the Denver Zoo's order process was any indication, all we'd get would be another error page. And no real explanation.

Note: Revised to account for the fact that Malenke Barnhart, acording to the Marketing Director at the Zoo, DIDN'T build the backend of the Zoo site. Read the comments for why we thought they did, and why this post is still relevant to the discussion of providing a good user experience to build brands and effectively promote organizations.

Labels: advice, agencies, customer service, marketing, nonprofits, usability, web design

posted at 11:40 AM Leave your comments here: 1 comments

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