Category Archives: Usability

Dark UX Patterns

Posted on February 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

In a comment on my post A terrible UX? On the contrary, a brilliant one, Yishay Cohen, a UX expert, pointed out that the described site is a great example of a Dark UX Pattern, and referred me to a site dealing with dark patterns, classifying different such UX into categories. In this site I found (too) many examples of similar practices. This site objective is to “ ‘name and shame’ Dark Patterns and the companies that use them.” So if you enjoyed being annoyed from the never-ending-unsubscribe saga  in my post, I am certain you will enjoy being annoyed from the different dark patterns described in this site.

While in my post I described the UX as “Kosher but Stinks” , some of the dark patterns are not even kosher (not to mention the smell).

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Posted in linkedin, Usability, User Experience

A terrible UX? On the contrary, a brilliant one

Posted on February 24, 2012 | 6 comments

Yesterday I got a mail from UA (an old colleague, one of my few readers). As he knows it will interest me, he referred me to a mail he got from some company with an “unsubscribe” link (do I have to mention that he never subscribed to them?). When he clicked the unsubscribe link, he got the following page:

For the sake of my English readers and to save the time of the Hebrew readers – I will summarize this page:

We know you want to unsubscribe, but please note that each of your email address has also domain aliases – for example – if your email address is something@012.net, people can also send you mails to something@012.net.il. So if you want us to stop sending you to your address, please write down all your possible aliases, otherwise you will keep getting messages from us (yes, it is written in red !). And they add… “Together with the ISP abuse prevention departments, we compiled for you the full list of aliases per ISP… (the list on the right green bar)” – or in other words – we walked the extra mile for you in order to protect your privacy.

Seriously? you expect me to write all these email addresses? Why can’t you just write a simple script (I will code it for you, if you want) that takes the email address I entered and calculate all the aliases yourself ? It would make this page much simpler for everybody.

What a terrible user experience !!!

However, after a few hours it struck me – It is a brilliant user experience !

Before you start wondering what substance I inhaled before getting to this conclusion, I will explain:

(Disclaimer: the following is my interpretation. If they had other reasons to do it – I will be happy to hear…)
The page gives the users the option of unsubscribing from their service. This is the last thing they want you to do – so they make it difficult for you. This is not a new thing, but they are doing it in a very creative way.

  1. They are giving you the feeling that they care about you – so they formatted the page nicely (as opposed to other unsubscribe pages), and teach you about  aliases and even collected all relevant aliases for you – so you will get the feeling they really care about you.
    So they get your emotional vote. Maybe you will think twice about unsubscribing.
  2. They assume that once you start reading the page you will tell yourself “I do not have time for it right now, I’ll do it later” – which you will never do. Or maybe you will do it, but later…
    So they earn time. meanwhile they can send you more messages.
  3. They warned you that if you will not write down all the addresses, you will continue getting mails – this is the most clever thing they do-
    From their point of you – they have your consent to continue sending emails to all the addresses you did not enter.
    My guess is that they do have a script, similar to the one I suggested earlier, but it does a different thing – it checks which of the aliases you failed to enter, and they update their database with the new address.

So it is not a matter of dumb UX, my feeling and personal interpretation is that they were just being creative here.

Do I like it as a user ? not at all. I even disgusted . But they got my vote for the creativity…

As the old saying goes “Kosher but stinks”
(sorry, I could not find any web resource with the story behind the idiom)

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Posted in linkedin, Usability, User Experience

I’m Alive / Something About Usability Testing

Posted on February 4, 2012 | 2 comments

I’m alive. As ELO sang it very nicely (audio) – I’m alive. For those who are emailing me, asking why I am not writing anymore or whether the wheels are not turning anymore – I will answer with a question – “If wheels go round and round and there is no one to watch them – do they really turning?”.

The truth is that I am too busy doing other things (AKA working), and I have little time to watch, not to mention share what I see.

So when I started writing an email to some of my venture partners about a nice usability video I was watching, I told myself “hey – some of them read your posts, and there are also some other people you want to share the video with – so why not just post it ?”. So … here is the first post for a very long time.

So… as most of you know, we are working on a new product that will change the world. One of the funny things about consumer products is that you actually want users to use it, and to be happy with. This means the product should be usable – or in other words – people should be able to do with the product what they expect to be able to do, and it should be simple for them to do so. Anything else – will just not work. There is a lot of similarity between customer experience (another topic I wrote about) and user experience. In one you are doing your best to provide the best service and environment for your customer – because you want him come again. On the latter – you just want him (or her) find the application useful and usable enough, so they keep on using your product rather than find another product (that costs exactly the same – nothing). Or in other words – it is very easy to be frustrated from an app – in a very similar way to your frustration from the long time it takes the waiter to return with your credit card after you pay.

A few days ago (I have limited time every day… did I mention it ?) I started reading Steve Krug’s book “Rocket Surgery Made Easy” (or the book site)  – about Do It Yourself usability testing – claiming you do not have to hire a highly-appreciated and outrageously-paid user experience expert for doing usability testing and finding your usability problems. For those of you who don’t know Krug, he is also the writer of the well known “Don’t make me think” about web usability which I recommend to anyone – even if you have nothing to do with development).

One chapter of the book is dedicated to “homework” of viewing the following movie (~24 minutes) showing a usability testing session on a web site. I highly recommend to spend the time and watch it.

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Posted in Customer Experience, linkedin, Usability, User Experience