Existing Design - things that work and don't work an introspection

Been busy with the hi-fidelity prototype work for the past 3weeks... But the good news is I was able to build a well appreciated and usable Interface for the SaaS based EPM solution.

This articles focuses on the importance of taking a look at the existing system before you start to re-design.

Sometimes as usability professionals we get too high on confidence in the level or expertise we have and fail to look into the importance of why things are done in a certain way (as a usability professional I' sure you would have encountered this situation in the past ). When I started to analyze the existing design I knew it was easy to use but that was only because I had a some sessions with the product experts on how the whole Scorecard creation works. To develop a scorecard in that application the user should have good amount of knowledge in the best practices, different components of a scorecard and how to measure them... while it it is important to know all of this to be able to develop a scorecard, the most important factor the existing design failed to address was, being a SaaS product, where u can sign-up for a free trial and get started right away, it really wasn't intuitive, some very important functionalities which no other EPM SaaS product give where almost unreachable (deep, down, inside)

When I was almost done with the analysis and presented the prototype to team it was accepted very well initially. But as we started to have discussions on various scenarios and how the new design will address it, there I realized a gap in my prototype and how the existing design was able to handle it... Though for a first time user the existing application will look complicated for a user with domain knowledge it would still be a great product.... So I had to revisit my analysis now more from the angle, the existing design is great in terms of functionality and its potential how do i make it intuitive and not try to re-invent the wheel.

Voila! This time I guess I was truly successful. The new prototype was tested for all the scenarios possible and was accepted finally... I'm done with the core modules and have started to work on user management, file management etc., The development teams has started to work on the application when we are ready with the product to go live, I will post it on my blog test it and let me know your comments....

I guess the proverb looks can be deceptive holds good for UI also :)

Follow-up article.... Poor usability on istockphoto.com

Been quite sometime since I've updated my blog eh? I read an article by Jacob Nielsen on bloggers contribution to information clutter in cyber space http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html was contemplating on my perspective to this article and have finally decided to go low on number of post but improve the quality of each post. Now over to the article

Remember my previous post on usability issue on istockphoto.com, they have done a quick fix to this issue, the 'search within' feature is completely removed from the site!!! Now that can only be a quick fix since 'Search within' is a critical functionality in image search portals...

I think instead of trying to re-invent the wheel they can do a CtrlC + CtrlV of this functionality from their parent company site gettyimages.com its handle quite well there.

Poor Usability in istockphoto.com

Over the weekend, I've been doing some extensive image search for one of my online campaigns. I wanted a portrait of a Team manager preferably in his 50s with a happy look on his face which will suggest 'how easy it is for him to manage data with the help of this particualr tool for which i was doing the campaign. Additionally if the image had people in the background, out of focus, like his subordinates, will add value to the campaign messaging.

User behaiour in image search portals:
The clarity in the kind of image a user wants as they start to search will be about 30-40% as you keep refining your search keywords is when you will arrive at the right kind of image.

I used istockphotos because they have a good repository and affordably priced. The moment you enter the keyword and hit on search... automatically the option to do a 'new search' changes into 'search within'.... Everytime i have to do a new search I have to change it from 'Search within' to 'New search' adding to more number of clicks and interupting on the thought flow. It was very annoying.

And I also noticed that it threw some completely unusable search parameters as reference for the image keyword i was looking for.



If the option to do a 'Search within' was by choice, it would have been more usable and time saving instead of assuming user behaviour in best possible scenario and automatically changing the search criteria.

This morning I thought I will send my feedback on this particular usability issue to istockphoto and to my surprise they din't have their feedback button upfront. I had to do some searching for that as well... I did manage to find it and have posted my comment. Lets see if they take user feedback seriously.

That apart I found the right image that will suit my copy. http://www.istockphoto.com/ has a very good image repository and the best part is you can get a good image for web usage as low as $1. These minor edits on crtical functionalities will enable the user to use the site more effeciently.