My Top 7 Examples of Bad User Experience

I recently had a client looking for a very senior User Experience Designer to add to their team. In my quest for this person, I started asking myself ...

"what really makes a great user experience designer?"

Along the way, I remembered my own first experiences in college.

I feel old typing this. But, "when I went to college".. it was 1994

• We were using dBase on an Apple II
• We used CorelDraw 4 & 5 on our friend's computer he had in his dorm room. Having a computer and that newest expensive software? Was a HUGE deal-it was super $$$.

Back then, was the birth of the web. Not everyone had cell phones, either. SHOCKING!!

Today, we visit websites and apps via our tablets, mobile phones and anywhere we have a connection. I am going to come right out with it..

EVERY company

needs User Experience people

2012 eCommerce & B2C facts

Percentage of online shoppers that base their opinions on a website 

by the design of the site alone: 

42%

Percentage of online shoppers that did not return to a site 

based on the site aesthetics: 

52%

My 7 top examples of Bad User Experience and User Interface Design

• Mobile "optimized" site - that looks like a table of contents
• Flash - I have an iPhone, iPad and a MacBook
• Pop Up Ads - I click to close them. Period.
• Flashing Banner Links - again, it looks like an ad and I will not click
• Site Consistency - your user needs to feel comfortable
• Auto Play Video - huge problem on major media/magazine sites
• Keep it simple - the best design is often the most clean

I'm considering switching banks. A good percentage of my frustration is their UI and UX on their website.

What sites frustrate you? What else would you add to my list?




*I registered for Stanford University HCI classes to dive deeper into Human Computer Interaction. They start sometime in February!

Once it starts, I'll be writing on the blog to let all of you know how the class is going!

Here's a nice 2012 B2C Color Infographic from the folks at: The Infographics

The difference between being a leader, and leading

"Whatever else each of us derives from our work, there may be nothing more precious than the feeling that we truly matter — that we contribute unique value to the whole, and that we're recognized for it."

What a powerful statement. It's very simple, really. Most of the time, it's easier to push people for "more". Whether more is more time, more production, more sales, more contacts, more meetings, more coding, more traveling... More gets in the way of Appreciation, too often.

http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/01/why-appreciation-matters-so-mu.html

by TonySchwartz

Points from Tony's blog:

•  "The single highest driver of engagement, according to a worldwide study conducted by Towers Watson, is whether or not workers feel their managers are genuinely interested in their well being. Less than 40 percent of workers felt so engaged."
• "Oddly, we're often more experienced at expressing negative emotions — re actively and defensively, and often without recognizing their corrosive impact on others until much later, if we do at all."
• "Feeling genuinely appreciated lifts people up. At the most basic level, it makes us feel safe, which is what frees us to do our best work. It's also energizing. When our value feels at risk, as it so often does, that worry becomes preoccupying, which drains and diverts our energy from creating value. "

This is why I'm incredibly passionate about company culture creation and preservation. Think about what you say, what you do and how you lead.. as if your grandmother were sitting on your shoulder watching your every move.

Would she be proud?

Someone reminded me on Twitter tonight about an old saying. What do you want people to say about you and remember you by at your funeral? Now, go do that. 

Simple, but perfect.

Cooking with my Girls

I LOVE cooking. It's one of the things I learned during my childhood when I hung out with my grandmother so much. She would make everything from scratch. I never once saw a box of anything "pre-made" in her kitchen. It was so much fun to help her make cornbread, batter chicken and especially help with her Red Velvet cake.

We would cook and cook and be in the kitchen all day. It was so much fun to me.

Now I'm passing that love of cooking down to Emma. She's around the age I was when I started cooking with Grandmother. I'm so happy that she wants to learn :-) Makes me tear up a little because it reminds me of my grandmother and the special times that we had.

Today we made Blue Cheese and Fig Tartlets. Only she and I liked them turns out-but we didn't care ;-) Tonight we are making Parmesean Crusted Chicken and veggies and salad. YUM! Tomorrow it's pot roast and I'm going to have her help me make Yorkshire Pudding too.

And of course there's plenty of my homemade sweet tea to go around too....

Compassion

I completely believe in the "Pay it Forward" mentality. I have seen it work personally and all around me.


I always try and help someone else if I feel like they need it. I practice this in business as well as my personal life.


On Good Friday, I had stopped at my sometimes usual gas station on Piedmont near Sidney Marcus for gas for the weekend of soccer games here and there with the kids. I had $20 in my wallet to buy more lottery tickets-just to hedge our bets. I had planned on going into the store after filling up and purchasing them. I was excited-the lottery was over $80M. Surely we could get even a small piece of that right?


As I was about to get out of my car I see an elderly man walking towards my car. This particular intersection is famous for day workers, etc. so I thought to myself "oh gosh please don't bother me and just go away". With recent abductions featured on the news I get scared so much easier these days-and a girl can't be too careful. So I rolled down my window just a bit and the man began to tell me a story...


He said his wife and he were victims of a house fire and had no homeowner's insurance. Sure enough an elderly lady stood right on the sidewalk in front of me with a cane and what looked to be belongings on a wheeled cart. They were decently dressed and looked pleasing enough. He then went on to tell me that they were put up in a hotel by the City of Atlanta but could only stay there a week under the city's provisions until they had to find semi-perm/perm. housing elsewhere.



The man went on and on without asking me for anything. It was almost as if he just wanted to tell his story to someone. Although I knew he wanted money I felt I needed to hear what he had to say.


So the $20 that I had planned on buying lottery tickets with-went to he and his wife. She waved to me and said "God bless you baby" when he told her what I had given them.


The older man could have been a con-artist feeding me a line. He could've been giving everyone the same line all day long. I'm the biggest skeptic on the block and trust me that was going through my mind the entire time I was engaging in conversation with the man. 



So I invested in Karma on Good Friday. I hope it helps he and his wife out and that it starts a chain reaction of people helping people in some small way in this world. That one day he and his wife will be on their feet and can help someone else and remember that someone helped them at one point when they were down and out too....