Navigation Gone Too Far

Launch an online shopping website of your choice on a desktop or a laptop. Pick any item that has multiple thumbnail images. Browse through each image one after another. How hard is that?

Miracas website makes image navigation miraculously hard by placing Previous and Next icons far far away from the current image, forcing users to move far left or far right to navigate between images. 

Can we do better?

Yes, we can!

Feature Alerts for Mobile Apps

Mobile devices have limited real estate. Mobile devices also have too many features to stuff in with. Therefore, a growing number of new features face a high risk of not being noticed by users ever!

Momondo app introduces features in a nice way.  The first time a user launches an app or when a new feature is launched, it educates the user about each feature by highlighting that feature on the relevant app screen.

Creating An Article is Hard On Articles Page

Linked In was one of the earliest players to empower even random ranting employees to start blogging. Twitter founder, Evan William's Blogger existed for several years, although it propelled few to blog. Linked In, on the other hand, catapulted regular people to start writing small updates, and eventually to start blogging. 

A few months ago, Linked In team pushed some updates. 'Write an article' button went missing from articles summary page. Here are few problems:
1. Frequent bloggers have no way to write an article from articles summary page. Users have to move to the home page to find 'Write an article' button. FAIL!
2. Clicking on the account name 'Parimala Hariprasad' no longer takes the user to home page. Instead, this action redirects the user to the same page. FAIL!
3. With Linked In logo and Settings icon left, the user clicks on Linked In button with a lot of hope. Hurray! 'Write an article' button appears on home page

Many users have walked away from writing, thanks to this problem.

Does your product have such problems too?

Rotate and Press, Rotate and Press

Weekends can be daunting for tourists in many parts of Europe. Most of the shops are shut down and there are too few people on the street. If you don't know the dominating local language (non-english mostly), you are up for a challenge.

On one such European trips, I visited few cities in France. On a chilly Saturday morning, I set out to explore the local attractions. When I visited the nearest train station, I spotted a ticketing kiosk (displayed below).

Key Challenges I faced
This ticketing kiosk supported only French. It was hard to distinguish between nuts/bolts, coin inserting area, button and the knob. On a chilly morning, struggling with a ticketing kiosk was the last thing I prepared myself for. I found myself seeking help from a fellow passenger, who I thought was magically dropped from heaven to help me. 

This is how the kiosk works:
1. Rotate the circular knob
2. Identify the ticket type 
3. Press the center of the knob

Need another ticket to a different place?
Rotate and press, rotate and press, rotate, rotate, press, rotate, rotate, press.

Can we fix this?
Can we have a touchscreen interface with options rather than the rotate and press circus?
Can we support English and switching from French to English?
Can we make it tourists friendly and not just citizen friendly?

Yes, We Can!

Mandatory and Optional at the Same Time

At first, users are told that all fields are optional



And when users skip it, they are punished with a message, "This question is mandatory: please answer it"

Users have no clue which question is mandatory!

Are your input fields optional too?

Distract Users with Same Notifications Multiple Times

Facebook is one of the most sticky products in the market today. It was originally built for college graduates within campus to find the *best ranked* girl for dating. Today, a large percentage of users using Facebook are 65 year olds. 

1. Login to your facebook account 
2. Send a friend request to a friend or acquaintance



3. You get a notification on 'Friend Requests' tab that your friend has accepted your request (Yeh, Hurray!)

And then....

4. You get another notification on 'Messenger' tab that you are friends with this person (Not so Hurray!)

Product organizations must stop distractions using irrelevant notifications or else, their products shall become irrelevant.

Why Show Stuff Users Don't Need to See

Linked In sends me a notification. I tap on the notification. Pending Invitation section is displayed. The moment I accept the invitation, the invitation section goes away.

Why Show Stuff Users Don't Need to See
If the invitation is accepted, what is the need for 'Pending Invitations >' to be displayed. The absence of pending invitations block itself is a visual cue. 

Can we simplify it? Yes we can.

Taps can be turned on in different ways based on their design. Some have knobs, others have a handle, while few others have an extension.

The one shown above had a stick like extension with a red mark on it. Does it mean that hot water flows out? What if this stick is pushed forward? Does it let cold water out? 
Oh wait! How to turn this tap on? 

Ah! user has to play with it for a while to figure this out. Can't user do even this?

Shame on the user!

Tell Me What's Nearby

You are in France. 
You want to book a flight. 
You launch a flight booking app. 
Origin airport - Pick one from the long list and choose one
Depending on the name of the origin airport, it takes close to a minute to type in the city/airport name.

Momondo flight booking app safely assumes that you are flying from the airport that is nearest to your current location. Origin airport displays all the 3 airports close to current location. Easy!

What if there is only one airport? Oh! Momondo defaults the origin airport to that one. You can always change it if you plan to fly from a different airport.

Does your app tell you what's nearby?

Is the System On or Off?

Walking into any video/audio conferencing room can be a nightmare. Picking the right cable, to connect to your laptop, turning on the TV monitor, enabling the laptop mode for presentation are things engineers do on a regular basis, yet are intimidated by the various technologies involved. 

Why not walk into a conference room, connect the laptop to the right cable, turn on the TV and we are good to go? I often wonder why such a simple task is horrendous to execute?

Folks at Extron have attempted to simplify it. They haven't succeeded completely though.

Can you tell if the system is ON or OFF? Does red color signify ON? 

Signifiers have to be clear enough for users, which in this case is not.

Long Queues to Dispose Soiled Plates?

How do you dispose soiled plates/cups at workplaces or self-service restaurants?

You look at the nearest trash box to place your soiled plates. At a big party or an event, you may notice a large queue of people waiting just to drop their soiled plates.

Conveyor belt carrying soiled plates/cups/glasses

A French organization, Amadeus SAS deployed a conveyor belt to carry soiled plates to pantry. 

No long queues. No hassles.

Facts, Figures, Data OR Good Experiences

Take any weather app and it tells you precisely the weather for any particular day. Planning for an overseas trip, look up the weather app. Visiting family at your home town, look up the weather app. 

Sadly, all that the weather app does is to throw temperature data at you for different dates. 

Can we make it better?
Throwing data at users is one kind of an experience. Analysin already available data and make suggestions to users is another. 

Facebook Weather Forecast

Facebook website shows weather forecasts on days with unusual weather changes. For e.g., a hot day that is unusually hot, an unexpected rain or storm and so forth. This is the feature that delights users, not the data.

User's joy is driven by good experiences, not facts/figures/data.

Do you throw data at your users?

Customer Experience for Bus Passengers

Suppose you are in a foreign land and exploring local bus transportation options. Imagine, You do not have access to maps or in general, internet connectivity. How do you know where the bus is currently headed?

Destination map for bus passengers in Nice, France

In Nice (France), local buses have a digital display board where the bus keeps moving from one point to another in real-time. For first time visitors or tourists, this is a good way to find out where they are at any point in time and also prepare to get off at their stop without hassles. This is a good feature particularly in few cities/countries where the local people speak a different language or not too helpful in directions. In fact, in many cases, the local people themselves may not know the directions, because Google, Internet, and GPS have taken away most of the geographical knowledge people have in general.