Interesting article on the BBC about the increasing importance UX is having on business.

It is a bright Thursday morning and, like millions of people all over the world, I am sitting in front of a computer. Unlike them, however, it is not to work.

Instead, I am a test subject sitting inside a research lab at the London offices of internet giant Google.

Read the rest of this article on the BBC News website.

It was a good reminder of the importance of identifying who your potential users types are going to be. And the differences in how they are going to approach the internet and your site. Children are very different from pensioners, just as adults who use the internet everyday will have different skills and expectations than those who don’t.

I often try and imagine how my mum would approach a site (sorry mum!) to remind myself that nothing is ‘obvious’.

As you can see in the above screenshot (click to see full size), the breadcrumbs at the top of the home page say:

Home > Student Loans Company

This would suggest that we are in a sub-section of the site, whereas in fact we’re on the home page.  Elsewhere on the site the breadcrumbs are logical. It’s just this one instance. Breadcrumbs are an excellent way of making sure your users don’t get confused as they browse your site, or know where they are when they are linked to a page deep in your site. Just don’t confuse them by having a random, illogical instance!

So off I went to Google (where else!?) and put in ‘UK student loans’.  That brought up The Student Loans Company.  That sounds right so I go to the site.

There looks like lots of useful information on here, but after a few minutes of browsing around I eventually found a link near the bottom of the ‘Contact Us’ page about loan repayments.  It turns out that this is a completely separate website (http://www.studentloanrepayment.co.uk).

Two points come immediately to mind:

1. Why is this a separate website when it’s all managed by the same company?
2. Surely a little bit of thought around the potential users accessing the SLC website would lead you to conclude that some (many?) would want information about repaying their loans?

For now I’m going to accept the two website decision. It smells to me like the classic mistake of organising your website around the company structure, instead of how customers/users view your company.

Instead, for this post, I’m going to look at my second point. I’ve thrown together a quick addition to the site, which would alleviate this issue, whilst keeping consistent with the branding.

You can see that this simple, extra banner of highlighted text at the top of the page clearly leads users to the repayments website.  Perhaps an additional link in the left hand menu would also help as many users will scan menus looking for relevant words when on a new, unfamiliar site.

Today’s lesson is to always remember who your website is for.  Think of the users…

Image from Flickr: eatmorechips

So the gym I go to (at 7am [not quite worked out how or why yet]) has the standard changing room row of toilet cubicles.  On the whole there’s nothing wrong with them.  They’re clean, always have toilet paper and flush correctly (I think you’ll agree that’s a minimum set of requirements).

And so with the basics covered my mind has come to notice something that really should have crossed someone’s mind when they were installed.  The doors to each cubicle have a habit of swinging closed under their own weight.  Not in a violent, dangerous way, mind.  Just an innocent looking peramble back into place in the door frame.  As you can imagine this has the annoying habit of making every stall look occupied when you first walk in.

Of course the lock mechanism does have a small indicator on it that shows when a lock has been engaged, so it should be trivial enough to wander down the row looking at each till you find one that doesn’t have a small red stripe.  But who here can honestly say that they have been in a public conveniece which had every lock available and working?  I know I can’t!

So, you’re walking down the row and you find a cubicle which should be free going by the lock indicator.  But, previous knowledge of broken/missing locks tells you that you can’t be certain it’s free.  So you give the door a gentle push…

Now, one of three things should happen:

1. The door opens onto a vacant cubicle, you enter.
2. The door opens onto an occupied cubicle, you don’t enter (I hope).
3. The door doesn’t open, you quickly move on.

Two out of the three options above lead to socially awkward situations, which isn’t a very good hit rate in my book.  All of this could be avoided by having cubicle doors which naturally swing open upon exit, giving a clear and obvious sign that it’s ready for it’s next occupant.

Image from Flickr: Hyperopia

Following on from my previous post on the pointless page of Natwest’s online banking, I have another bug bear with the same page.  As it’s not actually to do with the pointlessness of the page I thought I’d give it its own post.

So, we’ve logged into the site and if you read the previous post you’d be expecting this to show up:

But, in actual fact, what you get first is:

The observant among you will notice that the adverts haven’t loaded yet (note the loading bar at the bottom of the image) and placeholder text is in place.  The adverts are obviously being loaded off a different server or somesuch as they take a second longer to appear.  This second is just long enough to move the mouse cursor over the ‘Next’ button, when, just before you click, the adverts appear and the button jumps an inch down the screen.  This causes frequent clicks on the advert, taking you off somewhere else in the site.  Annoyance level +1.

You may have noticed a smilar effect happening on other sites.  It’s fairly common.  The text you want to read loads up and you start scanning down it.  All of a sudden the text jumps and you loose your place.  Nope, not a miss-firing neuron causing your finger to scroll the mouse wheel, but instead an image has finished downloading and the browser is making space for it.  It’s not the browser’s fault though.  Whoever made the page didn’t take the time to put the height and width of the image into the code.  It’s simple things like this which cause frustration on behalf of the user and surely they’re the whole point of building a site in the first place?

I bank with Natwest and have done for years. I’ve also used their online banking service since it first came out. Much easier to keep an eye on what’s happening with my money, especially when I was in Japan (no nipping down to the branch during lunch!).

A while ago they updated the look of their online section and on the whole it was for the better. There is one small part which annoys me every time I log on. Which, when you log on several times a week, really starts to grate.

After putting in your login details you’re brought to the page below:

I have several issues with this page, one of which is it’s existance at all.

While the importance of the ‘Date of last log in’ is not lost on me, why couldn’t this just be at the top of the account summary page? I don’t keep a personal record of when I last logged into the site so I really have no way of checking if what is being shown is correct or not. I log in frequently enough that I don’t even notice that anymore, I’m just on a mission to get past the page. I guess if you only log in once a month you might notice if the date was for the previous week but does it still deserve a separate page?

The other information there is a notice about my mobile number (which is erased in the image) and the adverts underneath. My phone number on the site is correct so I don’t need to ‘update’ them, but still this message comes up everytime. Why isn’t there an option which says ‘If your number is correct, remove this message’? If I change my number at a later date I can go to the ‘Personal Info’ section of the site and change it. I’ve even tried ‘updating’ my number several times, but the message stays put. Why couldn’t they do what I’ve seen over at Facebook, where announcements are put at the top of the main screen, with an option to act on the announcement (update phone number) or remove the announcement. If you do neither option it comes up everytime you go to the home page, but once you’ve done one or other option it dissapears. If you worry about people removing it and then realising they want it later you can have a menu option for past announcments where a history is kept.

So, after the date/time stamp and the phone number check being not required, the only thing left are the adverts. Do people think that by having adverts on a ‘passthrough’ page I’m going to take the time to read and click on them if interested? No. I’m after the first handfull of logins I’m going to be completely focussed on my task, which is clicking the ‘Next’ button to get to where I want to be (Accounts Summary).

When designing a site you have to remain focussed on what the user will be trying to do. This is the reason that splash pages have all but died out. Several years ago they were all the rage, usually in Flash, to show an animation, a video or just a logo as a way to ‘define the brand’. People just got annoyed with them. The internet is not like TV. People have a reason for being online and coming to your site, don’t waste their time!