We love when our clients give us exciting and innovative designs to test and often we agree that an interface that is not immediately intuitive is learnable and so can be considered to be usable for the target audience. Several factors affect whether an interface that requires learning time is usable.

1. Does the effort outweigh the benefits? The effort required to learn the interface sometimes outweighs the benefits of presenting that content in a complex interface. We feel that innovation is essential, however, sometimes the user is required to do a little too much to access content and they quickly lose interest in the content and the interface as a whole.
2. Will the initial effort required to come to grips with an interface put the user off? It is essential that the interface provides very simple and intuitive core functionality to ensure that users are not discouraged during initial use. This will allow users to use core functionality and learn more advanced nuances of the interface over time.
3. Does the interface hide the purpose of the website? When the interface is too complex or excessively visually based the purpose of the content it provides can get lost.
4. How often will the user visit the interface? Some interfaces will be heavily used and re-visited regularly. In this instance the user has the opportunity to learn the interface and become familiar with its features and nuances, however, where a user visits the interface irregularly or perhaps only once, the opportunity to learn a complex interface does not exist.
5. Who will use the interface? Different user groups are more willing to learn and explore than others. While it is true that younger and more technically savvy users will get used to an interface more quickly, these are often the ones that give up fastest. In comparison to older users who are often more cautious and systematic in their approach, more proficient users assume knowledge and are typically less forgiving of an interface that requires learning.

As web technologies advance we hope that this will enable designers to create increasingly interesting and innovative interfaces, however, we hope that the users don’t get lost in the process.

As we are well aware, the internet has changed the way we do things. The way in which retailers ask us to sign up for loyalty programs or clubs is one of those things that has changed. It was not long ago that you would stand in the store and fill out a paper-based application in order to join a loyalty program. Now you are handed a card and asked to complete the application online in your own time. A recent experience highlighted the importance of a smooth integration between the off-line and on-line elements of the application process.

During a recent visit to Borders bookshop, at the checkout I decided to sign up for their new VIP loyalty program. I was handed the membership card and told to complete my application online. When I arrived home and logged onto the website for the life of me I could not find how to complete my membership application. Despite my expertise and experience in user interfaces, this task proved difficult. I became frustrated not being able to locate the call to action from the homepage, referencing both the instruction pamphlet and the membership card in search for further assistance. Finally I found the text link labelled ‘Join Boarders v.i.p’ in the top right of the screen.

If your company requires users to finalise what begins as an offline process via your website keep the following in mind:

Highlight promotional features prominently on the homepage: As I was coming to the site with the sole purpose of completing a process I had begun offline, I wanted the process to be as quick and seamless as possible. I was looking for a prominent call to action, something that grabbed my attention straight away. I was looking for a large advertisement, particularly as this loyalty program was a new feature.

User workflows differ when the task begins offline: In my example above, when I arrived on the website I was not thinking in terms of ‘joining’ as the link suggested, I thought I had already joined due to having received the card in-store. Instead I was looking for a way to finalise the process, looking for key words such as ‘Register your VIP card’. An additional call out box on the homepage which referenced my offline step (receiving the card) would have been extremely helpful.

Know your audience: Joining a bookstore’s loyalty program does not necessarily require users to interact with the company online. Many customers may join the loyalty program only to use the benefits in the physical store. You are therefore likely to attract more customers that may not be so familiar with the internet than if it was an online bookstore for example. Providing clear calls to action as mentioned above, would greatly assist these users.

I recently purchased a new mobile phone from a major Australian Telco, at the same time I moved from a pre-paid service to a contract, all with the same telco. Unfortunately, all did not go smoothly and this led to numerous interactions with customer support over a one-week period. Throughout the process I experienced a number of frustrations, all of which were exacerbated by having to engage with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu each time I called customer support.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that IVR is a great tool, and has many brilliant applications. However, what made this Telco’s implementation of IVR frustrating was that rather than providing the caller with a number of options to select from, the system initially asks the caller to explain the reason for their call. This assumes that the caller already knows the options that are available to them and the words/phrases that they will need to use in order to access the correct menu option.

In my opinion, this is like telling me that I need a key to unlock the door in front of me and rather than providing me with a set of keys that I can compare to the keyhole I am given some materials and told to go ahead and make a key a key that fits the lock. What makes it worse is that I HAVE to go through this particular door, there are no alternatives. Best of luck.

Here is an example of my first exchange with “Lara”:

Telco: “Hi, I’m Lara, welcome to [Telco name]. I’m here to help you with your call today. All you have to do is talk to me. So using just a few words, tell me the reason for your call.”

Me: “I have ported the number from my old pre-paid sim card to my new contract sim card. I am now receiving calls to my old number on my new handset but my handset indicates that the phone number of my sim card is different. I suspect that this may be why I can’t access or setup voicemail.  I would like to get this fixed. ”

Telco: “Sorry, I missed that. I’ll understand you better if you use just a few words.”

Me:  frustrated pause…”issues with my new sim card and voicemail”.

The system then latches onto some words in my statement that relate to their menu structure and offers me what it sees as the most relevant option. I have no idea if this is the right option as I don’t know what all of the options are and I won’t know until I speak to someone, quite often after a prolonged period on hold. As a result, I frequently found myself in the wrong department with no idea how to get to the right department. The very friendly call centre staff often transferred me to another department, but due to the Telco’s use of VOIP, the call repeatedly dropped out before I got to speak to anyone and it was back to Lara to start all over again.

All-in-all, it leads to an extremely poor user experience which tarnished my perception of the brand and has led me to actively recommend family and friends avoid this Telco. My experience serves to highlight how menus provide invaluable orientation for users. I suspect that my frustration would have been greatly reduced if Lara had started off by providing me with a list of options to choose from. Perhaps even more importantly for this telco, I would not have clogged up their customer support line with my queries for a week if I had been provided with these options up front. You have to wonder how much money they are spending on servicing customer support calls which could be avoided by simply offering customers a list of options to choose from at the start of the customer service call.

Breadcrumb trails, those links you see at the top of the page that often start with text such as, “You are here:”, provide a number of benefits to users and website owners alike:

• They act as a signpost to where the user is within a site. This is particularly beneficial to users that arrive on your site via a search engine. The breadcrumb trail allows these users to identify what section of your site that they are in, as well as providing a quick preview of the type of content the site holds.
• Breadcrumb trails also allow users to move back to any page in the trail with a single click, rather than multiple clicks of the browser back button.
• They also provide some SEO benefits and Google is now including breadcrumb trails in their search results.

The name “breadcrumb trail” suggests a path that the user has taken to reach their current location (think Hansel and Gretel) and this is certainly true when considering a very linear user experience. However, that linear experience is no longer truly representative of the way in which many users interact with websites, particularly content rich sites where users have a high level of engagement.

Consider the following example, a user arrives at the home page of a news website, they click on the primary navigation option Entertainment, then a sub-heading Movies and then an article. Up to this point the breadcrumb serves the users well in reflecting the journey.

It is quite likely that in order to increase the amount of time that the user spends on the site, in our example above, users are encouraged to click on some form of related content (e.g. blog, video, image slideshow). Typically, this content is located in a different section of the website which results in a resetting of the breadcrumb trail. This suggests that despite its name, the breadcrumb trail is actually intended to demonstrate the location of content within a site’s IA, rather than how the user has arrived at a particular page (insert image).

What does all of this mean for the implementation of the breadcrumb trail, and recommendations we make as user experience professionals? Although our experience suggests that only a minority of users will use breadcrumb trails we still feel that they have a role to play on a website; however the definition and application of that role is a lot more ambiguous than it used to be. What do you think?