Apple seems to have mastered the call to action.  For starters, both devices have one physical button which appears to provide children with an obvious start point as well as an incentive to see what happens. Young children explore the world, trying to understand how things work – and Apple’s clear button and subsequent unlock bar lure children into this curious new device.

Feedback is the other core design basic which assists children to understand the Apple devices. The feedback is immediate and also suggestive of what is possible. For example, when a little finger touches a photo and begins to drag it across the screen it suggests that there is somewhere for it to go. And soon, there is a new image.

Apple illustrates how important it is to get the basics of design right: feedback and calls to action, when done correctly, make a device child’s play for the user.

So next time you look at your website (or other device?), perhaps you should think of it from a more child-like perspective! Is there a clear call to action? Is feedback immediate and suggestive for the user? How intuitive is it? If it’s not child’s play for the user to navigate, then it might not be right.

image by emmerrrrrrr (flicker)

What can often frustrate users online is when these questions are not addressed until too late in the purchase process; when the user has already made some sort of a commitment to the product, only to find out it’s either not available, cannot be delivered in the expected time frame/location or delivery costs are too high. Had the user known these factors upfront during their browsing phase the frustration levels would be a lot lower and the chances of that user staying a customer much higher.

It is important to inform the users of the following before they arrive at the checkout. It  may be just enough for users to stay a customer rather than go straight to a competitors site. A few small changes can have a great impact on a user’s shopping experience

• If a product is out of stock provide this on the product listing page
• Offer an email alert when the product become available
• If, for whatever reason, a product cannot be delivered in the company’s standard time frame (next day delivery for example), provide this detail upfront on the product listing page, before users have committed to the order

Reducing user frustration leads to a much more happy and satisfied customer. And satisfied customers are more likely to return. Empowering users by giving them information before arriving at the checkout process of factors such as product availability, delivery time frames and costs is one simple method to do this.

There appears to be somewhat of a standoff between government and bodies on whether to create – for example – campaign sites, or to incorporate these into department websites.

Creating separate campaign sites has its benefits. These sites can be designed around one focused message, cutting through the noise of the rest of the Department’s activities. However, they also introduce confusion, as users must find a separate site rather than finding all content on the parent Department site.

The Department of Health and Aging (health.gov.au) has individual websites for many of their campaigns, such as How do you measure up?(measureup.gov.au); Alcohol-related harm (drinkingnightmare.gov.au) and the national tobacco campaign (quitnow.info.au). The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (dbcde.gov.au) has lots of information about the switchover to digital television on their main website but have also developed a campaign website, Get Ready for Digital TV (digitalready.gov.au).

Whether or not to create a stand-alone campaign website  is the question. This is a question that has been increasingly prevalent lately, and we’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences…

There is some lively debate about the actual existence of the pagefold on websites (see http://www.thereisnopagefold.com/).  The main arguments as far as I can tell, is that the pagefold does not apply to the web because, unlike the physical world where a newspaper fold applies to all readers, online users can view pages in a variety of screen resolutions which alter the placement of the fold and there is a scroll bar on most websites to find more content.

My take is a little more pragmatic;

When we observe users in labs, time and time again we see some people not using the scroll bar.  While good designs help to avoid this, it does happen.  As such we recommend to our clients that they present key information (not all content) above the page fold in common screen resolution formats (eg. 1024 by 768).

Whilst I agree that we should think about websites outside of the newspaper paradigm I do believe that talking about the fold encourages website owners to think about the placement of key information on the page to make it easier for users to undertake key activities.

What do you think?

A quick introduction about us, and what we plan to do in this blog:

We are an Australian based usability research agency with offices in (not so) sunny Melbourne, and (slightly more) sunny Sydney. We conduct user research and usability testing for a wide range of clients, to help them improve the user experience of their interfaces.

As a team, we frequently share interesting articles, tools, discussions and resources with each other. This blog is a place for us to share these with you, as well as to put up some thoughts and opinions of our own. You can respond in kind, and share your thoughts on our posts, as well as add content which you feel would add to the discussion.

Another usability blog?

Yes, there are a lot of blogs out there writing about user experience, and we definitely don’t want to just add to the noise. We hope to be different in a few ways. We like to think that we have a unique perspective on a number of aspects of usability.

For starters, we are not a design agency. Whilst we work closely with designers on most projects, we focus on the research side of things. Where others may focus on principles of design, we focus on the principles of research design. And how that can help you to design a better user interface.

Additionally, being a consultancy we get to work on a lot of different projects. We work on all kinds of interfaces, large and small, stationary and mobile, and get to experience many different approaches to solving user’s problems and meeting their needs. We frequently find that some of the best solutions to an issue come from a different industry or platform to the design in question.

These differences will also mean we can offer a unique set of perspectives on usability and user experience. Hopefully, what we write in this blog will sit nicely alongside those you already have in your feed reader or morning reading list.

So don’t be shy

This blog has been set up to enable a conversation with you, the reader – our clients and peers. If you have a question for us, disagree with us, want to show us something, or just want to say hi then please do. Leave a comment, or send us an email if you would prefer. Look forward to hearing from you.

The U1 Team.