Author Archives: Atlanta B.A.

Rule #3: Keep the Navigation Simple

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The purpose of navigational tools and cues is to allow the user to get where they need to be. The best type of navigation is the ones where the user doesn’t even realize they are using it. The user shouldn’t have to figure out how to use your “cool” new nav.

An example of bad navigation is ESPN’s “floating nav”. I did an entire post specifically on this feature here: ESPN Floating Nav Text.

An example of good navigation has to be Amazon’s. The site is incomprehensibly huge, yet a user to able to get to any item with a couple of clicks.

This may be a personal preference, but any nav that changes when you move the scrool wheel on your mouse is too distracting. If the entire page changes because I’m scrooling down a few lines it is very disconcerting. Please give me a way to turn that function off.

In Summation- The best navigation is one your user never notices.

Happy Birthday… Not Really

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Hello All,

Long time, no hear. Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been slammed at my day job.

Well, that’s going to change.

I can’t say it was a 100% surprise, but I was given notice today. Yes, I was let go on my birthday and barely a month before Christmas. Sometimes life can really bite.

Positive side: this will let me focus on getting a couple of things around the house done.

Negative side: everything else.

Soooo, if any of you know of a company that can use a very experienced BA/Information Architect, please give me a shout.

Thanks-

Jay

Google’s Useless Homepage

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Sometimes I think I have to be missing something here.

I click in the text box and as soon as I type the first letter the screen changes to the results view.

When do I get the chance to click that “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

This has bugged me for a while, so if anybody knows about a setting I have or whatever then please let me know.

-J

Facebook Messenger finally adds diverse emojis! — TechCrunch

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Facebook has started rolling out a more diverse set of emojis to its Messenger service on the web, iOS and Android. With the update, you’ll have access to over 1,500 new emojis — 100 of which were designed “to better reflect gender and skin tones” with gender-agnostic options and multi-colored emojis. “We’re diversifying the genders to…

via Facebook Messenger finally adds diverse emojis! — TechCrunch

The top several posts in my Reader are similar to the one above. I’m all for diversity and all that, but is Facebook pumping out new smileys  really that big a deal? Must be a slow news day.

Choke Point

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There is a tactic that you’ve seen in every war or cop movie. The hero is surrounded by bad guys, ducks down an alley or hallway and sets up a position there, picking the evil-doers off as the funnel in after him.

In the military this hall or alley is referred to as a “choke point”. It’s an environmental feature which funnels the users into a single line.

This term has also been adopted in business. A perfect example is if five people are writing requirements documents at the same time but they all have to be blessed by one person. That means that five people can only work as fast as the one approver. Choke point.

The reason that this came to mind is my house. We have a lovely, fairly large home. Very open floor plan in the front of the house with the ability to block off the back of the house for privacy. For instance, if we have workman in the house we can close one door and they don’t have access to any of the bedrooms. Nice.

EXCEPT that this means that the entire back of the house is served by one narrow hallway. Excellent for security. Sucks for everything else. I can count at least three times where we’ve bought furniture for a back room and had to send it back because there was literally no physical way to get it into the desired room. It makes walking down the hallway impossible as well. If two people are coming from opposite directions there is that inevitable dance- “After you.” “No, come on.” etc etc.

The moral of the story is this: Usability is not only for the online or business world. I made a mistake 15 years ago and it has since impacted my family and I on an almost daily basis.

Would we still have bought the house had I noticed the issues with the hallway?  Probably, given my wife’s “Ohh’s” and “Ahh’s” over everything else about the place. It is a nice house. But maybe I could have shaved a few thousand off the price.

Could have used that money for skinnier furniture…

-J

Steven Seagal Points The Way

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Hey Everybody!

Sorry for the long absence. Life happened and I forgot to duck.

What brings me back this time?

The sheer genius and acting ability of this man.

The film is “Under Siege”: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105690/

For most of us the only highlight of the movie at the time was Erika Eleniak coming out of that cake. However, I was watching it last night for the first time in more than 10 years and came to the scene where he smuggles this huge backpack into the little wooden rowboat which was for some BIZARRE reason hanging ON THE SIDE OF AN IRON BATTLESHIP!! What could possibly happen to that ship that would make the little wooden boat which MIGHT seat 6 the preferred option?

Anyway, that’s not what stopped me dead. It was when he unfurls this big antennae dish (which he promptly COVERS in the boat- different rant), does some vague button pushing and then goes back inside where a perkily dressed Erika is waiting for him. She sees the “phone” in the pic above and asks “What is that?” He gives her some techy crap about a “SEAL phone” and she goes “Oh, like a car phone.”

1- When was the last time you heard the phrase “car phone”?

2- How different would this movie have been if he had just whipped out a Galaxy S7 Edge and called the Admiral?

Now the scary part. This movie is from 1992. Yes, it’s “celebrating” it’s 25-year anniversary next year. The entire paradigm in communications has changed in less time than it take to mature a good bottle of Scotch.

What will it look like in 2041? Will my daughter just wave at the air and get a connection to her kids? The mind reels.

That’s it for now. I’ll try to be back here more often.

-J

 

 

 

Starbucks- Angels or Evil Incarnate?

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I’ll be honest- I don’t know why I check Mashable.com every day. I’m clearly not their demographic and half the time their content makes me either cringe or rant.

However, I spotted this during my daily “Why the hell am I here? visit:

photo starbucks.jpg

Consecutive stories are about the Mecca of Millenials- Starbucks. Personally, I call them “Charbucks” because I hate how over-roasted their “coffee” is. Give me Caribou any day.

The thing that struck me is the top post is all about a caring employee who’s learning ASL for one deaf customer. The very next post is about how they’re a money-grubbing evil corporation of evil evilostity.

I just liked the juxtaposition.

ESPN’s Floating Nav

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I’m not a fan of “cute” navigational elements. As a rule all they are good for is showing off the coding skills of the developer and giving the user a brief “Oh, that’s cool” moment. Very quickly, that “cool” factor devolves into “God, that is so annoying. How do I turn it off?”

An excellent example of this is ESPN’s navigation. When you first enter the site, you see this- a typical primary nav (black bar) and a corresponding sub-nav (white NFL bar):

photo full.gif

However, if you scroll down a bit the sub-nav jumps into the primary position, covering the main nav:

photo part.gif

Where this gets REALLY annoying is that if you are a mouse scroller (as most of us are) once you get past a certain point on the screen every UP click exposes the black bar and every DOWN click hides it again. So if you are reading an article and wheel-scrolling it through it there is an almost constant black/white strobe going on at the top of the page.

ESPN- give me a way to turn this off. Please.

Labor Pickets for the Modern Age

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Remember when the idea of being picketed due to a labor dispute would terrify a business owner? The image of hundreds of angry people, marching around with signs and chanting hateful things about the owner, his business and basically his entire extended family splashed across the news and in the papers would keep him up at nights.

Well, apparently those days are over.

The Westin Hotel is being picketed as we speak. Here it is:

photo westin.jpg

Yep, one large sign and two guys in lawn chairs just sitting there like they were watching a ball game. Usually they have 3 or 4 guys in yellow vests handing out print-outs too. Well, not really handing them out. More like they stand there with one in their hand and hope that somebody takes one. I’m guessing it was too cold for them today. I mean, it got down to 45 degrees.

Here’s the upside to this strategy- they can “protest” more than one site at a time. Here’s the riveting scene half a mile up Peachtree:

photo flatiron.jpg

There’s a third “protest” going on an Hotel Indigo, literally within sight of the Westin. They weren’t out today. I guess it was their day off from being on the front lines of this grueling labor war waged on the mean streets of Atlanta.