HUMAN Experience Design

OH boy, have you seen this thing? This little logo, just unveiled for the London 2012 Olympic Games is causing quite a stir across the pond. In fact over 80% of people surveyed over there disapprove. There’s an online petition to scrap the thing.

I have to say that I personally don’t like it. The colors are too retro and I don’t get the design at all. My taste is not the question though. Will a brand that is so disliked provide the revenue (through product sales and sponsorship) that London needs to foot the bill for the games? Maybe.

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We all know that we should strive to make our systems as usable by humans as possible right? Just slick and easy to use is always the right way to go? Well, there are some design and systems issues that pull us away from usability. Understanding these tensions can help us create better human experience design.

The first tension I’ll mention is between usability and security. Generally the more secure we make a system, the more inconvenient it is to use. Most financial transactions on the web, for example, are multi-step processes that may involve user-id and password, anti-phishing technology, and perhaps CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). These inconveniences are necessary to protect users personal data and to prevent electronic thieves from stealing their data.

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It’s estimated that people in the US are exposed to somewhere between 1500-6000 advertising messages a day. This includes signs, commercials, packaging, banner ads, logos, etc. What’s an over-saturated brain to do? Shut it out.

Current web research shows that people not only ingore most advertising, but they ignore anything that even resembles advertising. In fact, they pretty much ingore anything advertisery - with the exception of text-based, highly targeted ads which are integrated into the design.

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There’s a great article in the New Yorker about complicating technology with features that nobody ends up using. Author James Surowiecki makes some great points that are backed up with research.

Did you know that product returns in the U.S. cost companies 100 billion dollars a year? At least half of those returns have nothing wrong with them, customers can’t figure out how to use them. Also, the average customer spends only 20 minutes with a product before he or she decides to return it. Ghastly.

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My local alderman dropped by the other day, it seems he’s running for Mayor. He handed me a little postcard with his campaign slogan on one side and a calendar on the other side - how nice. When I got it inside the house and looked at it - the calendar was a mashup (to use a virtual term in the analog world) of election dates and the Red Sox game schedule.

Red Sox Game schedule?!!! Hold the phone! What has that got to do with anything?

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I was on a web site today looking at an office phone system that included music on hold and other cool features. I like to entertain people when I put them on hold so I can go make a sandwich. The site was very informative and behold a link on the main navigation to pricing. beautiful.

So I click on the pricing link and what do I get…

If you have a specific question about ***** services, or would just like some additional information, please complete the following form. You will be promptly contacted by ****.

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As her MFA thesis, Jenova Chen created a flash Game called Flow, which has received a lot of attention in the gaming world. I encourage you to go play with it.

 Video games, the popular ones anyway, tend to be very immersive experiences. That is, while playing them you tend to lose touch with your personal identity  for a time - you are less aware of being you.

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I love movies and watch several a week on cable or DVD. I don’t get to the theater much now that we have infant twins. One thing I absolutely hate about the DVD experience is the junk I have to get through at the beginning of the DVD to get to the movie.

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