#uxconcepts

The restaurant doesn’t want customers throwing these baskets into the garbage receptacle when they’re cleaning up. So, how do they help customers avoid throwing away the baskets with the garbage?

They do so by providing a garbage receptacle with an opening just big enough for paper cups and wrappers to fit through but too small for a basket.

LIMITING OPTIONS: A burrito shop stops customers from throwing away baskets by only making the opening large enough for standard waste.

Let’s contrast that with another local eatery with a similar desire to keep its food baskets out of the garbage.

Its solution is to provide the usual wide-door garbage receptacle but, in this case, with a sign next to a bus bin reading, “Please place black plastic sandwich baskets in here!” And in all caps, by the way.

ASKING NICELY: Another eatery kindly asks customers to not throw baskets in the trash and, instead, place them in the bin above the receptacle.

Which restaurant do you think spends more time combing through the garbage to retrieve their baskets?

The burrito shop’s solution is a good illustration of how to guide users through a task -- making things easier for them (and, just as important, the restaurant) by limiting their options.

Now consider the following example from the world of User Interface Design.

Our Email Direct Marketing team at Twisted Rope uses a variety of platforms, based on client requirements and licensing, to test and execute email marketing campaigns. The interface of one particular platform we use on behalf of a client has, what we consider, a UI design flaw. In the part of the plaform used to schedule emails to send at a specific time, the user is asked to place the date and time of the execution into a text box and it must be formatted in a specific way.

Take a look at the following two examples from the interface in question:

NO CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS: A platform used by the Twisted Rope Email Direct Marketing team is vague in how users can enter information. Straying from what that platform needs, however, results in errors that aren't clear to users at the outset.

One of the above examples is formatted incorrectly. Can you tell which one?

Early on, when our Email Direct Marketing team was still learning this platform, the date and time were entered in a format similar to the second example above – without a space between the time and ‘PM.’

The execution failed.

That is, we didn’t know there was a mistake until we arrived in the office the next morning to discover the campaign did not execute overnight. To make matters worse, it was not immediately clear why the campaign failed. It required a substantial amount of time investigating the matter to discover the reason.

There are a lot of things wrong here. Just to name two, there is no clear message as to why the campaign failed and there is no format validation or error handling at the point of scheduling the execution.

However, by far, an easier and, frankly, more elegant solution would be a different type of form input for this data.

As the Nielsen Norman Group puts it:

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

A simple alternative in this “error-prone condition” would be to provide the user with drop-down menus -- one each for hour, minute and a.m./p.m. data inputs.

We’re left guessing as to why the platform uses a text-box input. It could be that the system designers wanted to allow for open-ended, granular scheduling. That is, a drop-down list has its limitations. To provide for scheduling executions at the minute level (e.g., 4:33 PM) would create a cumbersomely-long list containing all 60 minutes of an hour.

In my opinion, having the user work with the long list, or better yet, restricting times to every 5 or 10 minutes, would be a worthwhile trade off. Provide restrictions to the user so the format is correct every time. As it is now, it’s too easy to input the data incorrectly.

Maybe the designers of this platform should stop by my favorite burrito place and have a look around. No signs to read, no instructions to follow and no room for error. The garbage bin will not accept baskets. It’s as simple as that.

Follow our UXD team on Twine and at twisted-rope.com as we design a process that works for us, helping to improve user experience for our clients, as well as their customers.