The International Parking Meters Study by the UXalliance

Partners and associates from the UXalliance conducted the international usability study of parking meters to coincide with the theme of "transportation" for World Usability Day 2008. The International Parking Meters Study explored interface and interaction design of parking meters around the world and examined different parking meter interfaces and the common problem of designing an interface to accommodate a broad range of users trying to achieve multiple tasks.


Using parking meters is an everyday activity for many, and one that should be intuitive enough not require much thought from the user. The International Parking Meters Study provides valuable insight into how and where interface and interaction design can be applied to avoid potential annoyance and unnecessary costs. The International Parking Meters Study is a good opportunity to learn what's designed well and how to detect and fix existing shortcomings of the parking meter.


Read the full Int'l Parking Meters Study or visit the UXa website.

Using the SUS Questionnaire to Evaluate Subjective Satisfaction with Handsets in Out-of-the-box Testing by Sven Koerber, SirValUse, GmbH (Germany)

Based on the results of 27 quantified usability tests of mobile phones, usability professionals from UXalliance partner SirValUse GmbH (Germany) are able to provide data points based on this research. The data points provide an understanding of what to expect from SUS (System Usability Scale) questionnaires in walk-up-and-use testing.

Created in December 1986 for the evaluation of office systems, SUS continues to be valuable. This one-page, ten-item questionnaire written by Sven Körber, Director Customer Experience, SirValUse GmbH has proven a useful and consistent tool to capture subjective satisfaction with mobile phones, even with small samples and when time is short in sessions. As a rule of thumb, scoring higher than 70 on a scale from 0-100 can be interpreted as providing relatively high perceived usability for mobile phones.

Read the full article visit the UXalliance website.

What’s Driving the Mini Cooper? Not the User Experience by User Centric, Inc. (US)

User Experience professionals from UXalliance partner, User Centric, Inc. recently conducted an evaluation of the Mini Clubman's dashboard user interface. A good portion of the 'eval' focused on the Mini's powerful and feature-rich audio system.

Most of the controls for the audio system and the car's computerized settings are situated near the oversized analog speedometer. Although most controls are well-labeled (including 'Audio' for switching modes and 'Main Menu' for navigation), the system suffers from an inefficient layout of controls and poor error recovery.

The main selection dial for the audio system is located just below the FM tuner buttons and could be easily mistaken for the separate volume control, which sits below the CD player outside of the main area of interaction. This volume control seems disconnected from the rest of the audio system.

The system has direct iPod and iPhone connectivity providing users versatility and flexibility with inputs for both auxiliary and USB cables that can double as device chargers. However, when we tried using the iPhone in both AUX and USB modes, a message read "This accessory [cable] is not made to work with the iPhone". The Mini's user manual says that the cable is only made to work with some iPhone models, but it does not say which ones it works with or where to find out which models it does work with. It is important for users to be able to recover from errors and build trust in the systems that they use.

Read the full article or visit the UXalliance website.

Travel in the Economic Downturn by Xperience Consulting (Spain)

Weakening in the economy has not affected international travel and number of airline passengers, according to the International Air Transport. International travel has risen 9.3 percent in March 2009, compared to the previous year. The internet is the most widely used tool for searching travel options. Airline and hotel websites are optimizing their sites to meet demands and improve the functionality of their sites.

UXalliance partner, Xperience Consulting conducted the expert usability evaluation of online travel agencies and hotel web-sites. Xperience Consulting found people traveling in the economic downturn are more selective, tend to analyze options more, and looks for deals. The study explores opinions, preferences and behaviors of consumers, plus analysis of search strategies for booking travel.

Read the complete report on the UXalliance web-site.

Fashion: A Useful Usability Placebo by Andrew Swartz, Managing Consultant - Serco Usability Services (UK)

Let’s swallow hard and say something difficult but true. It may feel like a dietician being forced to discuss the merits of chocolate cake, but still it has to be said. So here it is, straight and clear, right at the beginning: sometimes fashion is more important than usability.

Why is that so difficult to say? Maybe it’s because we’ve spent decades trying to get developers and designers to pay any attention to the user’s needs whatsoever. Not just that, but also we’ve been building a profession from scratch, cost justifying our very existence, and fighting boneheaded ideas, such as all you need to do to fix a bad interface is to make one horrible screen slide elegantly into the next. So it is difficult to admit that simple usability is only one component of the users’ entire experience—an important component of course, but still just one of many.

Here’s a story I’ve told before. A while back, we studied two versions of a mobile phone Menu screen. The first showed 12 icons, each with a name underneath it. The second showed the same 12 icons but without names. All the people who tried the two versions were much more successful using the version with the names. But they greatly and unanimously preferred the version without the names. They weren’t fooling themselves either. They knew they were more successful with one version but preferred the other. Why? The version without the names was more fashionable‐looking at the time than the version with names. And because the version without the names wasn’t too difficult to use, fashion trumped usability.

To read the full publication go to the UXa website - Reports & Publications

Google Health vs. Microsoft HealthVault: Consumers Compare Online PHR Applications by User Centric, Inc. (US)

User Centric, Inc. (US) recently conducted an independent usability study of two existing online personal health record (PHR) applications, Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault. (Neither Google nor Microsoft commissioned or participated in this study in any manner.)

While participants’ overall evaluations were certainly influenced by features, security, privacy and trust, it is critical to note that their major difficulties with both applications - and their strongest criticisms - were related to the user experience.

During this study, 30 participants representing patients completed key tasks using both PHR application and provided qualitative feedback, ratings and preference data on five specific dimensions: Overall usability, utility (usefulness of features), security, privacy and trust. Participants were generally new to the concept of PHR applications.

During the study, they completed seven tasks using both the Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault applications which included three application-specific tasks that explored each application’s unique features.

Based on this usability study, User Centric has identified several guidelines to be included in a working model for PHR interfaces that facilitates user adoption. The complete complimentary study by User Centric, Inc. is available.

The Multi-touch Interface Challenge by Tim Semen of The Hiser Group (Australia)

Gesture-based interfaces are the way of the future – but it could be a path set with user barriers if we don’t identify a set of intuitive and consistent gestures for standard commands.

Gesture-based interfaces have been around almost as long as computers have had displays. Light pens first appeared in the late 1950’s (predating even the trackball and mouse) and were briefly popular in the 1980’s. The Palm device line was extremely popular from the late 1990’s (even though they came with a stylus you only managed to keep for a week before it was never seen again!). And in recent years, my wife has been wowing her students with the Tablet PC she uses daily for teaching class.

However, those devices simply allow you to poke, tap, or scribble gestures on a fairly standard interface of windows, icons, menus and pointers. As useful as these attempts were to provide a more natural interaction, they did little to bridge the “computer world” with the “real world”.

In the computer world we’ve largely been reduced to poking at things with one finger at a time through the on-screen pointer, whereas in the real world we’ve learned to use all ten digits and both hands together. Consequently, we’ve never been able to signal our intent to computers using the full range of our capabilities.

Perhaps that’s why they’ve never felt very natural to us.

Check out the full article The multi-touch interface challenge