Usability: Universal Principles of Design, Part 2

2/6/2017

Constraint

Positive: The GoPro Hero camera has 3 buttons. One of these buttons is positioned in the same place as a traditional camera shutter button (a psychological convention). This button, predictably, makes the camera take a photo or start recording video.
Negative: Though some stations identify where the train doors will be positioned, it surprises me that riders in NYC are not restricted from the platform at places other than the doors. A form of constrain might increase safety and speed of loading. The Grand Central / Times Square shuttle (S train) does this.

Control

Positive: Video games often require that you earn or unlock certain features after you’ve progressed in the game. This ensures you’ve learned enough to use them effectively (other benefits too).
Negative: In New Rochelle (north of NYC) the parking must be purchased by license plate number from a centralized machine. There are too few machines, they require that you remember your plate number and they provide way too many options. Users often queue up because the process is so cumbersome. The system should streamline the most common payment method and require users to unlock other methods if they need to.

Cost/benefit

Positive: I use an app called Bear to write notes / edit text, etc. They recently developed a feature where I could sync the desktop version with the mobile version. This feature prompted me to fully replace the use of Apple Notes.
Negative: When I worked as the editor of my student newspaper in college, we opted to redesign without any consideration for how the paper was performing or what benefits the redesign might offer. This redesign, performed over many months, incurred some cost that was likely not realized in benefit to the reader.

Entry Point

Positive: The New York Times website has this banner feature that appears once you’re reading an article (which is often how you arrive to the site from social, etc.). It provides the top articles / columns etc. in numerical order.
Negative: The lobby of 65 W 11 doesn’t have a great entry point. Our classroom is off to the right, in a space that I did not expect. There are a number of different directions to move as you walk through the entry.

Errors

Positive: A number of word processing / Office-type products (including Google Docs) have started auto-saving everything. So, instead of prompting “Do you want to save the changes you made to _____?” it just saves it.
Negative: As a former publication designer, I spent a lot of time working with Adobe InDesign. This software had a few operations that would predictably crash the program. Though the file recovery worked very well, I sometimes have catastrophic errors without warning.