Canonical is looking to fix 100 minor user experience issues in Ubuntu with it’s One Hundred Paper Cuts initiative. This is particularly heartening to see as a user experience consultant. In testing we find small usability problems all the time, but the larger usability issues will always (and should) take priority. The major issues are solved, the minor issues fall off the ‘to do’ list, there’s just not enough time to solve everything.
But all usability issues (no matter how minor) undermine the user experience. Not sure where that file you downloaded is saved? Can’t seem to be able to get the text to change to that colour you’re asking it to? All these seemingly small problems could be the straw breaking the users back – they’ll think twice before using your application again.
Getting a large chunk of these minor issues out of the way in one go seems to be the most economical method to solve these issues, and the possibility that the process “might be reiterated during future development cycles” implies that those behind it are aware that they are just taking the tip off the iceberg. Minor issues crop up as a matter of course. It’s how you deal with them that shows your attitude to user experience, usability and your users.
For all our previous clients, go and look for an “additional issues” section near the back of your user testing reports – you may find usability papercuts there!
It was then that I found that, although there were often 60+ products for me to view, there was no sort function on the product results – I couldn’t view the products in order of price, colour or anything else, I was stuck with the random order that I was given. It was then that I decided that it wasn’t worth spending the time going through all the results and left the websites.
Bing uses powerful imagery that’s eye catching although whether that’s a good or bad thing for search remains to be seen. Google’s always gone down the minimalist route when it comes to visual design. Interestingly, Bing’s background images seem to change almost daily, so a bit more frequently than the 
Bing’s ‘More’ search options button takes the user to a page that bizarrely shows just 1 additional item. They’d do well to include this extra ‘xRank’ option on the actual search page itself – 1 more link isn’t going to overwhelm users. Google handles additional search options well, with a ‘More’ drop down that lets the user see exactly what else there is, right there on the page. It’s only past ‘Even more’ that Google takes users to a different page entirely.
The feather in Bing’s cap is its preview feature on the search results page. This is a nifty little feature as it saves users to-ing and fro-ing between the search results page and the websites. Till now, the only way to explore the results in a bit more detail was to leave the search engine and go to the actual pages. An area that this preview’s great for is online comparison shopping. Imagine quickly being able to see the differences right there on the page and making a decision. The downside is that its design’s quite subtle with a vertical bar that’s easily missed if one doesn’t hover to the right of the results. It’s more likely to be an accidental discovery than an intuitive one. So while it’s ingenious, its visibility can certainly be improved upon.
The net panel – amongst other things it ensures you aren’t referencing any missing files plus checking things aren’t taking too long to load. Great for making sure you haven’t referenced any old files and that everything is neat and tidy.
The lovely layout panel – more obvious but so useful. Just inspect an item and it’s margin, border, padding are shown as a box model diagram! Brilliant.
Hotels.com
Macmillan
Hitachi Capital
User experience
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Online copywriting
Web development
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