Easily Startled

I feel the hotel is sending me mixed messages with this one.  On the one hand, the red strike-through cigarette is says: “Don’t Smoke.”  While the ashtray which sits upon it says: “Go right ahead, smoke in bed, burn holes in the sheets, just don’t get any ash on the floor.”  I guess they are just being realistic.

A friend of mine sent this along as another stellar example of instructive content.  The best part of this photo, to me, is an image of a increasingly frustrated parking lot owner, who keeps adding more signs to the machine.  Clearly since the last 3 he added had no effect, the solution must be to add one more.  The three “step 3″s is amusing as well.

You probably need enlarge this one to get the full effect. A co-worker of mine likes to say: “somethings just don’t need a label.” I argue that this might be a good example of that.

I found this bathroom gender identification sign in a hotel a little bit odd. Is it just his pose seems exaggeratedly “manly”? Or does the angle of the legs look a bit too similar to the “skirt” of the female sign? Maybe I was just jet-lagged, but it made me question the choice I was about to make.

By Paco Underhill

Why we Buy provides a detailed look at how people shop for everything from jeans to jumper cables. Underhill’s Gorillas-in-the-Mist approach to shopping research proves fruitful as he examines every intricate detail about the allusive beast known as the “shopper.” While not everything directly translates to interface design, his dedication to total understanding of the user’s habits is admirable.

Oddly, while reading the book, it is hard not to picture Underhill as a tweed-clad anthropologist frozen since the 1950s. Something about his choice of phrases or his fascination with gender differences gives the book a slightly dated feel. None of it is done in an offensive way, but more in that matter-of-fact tone that suggests nothing could be more widely known than that women don’t feel comfortable shopping in hardware stores. It sports a Leave-it-to-Beaver charm.

Despite this quirk, I recommend this book to anyone interested in commerce, ‘e’ or otherwise. It is also fun to apply the critical eye gained from the book to your daily excursions to the grocery store. And the book is not without practical lesson for us web types. I think that ideas such as the “butt brush effect” might actually have a digital equivalent. Underhill describes the effect as the drop in sales that occurs when aisles are placed too close together. Shoppers who are “brushed” by other shoppers trying to get by, are much more likely to feel uncomfortable and leave without a purchase. While the cause of the discomfort is different online, it is easy to see how even small frustrations or awkward moments could prevent a web purchase. What can we do to make sure people feel comfortable and safe all the time while on our site?

Underhill discusses transition zones and how their presence at the entrance of a store is important to allow shoppers to make the adjustment from ‘parking lot’ to ’store interior.’ He suggests that leaving that zone empty might actually be the best use of space one can make. I wonder if homepages should functions as such transition zones. Do we need a landing pad for the highway surfers skidding from one site to the next? But if so, how one deals with visitors hitting item pages directly? Unlike a physical store, visitors can skip the entrance and jump right to the shelf they want. Do we still need to find a way of easing them into the shop?

Ironically, the author himself doesn’t put much stock in online shopping. He feels the sensory experience is significantly lacking in the virtual store. Of course he writes all this nearly 9 years ago, so he lacks the benefit of watching sites like Amazon and Zappos really take off. It is too bad, as I would have liked to have read his take how these offline observations might pertain to the online world. As it is, I can only hope to make my own.

I am not sure I fully accept the existence of this TOS page. It is nice of them to give me a choice.

For those not familiar with San Francisco MUNI system, these helpful monitors line the underground stations of our city’s public transit system. I have no idea what is going on, but I am pretty sure I played this game back in ‘85.

I can only assume someone blew the sign budget on flashy flat screen monitors leaving nothing for updating the display software. I guess it is an interesting look into what the MUNI conductors must deal with every day, but I pity the tourist who thinks they can actually divine anything useful from this display.

Where am I? When is the next train coming? Where is it going? These are the kind of questions you might want clearly called out by a light rail informational sign. Instead, I panic because my poor frog is about to get run over and I can’t find the controller anywhere.

By Daniel Gilbert

While technically not a design book, understanding the role that happiness plays in interaction design has become a new personal crusade of mine.

Stumbling is better written than your average pop-psychology book.  In fact, to classify it as a pop-psychology book is slightly unfair.  Gilbert does a fantastic job of summarizing 50 years research on human emotion.  Witty and wry, you can almost forget the grim prognoses the book gives to the human condition.

In a nutshell, we are stupendously bad at predicting what will make us happy.  We do more than just defy logic in making these predictions, we build faulty arguments upon blatant mendacity.  Depressing in one light, but liberating at the same time.  If we really are so bad at predicting happiness that might result from our life choices, maybe we should worry about the choice less.  Considering if a new job will make you happy?  Gilbert points out we might do just as well to flip a coin, as our our prediction of how it will affect our life is bathed in falsehoods.

It isn’t all as grim as that, Gilbert points to our own “emotional immune system” which does a remarkable job at tempering any situation.  He also suggests that asking someone who has already made a choice you are considering is likely to be your best guide to your own future happiness.  You would be surprised how similarly we all experience the emotional world.

From a design perspective, two important lessons stand out.  The first is that users really are not that great of a judge when it comes to the question of how a proposed change will make them feel.  Asking them to do so will likely not provide you any better insight then asking yourself.

The second lesson involves “experience stretching.”  The concept is that we all normalize our happiness based on our range of experiences.  If you have never known a pain-free experience, it won’t occur to you to be dissatisfied with your current one.  I think this is the one that troubles UI designers the most.  We wonder how people can put up with the software that they do.  The answer is, until they see the greener grass, they are actually quite content with what they have.  It is only after we show them the alternative, do they understand what they are missing.  Great, now they can be terminally frustrated just like the rest of us!

I highly recommend this book for anyone who has to deal with people, namely: everyone.