Alphabetical Sorting Must (Mostly) Die

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for October 4 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/alpha-sorting.html

Summary:
Ordinal sequences, logical structuring, time lines, or prioritization by
importance or frequency are usually better than A-Z listings for
presenting options to users.

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Usability Week 2010 conference

  * San Francisco: this week
  * Copenhagen, Denmark: October 18-22
  * Edinburgh, Scotland: October 25-29
  * Boston: November 15-19
  * Las Vegas: December 5-10

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

DEADLINE to save DKK1,000 on advance registration for Copenhagen:
  * Next Friday, October 15

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BOSTON USABILITY WEEK: Nov. 15-19

Announcing the next Usability Week conference: coming to downtown Boston
in mid-November

  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/boston/agenda.html

We negotiated an awesome room rate at one of the best hotels in town. Not
just for out-of-towners; if you live in suburbia and want to stay downtown
during the event, now you can afford to do so.

Yes, it's the identical number we have in Las Vegas later in the year, but
I am still thrilled we were able to get you this in Boston, which is
usually a high-cost place to do business. Don't say that the recession
isn't good for something.
	
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WORST MUSEUM USABILITY: LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has lots of great art, but
shows uncommon disregard for visitors' needs in the way the objects are
exhibited. Much of the art is hardly explained at all, substantially
reducing people's ability to understand what they're seeing.

For example, a Roman copy of a statue of Athena was simply described as
being in the style of Phidias. Being the recipient of an elite European
education, I know who Phidias was and how he relates to Athena, but I bet
that 90% of LA museum-goers have no idea. For that matter, many probably
don't even know who Athena was (the Greek goddess of war and wisdom). The
label won't make you any wiser, and thus won't help you interpret the
statue.

The worst usability aspect of visiting LACMA came in the exhibit of art
from New Guinea. I am sadly uneducated in the finer details of New Guinean
art, so I really depended on the curators to explain what I was seeing.

But there were no labels at all next to the exhibits. Each object was
shown in splendid isolation. My guess is that the curators chose this
approach to make spectators appreciate the artistic qualities of each item
on its own merits, as a decontextualized object, free from any
preconceptions of history or culture. Sure, but it's still nice to know
what you're seeing.

Labels can be placed next to the item they explain, thus making it obvious
what label relates to what object. Also, they provide just-in-time
information, since you can look at the label when you see an object that
interests you and ignore the label for those objects that you're just
giving a quick glance.

Instead of labels, LACMA provided laminated leaflets at the door to each
gallery with a listing and explanation of the objects in that gallery.
Visitors could pick up these leaflets upon entering and carry them around
while visiting that room. The first problem is that this places an
additional burden on the visitors, as opposed to having the exhibition
maintain its own UI.

The second, and worst, problem is that it was very difficult to make the
connection between the objects in the exhibition and the printed
descriptions. Remember, there were no labels, catalog numbers, or titles
next to the objects. Instead, each description was illustrated with a
silhouette outline of the object it referred to. It was horribly
complicated to make the connection between these silhouettes and the
physical objects, for two reasons:

(a) The outlines didn't look much like the objects. It was hard to
abstract away from the rich textures and three-dimensional nature of the
objects to recognize them in outline form.

(b) Even worse, all the outlines were drawn to be the same size, no matter
whether they referred to tiny objects or giant objects. No sense of scale.

A basic usability principle is that the further you abstract away from
reality, the harder it becomes to make the connection. The compounded
barrier to understanding caused by the lack of adjacency/proximity, the
overly abstracted drawings, and the flouting of scale were too much, and I
spent all my time struggling with the explanations instead of enjoying the
art. I ended up leaving in frustration.