Re: [Sigia-l] Real World UI Design Failure

Thanks Jonathan... That's great stuff and the primary reason that I've
continued following discussions on this list :)

I really enjoy seeing your comparison between "pinned" and "normal" headers,
and learning about test results. Kudos to you for sharing that, and congrats
on having management support for maintaining artifacts that document design
rationale, and failures. Research into cognitive psychology, such as the
"Silencing" work that you reference from Vision Sciences Laboratory, is
tremendously instructive when considering employing certain design tactics
to improve usability, or increased usage of product features through
heightened prominence.

Would you please comment on how your group has proceeded to increase use of
results sorting since this attempt?

One observation that our own testing has shown to be useful when presenting
sort options to users is to have those options "reside" with the results. In
your case here (as shown in your screenshots), this would mean that the sort
menu would share the white background of the results and appear to be on its
level, rather than appear in the blue background of the header, which is
elevated over results (made more near to users by the drop shadow) and on
the same level as the loyalty program.

Thanks again for your post. Cheers!

On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 6:50 AM, Jonathan Baker-Bates <
[email protected]> wrote:

> I like to remind myself that the default mode of design is failure. Quite
> often though, failure that can be hard to isolate or pin reasons to. But if
> anyone's interested, I've written up some stuff about what I think is quite
> a clear cut failure of mine:
>
> http://webtorque.org/?p=1141
>
> In summary: I thought we might be able to achieve a "polite" (ie
> noticeable,
> but not intrusive) prominence to part of a search results UI by using a
> pinned header. However, I've now found strong indications that I was wrong.
> The good news is that I *might* have found a clue in the form of some
> recent
> tired party research about out why I was wrong:
> http://visionlab.harvard.edu/silencing/
>
> Incidentally, here at hotels.com, we log major assumptions about our
> website
> in a database (in this case the assumption is "Pinning items to the screen
> increases their visual prominence") and then attach research and other
> findings to them that may strengthen or weaken those assumptions over time.
> This allows designers to keep their heads above the raging tide of data
> that
> our analysts pump out, as well as our own qualitative research, and that of
> our Expedia big brothers and sisters.
>
> Jonathan
>
> PS: I'm recruiting for 2 permanent IA/UX positions. Do you have at least 5
> years UX design experience, preferably with some ecommerce in there? Would
> like to join a UX team of 12 in London's Covent Garden working on what is
> probably one of the most well-resourced commercial websites in the world?
> Then send me your CV because I'm having a hell of a time finding the right
> people.
> ------------
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Pre Conference Seminars: March 30-31
IA Summit: April 1-3
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