User Friendly #3: Examples

Earlier, I spoke of the importance of mental models and feedback in designing user friendly products. Let’s take a few examples Cliff Kuang’s User Friendly.

 

He cites driverless cars as an example of the challenges when something is new. And how Audi went about handling it. First, it should be obvious when the car is in auto mode (Mode confusion has led to many airline crashes). Audi needs two buttons need to be pressed together to transition to auto mode – this prevents accidental activation. When the car takes over, the color of various panels changes to convey the status. Second, the occupant should know what the car is going to do, before it does it. Surprises don’t sit well with user experience. Hence, before changing lanes, the Audi shows a countdown timer informing what it is going to do next. Third, one should be able to “see” what the machine is “seeing”. Else, one is nervous what the car may be missing. On the display, the Audi shows all the cars around it. Fourth, the transition from/to auto mode should be clear and smooth. When it transitions to auto mode, the steering wheel starts to move away from the user, conveying a gradual transition into auto mode.

 

Another example from the book is a suit designed to “augment the muscles of the elderly”. It is to be worn like pants on the legs. It has sensors and motors – when the sensors detect an attempt to use a part of the leg, the motors act like an “additional set of muscles” to help with that movement. Except… What if the suit misunderstood the intent? Does it make the wearer feel a puppet?

 

The solution was to make the motors make a sound to indicate that they were ready to activate. But only if the user confirmed the intent by, say, pressing on a body part close to the motor. Best of all? Putting one’s hands on the thighs (which acts as the confirmation of intent) fits with the natural way one tries to stand from a sitting position.

 

An early example of great usability design is the physical device behind the phone call icon on your smartphone – the humble phone handset! What?!

“The design of the handset… with the mouthpiece at one end and the earpiece at the other end, made it possible to use the phone with one hand…  A flat surface for resting the handset between your head and shoulder freed both hands entirely.”

 

Lastly, this organization called Khushi Baby developed a low-cost wearable amulet to store a baby’s unique identifier and to capture its health data during the early years, the aim being to reduce infant mortality rates. What it does or collects isn’t anything new or great. What was new was the usability aspect – the amulet like appearance was chosen because the designers noticed that most rural women put a black thread around the baby to ward off evil. The cultural fit of the design would hopefully make it a sustainable method.

 

An interesting and diverse set of usability examples indeed.

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