Usability
Don’t let a nice-to-have ruin a must-have
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Filed under Usability
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On an Air Canada flight back to Toronto this year, I noticed a pretty major user experience design failure.
Every seat on the plane had one of those tiny TV screens on the back so that we passengers could watch movies during the flight. That’s nothing new. What was new - to me anyway - was that the channel controls had been moved from the armrests into the TVs themselves using a snazzy new touch-screen interface. I guess everything needs a touch-screen these days.
It dawned on me pretty quick: Every person on the plane was going to spend the entire trip annoying the person in front of him by repeatedly pushing the back of his seat in attempts to see what else was on. Sure enough, no sooner had I realized this than I started getting poked more than my Facebook profile.
Sure that interface makes a lot of sense; I can actually see what buttons I’m pressing rather than having to feel around the armrest. But didn’t anyone realize how uncomfortable that would make the experience for the person in front of me? And isn’t that more important than my having a touch-screen? The same rule can be applied to Web design: Cool new features can be great, but they can easily end up taking away from basic features that are far more important.
When considering one of these features for your site, take a step back and ask yourself not only what might this add?, but also what might this take away?
