March 31, 2008 at 10:39 am | Usability
- Posted by Clara Vázquez |
Although some years ago I became an Apple “fan” (and still I am) I sometimes find things that are very annoying.
Two weeks ago I bought a song through the itunes application of my new Ipod touch. The experience was amazing, as everyone had told me. Easy, fast, satisfying…You get your song, you get your cover, everything is so perfect.
Three days after I was surprised to see that the song I bought was missing inside my ipod. I’m still looking for it…I thought it was time to contact the itunes store and told them my problem. And so I did…
When doing the process of getting in contact with the itunes support team I was amazed to see this screen:
“Do I have to pay for reporting a problem?? This table is confusing, isn’t it?” Affortunately I clicked on “Report a problem” and it’s, logically, a free service. But I felt scared while I was trying to report the problem. Bad things about itunes…
I’ll tell you something when I discover where the hell the song I bought is…
March 12, 2008 at 9:51 am | Accesibility
- Posted by Clara Vázquez |
The General Spain Elections that took place on March 9, 2008 will be remembered for blind people as the first elections that they could vote with the same conditions than non-disabled people.
For the first time in Spain’s history, blind people can now vote in privacy. They just need, as a special resource, ballots in Braille.
From my point of view this is, undoubtedly, a breakthrough in terms of accessibility, and maybe a starting point for reflection.
Aspects relating to accessibility are, the most of times, less considered than other issues that are part of a project. This makes reduce the quick advance towards accessibility and the discrimination to a big part of our society are increasing.
The same is true in the world of Internet. All the webs of public administration entities in Europe should be accessible since 2005 (eEurope plan). In Spain, only a few fill up these conditions.
Should we move faster towards accesibility? I think so…
March 8, 2008 at 7:22 pm | Usability
- Posted by Clara Vázquez |
The service
Few months ago I became a member of a popular and innovative service in Barcelona: the Bicing, a service that have lots of bike stations spread through the city that lets you move between them.
How it works
The way it works is, sincerely, very very simple: you put the card in a pannel of a bike station and it tells you which bike you have to take. When you arrive to your destination it is even easier: you just put the bike in a place of the station that is free, you wait for a led to became red and, that’s all. “Actually, it’s a very useful service…,very simple and very fast. That is usability!” I thought happily the first day I used the service.
The problems
The following days I started to think in a different way…I found no bikes when I needed to take one, I found that the station was full when I arrived to my destiny, I took one bike but it really didn’t work quite good,…
What makes a service usable?
It’s very important for the interaction between users and applications or interfaces to be easy, but it does really make sense if the service itself is not well managed and it makes it not useful? I think the most important thing to do is making the service itself useful.
Bicing’ slogan is “Your new public transport in Barcelona”. Maybe it should be…”Your new eventual public transport in Barcelona”