usability > crumbs

There are lots of prototyping tools that useful for performing this function. Between them here’s the combination of applications that I usually use to get prototypes with both good design and interaction.

Axure

The strength of axure is the html export functionality, the ease to define interactions (links, conditions, and dynamic panels) and to define widgets.

Its weak point is the short list of draw options that it offers (there is no option to rotate objects, to import images or to degradate fill colors).

The conclusion is to use Axure only if you have to develop prototypes of low definition. Otherwise use, in combination with Axure, a drawing application. My choice: Fireworks.

Fireworks

The strength of fireworks is the large and easy to use options of drawing it provides. Lots of options are available to make a good design. The interaction with the program is very simple (for me easiest than photoshop). The problem appears if you want to make a html exportation…

The solution, then, is to use this tool to draw, copy and paste it to the axure document (.rp) that contains de rest of the prototype.

Wishes

The perfect prototyping tool would be, for me, a combination of this two programs.

Another thing to point out is: it would be amazing that the exportation to html of Axure was made with HTML using CSS. Nowadays, the HTML exportation of Axure does not separate the content of the presentation.

Whats nav2us?

Similarly to panoramio, nav2us (still in beta version) is a social network where users can share photos of places or points of interests. However, nav2us goes one step forward and allows people to download routes or points of interest created by other users to their GPS navigator.

As applications such as google maps, the functionality that nav2us offers can be included in a website with the aim of adding value (but you have to pay for it). For example, in business like restaurants, shops, hotels,…the fact of including this tool in their website would be an interesting functionality for people owing a GPS navigator. One example of the implementation of this service is Husa Hoteles which has added nav2us inside the information of every hotel.

How it works?

When you want to download a place to your GPS navigator you just have to choose a navigator model (Garmin or TomTom) and connect your GPS by USB or, alternatively, download the GPX archive. You can also download the KML file to see the place in Google Earth.

Nav’it! Google Maps

This is an even newer functionality provided by nav2us that allows you to send your google maps results to your GPS.

That’s an interesting project. We’ll follow its future steps…

Going back to the world of accessibility, I have taken the liberty of evaluating some public websites in the country with an automatic accessibility tool (eXaminator) .
We must have in mind that the diagnosis of an automatic accessibility tool is not definitive, and that any evaluation of this type must be followed by a manual.
One of the features provided eXaminator is that, by using an algorithm, it shows a final mark of accessibility which allows comparison between various websites and make small benchmarking studies.

That is what I have done with some public websites in Spain. The study conducted an accessibility comparison of the homepages of this sites in four levels:

• Autonomous Communities which obtanied an average mark of 7.14 in accessibility
• Capitals of the autonomous communities which obtanied an average mark of 7.64 in accessibility
• Cities with a medium population which obtanied an average mark of 6,24 in accessibility
• Cities with a small population which obtanied an average mark of 4,53 in accessibility

The summary of the results is:

• All the websites of City Halls were assessed a note accessibility between a 5.60 (Santa Cruz de Tenerife) and 9.20 (Zaragoza)
• The governments of the autonomous communities had, on average, a result below than the capitals of the autonomous communities. The Valencian Government and the Government of La Rioja were below the 5 and the Government of the Balearic Islands and the Generalitat de Catalunya had better note: 9.10 and 8.70 respectively.
• As expected, the smallest cities have the worst notes in terms of accessibility (10 of the 14 municipalities were assessed less than 5)
• The website of the City of Granada is the one with the worst note between all the evaluated, with a 2.7. The best note is fot website of the City of Zaragoza.

There are several webs that perform vertical searches within the tourism sector. You can find a huge repository in this link. I’ve been visiting lots of this kind of websites this week. Here is my top list considering issues related, specially, to usability and web design:

In Kayak Hotels the results list and all the functionalities it inculdes is, from my point of view, the strength of this site because of:

- The huge and useful possibilities of filtering (ubication, price, category, services,…) and ordering (popularity, price, name, category, distance to a particular point) results

- The 3 different ways it offers to visualize the results list (list, map and pictures)

- The information of every hotel in the results list is complete (picture, name, map, price, services,…) and very well structured, so is easy and fast to read and compare hotels by just taking a fast look to some of the hotels in the list.

From my point of view, the details of the hotels in kayak is not as good as the results list is. The information of the detail is showed using a small pop-up that’s divided with some tabs containing all the information about an hotel. I prefer viewing all the information about a hotel in the same page. The fact of using tabs makes your navegation slower and it hides information that could be important behind the other tabs.

Hotels.com is among my top list because:

- The ways to filter and order the results list it offers are very simple. There’s only a box that contains 3 drop-down lists where you can select the ordenation (price, category and popularity), the location of the hotel (city center,…) and the services or comodities (near the beach, swimming pool, for families,…)

- Inside the detail of an hotel the system proposes you similar hotels that may be of your interest

I think that hotels.com might be one of the favorites of low users because it doesn’ t offer functionalities that could make them doubt or feeling insecure.

From my point of view, atrapalo.com is the site that has both, the results list and the hotel detail very well-done.

- It has hotel results list very similar to the results list of kayak.com. It also presents the results view in 2 ways (list and map)

- The detail of an hotel contains a lot of useful information in the same page (valorations, price, how to arrive, services, pictures, and alternative hotels). In some places, I think that the page is too much full, so the information design could be better.

About booking.com I can say that:

- The results list is similar to atrapalo.com/hoteles and kayak.com/hotels , but it adds a detail to the filters that I find interesting: beside every option of the filters it shows you how many hotels with this characteristics there are.

- About the detail of an hotel I like, specially, the way the information is structured (information chunking) and the information by itself too (similar than atrapalo.com/hoteles)

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…

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…

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”