The only immediate criticism is that econsultancy haven’t addressed “the diagonal problem” which Jakob Nielsen raises as a usability problem for mega-drop downs, but there is relevance for regular pop-out menus:

“…The very best implementations can sense when a user is moving the pointer from the navbar item to a destination within the drop-down. When the pointer is on such a path, the drop-down should remain visible. This supplementary guideline addresses the diagonal problem, which happens when the path temporarily takes the pointer outside the active area. The drop-down shouldn’t disappear when the user is on the way to point to something within it…”

Almost immediately, I’m put off from using the econsultancy site because it took me two attempts to select the last link from a pop-out menu.

Rail Europe is not a site I’m familiar with, since I tend to use the English version of Die Bahn for European train times, so I thought I’d take a quick look.

Visually, it is engaging, but there was an immediate usability problem I picked out involving the departure and return date fields in the timetable search:

Rail Europe Timetable Search

Rail Europe has used labels within fields, which is an accepted design pattern, though Luke Wroblewski, in his book ‘Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks‘ says that a “a reliable interaction for labels within forms requires the label to disappear quickly when users place their cursor into the input field so they can easily provide their answer”, and the site does abide by this rule;  however, a standard web design pattern allows for both the blinking text entry cursor to appear in place of the label, which clears automatically, and for a calendar widget to appear.

In the case of Rail Europe, neither happens, and I’m required to click the calendar icon to initiate the widget.

This isn’t a killer usability problem, but it is frustrating, especially when Design UK have promoted the site has having such an engaging user experience, and makes me wonder if I’d find similar issues deeper into the site.

UPDATE:  Rail Europe have now updated their website

The site allows you to login using either your nectar card or an email address.  Since I don’t know the card number off by heart, and I can’t be bothered to dig it out of the wallet which is in my coat pocket, I opt to login using my email.  Therein, the problems begin.

Sticking Point 1:  ‘Remember me?’

I’m a heavy keyboard user, so avoid using the mouse if my fingers are already on the keys.  I never use any of the ‘remember me’ options, so I’m normally able to type in the email address and password, and with quick tap of the ‘enter’ key, I’m logged in.  Not with the nectar.com website though, which throws up the following JavaScript error message:

“One of the boxes”?  Another quick ‘enter’ key, and I find the cause of the problem.  Near the ‘remember me’ is the check box ‘don’t remember me’.

Nectar.com have chosen to use two checkboxes to ask if I do, or don’t want the site to remember my login details.

I’m pretty sure I’ve not seen anything similar on any other website for as long as I’ve been conducting usability and user experience reviews.  It would be so much easier, and less confusing to use the following, which is a common design pattern for a web form.

Sticking Point 2:  Login problems

Once I’d fixed the ‘remember me’ problem, I entered my email and password again.

At first I couldn’t figure out the problem.  No Javascript error alert this time, but an error message sandwiched in between the form and the ‘Please login using one of the following options”.

Aside from the fact that the error message is indistinguishable from the text above it, why did Nectar.com not use a consistent error message with the previous one?  If the site already knows it can’t log me in using my email address and password, why just not show me that part of the form?

So, now I have to dig out my nectar card and type that instead.  Oh, and to add insult to injury – the ‘don’t remember me’ checkbox cleared itself, so I ended up having to type in my card number, again.

Fitbit automatically tracks your fitness and sleep, and then displays all this lovely information onto your personal page.  It isn’t out until November/December and costs $99.

Please let them have an API.  More information at: http://www.fitbit.com/

Mycrocosmos, a web service that allows you to share snippets of information from the minutiae of daily life in the form of simple statistical graphs.

(via swissmiss)

I have somehow managed to find a ‘mirror‘ of my site from that year, and it appears that at some point it was defaced by a hacker known as USG.  Thank goodness he was relatively ethical.

In large corporations you typically deploy a large content management system.  BP was no exception, using Teamsite globally to manage every single country website.  I used it to deploy bpmarine.com, castrolmarine.com and castrolpgo.com.  It’s not an easy tool to use if you aren’t IT literate, and it certainly wasn’t very user friendly for those that are.

With the smaller websites, a developer is often torn between developing an entirely static site or putting in some rudimentary content management system.  The former guarantees you with an income stream since the non-technical owner will rely on you to update it.  On projects such as dynamicadventureracing.co.uk, I was conscious that Simon and Nicky wouldn’t have the technical knowledge to update the site entirely, but  the budget wouldn’t stretch to the implementation of a CMS; though I could have used any number of open source CMSs, such as Drupal, PHP-Nuke or Mambo, but customisation would have been complex

In the end I opted to make sure the HTML was very well documented and some detailed instructions were provided.

Editing a page through CushyCMS

I found CushyCMS, a fantastic web 2.0 app that doesn’t require any changes to the original website, and requires only a minor update to the HTML to include a new CSS class on each section of editable text.  Everything is controlled directly through the CushyCMS editor, which automatically FTPs the updated pages to your site when saved.