Feature Creep is a nightmare for many. Some features are useful and when it doesn’t push a project back and improves the experience then it’s okay to have them.
One day I was on The New York Times’ website and I highlighted some text to act as a marker while I replied to someone on messenger I noticed something. A small tool tip popped up with a question mark and as I hovered over it - it stated ‘Lookup Word’. Clicked the tool tip to have a small pop up window open with the definition. At first I thought it was something the web browser had done but then I noticed it happened in other browsers and realized that the developers for The New York Times’ had added this feature that when you highlighted some text you could get the definition of the word. - Pretty Useful.
But then I noticed something - When I right clicked the highlighted text, I couldn’t copy it because it undid the highlight and thus prevented me from copying the text.
This feature which seemed useful to me broke normal browsing behaviors - Now we have a problem. Without the feature I could of copied the text and searched for the definition myself - but now I can’t copy this text.
But Wait… You can copy with keyboard shortcuts..
Yes I can use keyboard shortcuts, but the problem with that is not everyone knows keyboard shortcuts - for example - do you know from right off your head what Command+Option+Control+8 on Mac OSX does?
What if I wanted to copy a whole paragraph? - Well that works. As soon as I highlight four words I’m able to copy the text. So it doesn’t break my normal behaviors all the time… only when I highlight three or less words, then I have to use the keyboard shortcuts..
Not a bash on The New York Times’ site - I thought it was useful and granted most of the time I will use the keyboard shortcuts but it is a risk to make such a move. From what I’ve noticed when it first was released a lot of people complained and even went as far as blocking the script using ad-block and I’m assuming that since it’s release it’s been adjusted. It would be nice if at some point they made it so I could still have my normal right click behavior but no one’s perfect and hopefully they will find a way to keep the feature because I do think that they were focusing on their readers when they added this feature.
Recently I was at a retail store playing with some tablets and I discovered that by not using a tablet very often or almost at all that it allows me to experience how it feels to use new technology as someone who would receive such a tablet as a gift.
While I’ve played with devices that are touchscreens - such a smart phones, tablets aren’t exactly the same to their non-tablet counterpart (android devices mainly). Now if I weren’t a designer & if I had received a tablet as a gift I might have been frustrated with the learning curve but since I was just playing with the tablet and wasn’t going to buy it I took a step back and would ask questions such as - what am I suppose to do now?
Is it on?
How many times have you had to help someone with their computer problems to discover it’s not even on. While I moved on from tablet to tablet I noticed I had difficulty turning the tablet on. Without looking directly at the button, I would push the top button on a tablet - nothing. So I moved on to the side buttons, push - nothing. I looked at one tablet and it’s power button was clearly on the top but was so small that I think the only way I could turn it on was if I pushed it with a pen. I went back to the first tablet which I couldn’t turn on by pushing the top and side buttons, looked at them and couldn’t find any symbols that would explain what the buttons did. I can only assume that the two side buttons next to each other controlled the volume but who knows what the top button did. Turns out the power button was located in the back - Next to the area which it mounted to the display.
First, the power button was placed away from a clear sight, now if the power button was placed closer to the edge behind it, it might not be much of an issue - however it’s still away from clear sight. Another factor is not only was it out of sight, but it was close to the area where all the other tablets were mounted; now everyday people aren’t going to mounting their tablets on a display but taking account that this product will be sold in a retail environment that means that it’s one of the places people will first use the product and if they can’t find how to turn it on, what makes you think someone will purchase it?
Lock Screen
Moving along, after finally turning on the tablet I was greeted with the lock screen - which is good from a security stand point and support. So presented with this lock screen I asked myself - How do I unlock this tablet? I saw an icon of a unlocked lock so I pressed it - the lock changed positions and had a larger circle around it. [For those wondering it was a motorola zoom tablet] Now did the lock move because I preformed an incorrect action? Am I suppose to place my finger on the lock and move it in the motion of the circle that’s presented? Am I suppose to press the lock again? All questions I asked myself.
I pressed the lock and it unlocked itself. I later walked back to it once it locked again and saw what happened if I pressed my finger in the circle but not near the lock icon. It unlocked itself. Which seems odd because if you press the unlock area the first time you are prompted (sort of - you aren’t really prompted) to press within an area which was close to the original area and even larger - However my thought would be if you are going to use the second action as a confirm that you want to unlock this device you would think it would be a larger circle first and a bit of a smaller circle to confirm. However the circle itself led to some confusion because I thought that I might have to press the lock icon and move it within the circle.
I found my observation interesting because as I use tablets more my innocence will be lost - but by being aware that I am new to this device and taking note to what I ask and how I preform actions it would allow me to have something to look back at in the event I ever have to design an application or device even such as a tablet.
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
— Steve Jobs (via blissed)
(Source: valleygirldubs, via gypsysmiles)
I was at Panera recently and as I enjoyed my meal I noticed two kids who sat behind my table walk up and place an order. When they came back to their table I heard them say - “It’s not called a cup of cozy” to their mother and how the daughter felt so stupid for asking for it.
In Panera there was a hanging banner that on the top says “Have a cup of Cozy” - The word Cozy was on it’s own line and was also the largest size so it had more emphasis. Then it showed a cup with whip-cream and chocolate syrup. Underneath the cup it says Hot Chocolate, in a different typeface, different color, and what could of been a different weight. It was also placed in a spot that could easily been overlooked.
While the design was nice, and it caught my eye prior to hearing the event with the kids behind my table - it makes me wonder how many people have made the same mistake? In a world were meals have their own names that might have nothing to do with their contents - (Such as the Big Mac, McDouble, Whopper) it’s not surprising that someone might think this drink which you can’t tell it’s hot chocolate (due to the image only having the whip-cream and chocolate syrup) might be called Cozy. Yet when a person makes such a mistake and then walks up to the hanging banner to look at it a second time after being told “We don’t have a product called Cozy” to find out what the product is called - that’s a problem.
A simple solution is to move the part “hot chocolate” from the near bottom of the banner underneath the word Cozy. That way people won’t feel bad by making a simple mistake.
