That User Interface Guy: A partial video I presented to ebay for a consulting task.
2Ebay has tens of thousands of UX things it should fix. I gave them a couple dozen just for free in a meeting because I like ebay. I like their brand. They have good customer support and executives that take feedback. I believe the way their corporate system works is afforded by already identifying the class of user they have with customer to customer feedback. It's an interesting culture piece say Facebook/Google/Apple don't have.
Some random things I covered:
0 review automations
1) OCR -AUTO PICTURE and the time
2) No way to tell my free listings desktop
3) Dont sell on canada or uk
4) Quantity tied in selling
5) Crop
a) Default cache even if temp
b) Illegal error crop size small
6) Automatically search for sold listings on desktop
7) Can't see my free listings on website
-relist free credit warning
UX rules:
1) Intuitive
2) Time
3) Frustration
4) Assembly Line
5) Mistake Proof It
1) Intuitive:
-Know what it is & what to expect before using.
-How to hook new users. No one likes to read a manual. They like to do and feel good
-An analogy is Tolkein's The Hobbit. Designed for young readers, it makes you feel like you're an English Professor because Tolkien explains the big words he uses in the sentence. Only a master writer can make the unstudied feel like they're also a master of literature. Only master interface designers can make new users
-feel like veteran users without studying or reading FAQS.
-Proper design is to give the easiest and most essential options up front, and bury at the proper depth the more advanced functionality
-If a designer says,"Hey, the advanced feature is there. The user will just have to web search how to use it from the community or watch a how to video", your designer is failing.
-If a designer says,"Well we'll put all the features a new user might want in one giant advanced settings menu and only there.", your designer is failing.
-Guideline: Use other familiar interfaces/hotkeys
-Benefit for humanity to not reinvent hotkeys for every different company's application
-When upgrading Interface, keep them same familiar interface/hotkeys as last version.
-This results in "The Designer's game": Keep old interface/hotkeys while building increasingly better functionality. Aka: Designing is easy, until you need to deal with active interfaces then the legacy issues need to be respected resulting in "The Designer's Game" which is fun because challenging. If you do not play the Designer's Game, you end up with absolute failure designs like Windows 8 where they threw everything out and started from scratch. Then users were confused.
-Modern Intuitive Design: If it displays data, allow them to click on it to edit data somehow, even if clunkily opening a new window if complicated to do so.
2) Time:
-Focus on interfaces that save your users time. Allow them to get as much done as quick and easily as possible.
-You must have a trained Order of Magnitude mind to do these calculations.
-Not every designer is trained or has the ability to do this, but it is an absolute must someone on your team can.
3) Frustration
-Do not frustrate the user with a lazy design or implementation.
-Frustrated users will use your platform less, they'll not gush on their friends how awesome your platform is so you have less users.
-Even if you don't care about getting new users because you're swimming in your money pit now, if you keep frustrating your users, they'll help competitors grow which would be bad for your future.
-The customer is not always right, but you want the customer happy as often as you can make them without compromising site functionality.
4) Assembly Line
-If you focus on saving the user time and lessening his frustration, you'll naturally be coaxing them into an assembly line mentality.
-Each step they do, is quick. efficient, & not asking for redundant input
This efficient input leads the user into a rhythm.
-A rhythm aka assembly line ends up in at least three great things
-A user in a rhythm starts to get a joy like a mouse pressing a button for a treat. It triggers dopamine, and you have a happy user due to his/her productivity.
-Happy hooked users, use your product more.
-Efficiency's addiction means these users might list at a rate of 1 listing per 30 seconds now, but as they can assembly line it, drop it down to 5 or 10 seconds.
-Assembly lining does this. The user starts to naturally want to list asap, and haste does not mean a poor listing in this case for they are veterans to achieve assembly line efficiency.
-Assembly lining is the reverse of frustration and wasted time. You almost do not have to worry about 4 except as a check.
5) Mistake Proof It
-Never let the user click a button that could destroy their whole system of work.
-If you do mistake proof it, customer support will get lots of calls to fix these mistakes as they show.