But onto the point of this post – Adobe. They make some fine software, like Photoshop, but their periphery software is terrible. I just installed Acrobat Reader on a Windows machine and received a bit of a shock. no one particularly likes the install progress window, but Adobe has taken it one step further and added a carousel of banner ads.

Installation screen for Adobe Acrobat

Oh that just makes it so much better. I know it’s free software, but this solution just feels like a desperate attempt to satisfy the marketing department.

To summarise they are:
1. Form labels work best above the field. This is because forms tend to be vertical in nature so people find it easier to just read top-down rather than scanning left-right and then down.

2. Users focus on faces. This is nothing new, psychologists have known this for ages. I think the interesting part is that the study also shows that if the picture person’s face is looking at something, like a paragraph on the page, then the user of the site tends to focus there more as well.

3. Quality of design is an indicator or credibility. I guess this is fairly obvious, the more professional the site looks, the more credible it’s perceived, but it’s nice to have it verified.

4. Most users DO scroll. Oh the arguments I’ve had over this Years ago Jacob Nielson showed that most users didn’t scroll. Well times have changed and most users no longer have an issue with it (I can certainly back this up with user testing I’ve done at Sensis). The study suggests that users even prefer scrolling to pagination…

5. Blue is the best colour of links. Probably a less useful finding as there is a disclaimer about colour contrast, branding, etc. But if pure usability is you goal (and let’s face it, it’s rarely the only goal), then blue is your colour. Te most important point is to make the links stand-out though.

6. The ideal search box is 27 characters wide. I think this finding is a bit too general to be useful. Obviously what the site is used to search for would have a great impact on this. General search such as Google/Sensis.com.au would benefit from this finding. But I wouldn’t mind betting that the Surname field in White Pages doesn’t need to be that long.

7. White space improves comprehension. It certainly does. Jamming more info into a page is counter-productive. Sure it’s all there, but if your user can’t read or find it, it might as well not be there at all.

8. Effective user testing doesn’t have to be extensive. I think this finding has been around for quite a while. There have been many studies that have shown that as little as 5 users can uncover a majority of your usability problems, and after 10 users you don’t find many new problems. That’s why it’s best to do 2 lots of small tests than one big test with lots of users.

9. Informative product pages help you stand out. I’d put this one in the blatantly obvious pile rather than a finding. It’s interesting to note though that if you half of the findings in this list would help with this problem anyway.

10. Most users are blind to advertising. The title is a little misleading. They are mostly referring to banner ads (which is well establish finding). But users tend to excel at ignoring ads – it’s probably the thing they do best. Thankfully there are also studies that show that if the ad is relevant to the user’s task, then the ads tend to get more love.

Ok, that was longer than I was planning….

Cristoph shares info about his sleeping habits and humorous anecdotes (I couldn’t agree more about the damn mosquitoes!). His pictures are so simple but convey the meaning so well.

Thanks to @designui, via twitter

Then I come across a video of Bobby McFerrin at a the World Science Festival, on a panel about neuroscience. What the hell is he doing there you ask? Well it appears that the panel is discussing how the Pentatonic Scale (yes I had to look that up…) seems innate, or at least somehow hard-wired in our brains. So to show his knowledge on the subject, Bobby demonstrates how people just seem to know it. They demonstration is just magic:

So coming back to my original paragraph – I think I’ll need to extend past just sketching as an explanation tool and look at physical demonstration too. Sketching and physical demonstration are something we all do as kids. But as we progress through school we stop doing this and focus instead on writing. Writing is a great skill (I love books), but why do we have to use it for everything?

As you can see from my graph below, I tend to tweet in the morning and after lunch. Interestingly the number of tweets increases as the week wears on. A colleague had the same pattern – I wonder if this is a general ‘office worker’ pattern?

Thanks to Matty via twitter.

Not only is this more interesting than watching an egg-timer, it’d be much more accurate too (measuring time assumes everyone is using the same water pressure).

Courtesy of infothestics.

Well I’ve changed banks recently (not because of the ATMs…) and I got a wonderful surprise this morning when I went to use their ATM for the first time – they actually have a solution for my complaint! When the first screen comes up you have 2 options (after entering your PIN) and the first is to “Use Favourite Withdrawal”. I selected it and it told me I didn’t have a favourite set up, so it took me through the process. Not only can I specify a favourite amount, I can also set the bank account and whether I want a receipt or not. Brilliant! So now 95% of my withdrawals can be done with a single button selection.

Well done St George, or to whom ever insisted on this feature. Gold star to you!

I think this is a good way to drive home the topic. When you can see that the ground floor of your favourite pub will be underwater, then it becomes personal rather than a problem for “someone else”.

Courtesy of the infosethics blog.