Reliance Big TV Enhances usability of their website

Reliance Big TV, the leading direct-to-home (DTH) service provider in the country has enhanced their official website. The new site comes with a completely fresh and international look with free-flowing white spaces and fluid interactions. The new navigation interface adopted is simplistic and intuitive with the objective of increasing the average time spent on site. With a warm conversational tone, the content is aimed to provide enough info to category explorers to turn them into BIG TV customers while converting existing BIG TV customers into complete loyalists & advocates.
Sources state, the clear agenda for the site revamp was to use it as an effective marketing tool to garner new customers as well as to promote VAS to existing customers. The site achieves this by clearly directing 'seekers' vs. 'users' into separate sections. Interested customers can now order a new BIG TV connection online.

W3CAG

W3C Accessibility Guidelines

1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and
visual content.
2. Don't rely on color alone
3. Use markup and style sheets and do so properly
4. Clarify the usage of natural language
5. Create tables that transform gracefully
6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies
transform gracefully
7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes
8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user
interfaces
9. Design for device-independence
10. Use interim solutions
11. Use W3C technologies and guidelines
12. Provide context and orientation information
13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms
14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple

Mobile Usability Guidelines

Meet user's needs quickly
Design mobile friendly pages
Don't repeat the navigation on all the pages
Distinguish clearly selected items
Make user input as simple as possible
Show only essential information in the mobile

10 Best Intranets of 2008

Bank of America, US
Bankinter S.A., Spain
Barnes & Noble, US
British Airways, UK
Campbell Soup Company, US
Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation, US
IKEA North America Service, LLC, US
Ministry of Transport, New Zealand
New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, Australia
SAP AG, Germany

Source: useit.com

Usability/User Experience Listed among the Best Careers for 2008!

http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/best-careers/2007/12/19/usabilityuser-experience-specialist-executive-summary.html

.mobi

.mobi (also known as DotMobi) is a mobile top-level domain approved by ICANN and managed by the mTLD global registry dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices via the Mobile Web.

DotMobi domain names were made available for public registration on September 26, 2006.So far more than 700000 .mobi domain names have been registered..mobi has already made headlines with several 6-figure domain sales, including,
Flowers.mobi for $200,000
Sportsbook.mobi for $129,800
Fun.mobi for $100,000

These results demonstrate the strong role .Mobi is playing in driving the creation of mobile content on the Internet.

Since 100% of .mobi sites must be optimized for viewing on a mobile phone, the main advantage of .mobi, from the users' perspective, is that they are guaranteed a site optimized for their smaller screens alone.

It is financially backed by Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Telecom Italia Mobile, Orascom Telecom, G Samsung, Ericsson, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefónica Móviles, SM Association , Hutchison Whampoa, Syniverse Technologies.

Bad Usability in Road Dividers

Look at this Picture , Road divider has no reflector to indicate that there is Divider and the height is also more, number of accidents occur due to this reason, Many NH roads have the similar problem.

Consider a scenario when the driver is coming at a good speed in that road during night time, the road is smooth and there is no divider or anything so he continues to go with the same speed or more, suddenly he sees a divider which is only a few meters away from him and he could not stop or slow the vehicle finally he ends up with an accident which is similar to the image above.

If there is a reflector in the divider or board he would have seen that much before coming near to the divider and avoided the accident.

Usability in T.V Remotes

Why most of the T.V Remote doesn’t have a indicator or marker in the Number 5 button

All other devices like mobile phones, Keyboards, Landline Phones has a indicator or marker in the number 5 button to easily identify for the visually challenged People.

There is a serious need to have an indicator in TV remotes, when compared with the sighted people the visually challenged people don’t watch TV, but "There is always a possibility for them to listen to news, conversation, or music on TV."

Even when the sighted people use TV remotes during night hours and when the light is off, often there is a chance of pressing the button 2 or 8 instead of 5.

Consider a scenario the user is watching the T.V during night hours and he want to change the channel to his favorite channel which is in channel number 55, he have a chance of pressing 85, 52, 25 for pressing 55.

So it is mandatory to have an indicator in the number 5 button in TV remotes.

Look at the size of the power button, it is of same size of the number buttons, they have changed only the color to green, there is a chance of pressing button 1 or instead of pressing 1 you may end up with pressing the Power button.

The size of the power button can be made larger when compared to number buttons.

Reverse Cardsort

In this method we present the list of categories in the Information Architecture and a list of selected items in the site's content and asking the participant to palce where each item can be found in the list.

By this method we learn:
User's mental model of how they expect content to be organized
User grouping of what item's most user's grouped together
Whether the structure suports navigation
Whether the label makes sense to users.

Reverse cardsort can be done in face to face UT, In a remote UT, By email.

CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA" is an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart".

If you posted a comment,or ordered something online you have seen captcha.CAPTCHAs have also found active use in stopping automated posting to blogs or forums.

A method prevent robots from automatically submitting forms on a Web site by requires a person to visually view text in an image and enter its value in the form, which robots cannot do.

The Worst part of CAPTCHA is User's are not able to understand what is written in the image,yet there are some irritating captchas, which results in user gets frustrated and leaves the site. Drop-off rate increases due to bad captchas.

Good captcha should be easy to understand and straight forward.User should be able to view the text in a image when they see.

KISS Principle

The term KISS stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid", and the KISS principle states that design simplicity should be a key goal and unnecessary complexity avoided. It serves as a useful and frequent verbal exhortation (or even dedicated policy) in software development, animation, engineering, and in strategic planning.

Other versions of the phrase include "Keep It Simple & Stupid", "Keep It Sweet & Simple," "Keep It Short & Simple," "Keep it Simple, Sweetheart," and "Keep it Simple, Sherlock," and the obvious scatological variation.

ROI of Usability

ROI (or return on investment) refers to the returned value in profit or productivity that can be attributed to a given investment. When the investment is lower than the resulting gains, we get a positive ROI.

The returns generated from investments in website and software development are measured. Improving the usability of a website can
increase sales,
reduce customer service calls,
increase customer satisfaction.

For intranets and timesheets systems, improving usability can
increase productivity by reducing the time to complete a task,
reducing the error rate,
increasing satisfaction.
Most of these improvements can be quantified by measuring saved time, gained revenues, and increased productivity.Building usability into the processes can reduce development costs, reduce development time, and ultimately improve the end product.

Ten Usability Heuristics

These are ten general principles for user interface design. They are called "heuristics" because they are more in the nature of rules of thumb than specific usability guidelines.

Visibility of system status
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.