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Lessons Learned in Ruby on Rails and related technologies.
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Nokia N70 - 11 Clicks Away From Usability
I've had the privilege and misfortune of using a Nokia N70 3g camera phone over the last couple of days. My first impression of the phone has been mostly a series of frustrations but most importantly a lesson in the importance of usability and delivering on the basics. To quote 37Signals:
The basics are the secrets of business. Execute on the basics beautifully and you’ll have a lot of customers knocking at your door. Cool wears off, usefulness never does.
Usability on the Web and Embracing Simplicity
I just booked flight tickets for the christmas holiday and it got me thinking of usability. People depend on websites so much these days and it's a shame to let them suffer from poor usability. Of course, usability has improved quite a bit over the last couple of years. Indeed SEB finally uses a date widget, and I think even suggests a sensible default (the next working day), when you do payments through their online bank. For the longest time they left the user with a bare bones YYYYMMDD text input widget.
Booking tickets on the web is often a series of frustrations for me. This is in spite of the fact that I am a skilled web user. For example a form won't submit and the validation error is hardly visible. The user is left wondering if the form submitted at all, if there was a validation error, and if so, where?