POS Payment terminals: a visual review
Posted on | August 14, 2008 | 1 Comment
As promised in a previous post (Bad experience with POS payment terminals), and after the vacation break, I am uploading a visual review of (some) POS payment terminals. The document is not menat to be comprehensive, but rather illustrative and - more importantly - “open”. By open I mean that I will update it as I take more photos of more terminals.
Enjoy 
POS payment terminals: A visual reivew (PDF, 3.7 MB)
Tags: Bad Experiences > Informal (everyday) tests > payment terminals > POS
GPS: Labeling and doing two things at the same time
Posted on | June 23, 2008 | No Comments
GPS navigation for cars still have a way to go before perfect. A while ago, as a passenger from Oslo to Lista in Norway, I got to examine a TomTom GPS screen real estate a bit more thorough, and found an odd detail. Whenever driving South-West, the arrow in the lower left corner of the map pointed towards South-East (and the label saying SW). Driving South-East, the arrow pointed South-West (label saying SE). In addition, the car was indicated by an arrow without any labeling. This one always pointed up.
It took a little while to figure out. It seemed from the suns position that the arrows north and south direction was always correct, but th east and west always mirrored.
The solution was really simple, The arrow in the lower left corner pointed north, and the label on this arrow explained the direction of the unlabeled arrow illustrating the car.
My guess is that this error didn’t show up in any usability testing since it wasn’t crucial for it’s regular functions. You have no problem getting from A to B with this little flaw. Only when having too much time on my hand, I saw the error.
One easy fix would be to label the arrow in the lower left corner “N” for north, and maybe label the arrow indicating the car with the actual direction. Other suggestions?
Tags: GPS > labeling > usability testing
Finn.no bits: more on ordering
Posted on | June 16, 2008 | No Comments
A short addendum to the post on Finn.no’s ordering criteria puzzle. I wanted to look around at offers in the rental market, and as I reached the list of counties, I found another surprising - for lack of a better word - way of ordering the list.
Technorati fails on login failure
Posted on | June 12, 2008 | 2 Comments
Last night I was going to visit the Technorati site so manage some blogs I have registered over there. It was a first time login with the new laptop, and in the old I had stored the password in Firefox password manager. Hence I tried a password being unsure if it was the correct one.
Read more
Tags: Bad Experiences > Usability > Web
NRKbeta: at a glance
Posted on | June 6, 2008 | 1 Comment
NRKbeta’s facebook group has just passed the 1000 fans landmark, so I decided to take a look. What is it? What do they do? What do they write about? I was faced by the following screens, HP above the fold, and HP after first page-down. At a glance? Disturbing….
Of course, I must mention a couple of things. Firstly, you don’t really need to look at my screenshot, as you can just visit the website. Secondly, my own blog isn’t the best, neither design-wise nor usability-wise (however, I will improve on both as I have some time :-D).
But I’d expect a lot more from a project spinning off the Norwegian National Broadcasting service, and whose positioning I understand to be rather on the cool side of the spectrum. The posts themselves may be excellent, that I don’t know. But, frankly, at a glance, I was put off by the messy design….
Spring frost: a photo
Posted on | June 3, 2008 | No Comments
The spring frost (april) in Ljørdalen made this lovely pattern on my car’s hood - thought I’d share it
It has not much to do with *user* experience but it has certainly to do with experience!
Where’s the content? A crude real estate allocation comparison of six leading norwegian news sites
Posted on | June 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
I have done a crude comparison of the same six leading news sites HPs as in the previous post, to show visually how much real estate is allocated to news content on each of them. This is shown by dimming out everything that is not news content, and so advertising, headers, logos, menus etc.: Take a look at the comparison (.PDF, 2.1 M)
PS: Sorry for the loooong post title! 
Tags: Informal (everyday) tests > news sites > Usability > UXD musings
Six norwegian news websites homepages: a visual comparison
Posted on | May 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
This post is more about the visual attached than anything else. I have many opinions on norwegian news websites: I am used to Italian newspapers, where the “tabloid factor” is not so important, and politics dominate the content (well, someone may argue that italian politics IS entertainment suited for tabloids….but that’s another story…..).
Let’s give the word to the images, so to speak….
Tags: musings > news sites > Usability
Finn.no bits: dine funn
Posted on | May 28, 2008 | 1 Comment
Today I want to quickly comment on the “dine funn” (your stored items) function on finn.no. Firstly, I must say it has improved substantially with this new UI and, especially, with some new interaction. In particular, the interaction for deleting and for commenting, which is now Ajax-based, avoids lengthy page reloads, and works much better. However, I do have some small complaints.
Finn.no bits: ordering criteria puzzle
Posted on | May 23, 2008 | 1 Comment
I am a long-time and heavy Finn.no user. I have bought 2 cars through finn.no, 1 apartment, and just recently a wonderful second-hand Stokke Balans chair. In the last few months Finn has begun to “redesign” (if what they are doing can be called a redesign) the service, adding - timidly - a new feature here, a new UI there, in a way which - planned or not - gives the impression of being an attempt at seamlessly morphing their UI without the users really noticing.
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