Banking Exercise

Dear Visitor,

Please complete the exercise and add your valuable inputs to the design of banking sites. As part of this exercise, you have tell the suitable location of the following objects in the grid below. The grid is for saving account online. You see this screen first thing when you log into your account. The objects are -

1. Account Balance
2. My Recent Transactions
3. Reward Points Accumulated
4. Pending Transactions
5. New Offers and Schemes
6. Link to other related accounts
7. Ads
8. Local Navigation

The Grid -















Please write the location numbers again each item in the comments section of this entry.

Thanks for your help and time! :)

Remembering Passwords

Q)How does one remember something?
A) When the mental artifact shifts from the STM (Short Term Memory) to LTM (Long Term Memory).

How does this process happen? One of the ways is through mugging. Now all of us are not smart enough to mug all the time. So when we encounter the artifact again and again in our tasks it gets imprinted in our minds eventually.

For Instance, they teach you in school that the capital of France is Paris in grade 1. You may or may not remember it. Maybe you remember it for the tests but then you forget it. So in grade 2 you encounter the same piece of information again. And again in the third grade. So finally it registers in the mind that the capital of France is Paris.

Forgetting Password
Similarly with Passwords. For the Accounts that you check more regularly the passwords are easier to remember because you encounter that piece of information everyday and hence you 'Remember' it. For accounts that you do not access frequently, the passwords are not remembered. Specially the accounts that you check once in 2 months or more. More so because you have many accounts online each with different usernames and passwords.

As a result, users forget their passwords. Now comes the usability issue. What many sites do is generate a new one instead of sharing the old one on the pretext of more security. This means that the user has now to remember a new piece of information. So sending him a new password as initiated a new cycle of forgetfulness. It has not helped the user remember it. This is because the user does not encounter the same piece of information for him to remember. Instead he has the challenge of remembering an altogether new piece of information.

Remembering Password
Instead the user should help the user encounter the same piece of information to the user by either giving him hints or mailing him his password. This ensures that the user eventually remembers his password. The users can delete the main containing the password immediately after getting the password is security is such an issue.

A word of Caution
When user does not remember passwords, he tends to note it down somewhere which is again a huge security breach. Instead its best the user remembers the password. We should therefore take steps towards making the user remember his password.

Analysis of 2 rupee coin

The new 2 rupee coin glistened under the KFC lights and as I took a closer look at its over simplified imagery and smooth form it looked unlike any other Indian coin I ever saw. To test its unique design would be great fun.

And so it begins, the experiment to know how usable the new design was.
Me: So here's a bag that contains different coins and kindly pick up a 1 rupee coin in 5 sec.
Subject A: (Moving hands in the bag) Here it is.
Me: Thanks, who is next?

After testing with half a dozen subjects, the results showed that 1 rupee coin was taken out successfully only half of the time and the in the rest of the cases it was the brand new 2 rupee coin that took its place.

A similar experiment followed with a 5 rupee coin with 100% success rate.

As we analysed why it happened,
We realized that the subjects while hunting for the 1 rupee coin, felt for smooth texture, lighter weight and limited thickness.

The premise for conducting such an experiment was to enact the real life example of taking coin out in a jiffy say while paying back to the auto fellow who is dying to leave, a crowded supermarket where people behind you are waiting in the queue, in a bus where you cannot let go of the handle bars for too long to pay the money for the ticket, etc. Coins are always given in a hurry also pertaining to its low currency value. So then fundamental charcteristics of shape, texture, weight and volume come into play very significantly.

So we placed a 1 rupee, the new 2 rupee and old 2 rupee coins on my palm with their backs upside and asked people around to tell me the currency on each one of them. They all gave correct answers for the 1 rupee and the old 2 rupee coin and but but not for the new 2 rupee coin. Besides the reason that it was new and wasn't very familiar to people, the new 2 rupee coin was hardly distinguishable from the 1 rupee coin. Also how is a visually impaired person supposed to make it out from the old 1 rupee coin? How are the millions of illiterate people we have in our country supposed to make it out from the old 1 rupee coin ?

So what goes in while designing a good coin?
Very fundamental things like size, shape, color, texture, weight, etc. All the factors that identify it in less that a second. Things where people don't have to read the text on the coin. Something that is accessible to everyone.

So let's start making life simple starting with the small things in life.

scientifically correct experiment

In any scientific experiment, if you want to find out if something works you isolate it. You make sure that all other factors that may influence the outcome of the experiment are as predictable as possible. Thus any reaction to the experiment is a reaction to the one unknown factor you allow.

In web design terms, any user feedback on or statistics of the site as a whole should ideally reflect only on your new idea. All items other than your new idea should be well known, even a bit boring, so that your visitors will use them without thinking and won't comment on them.

Of course, web development is not an exact science--far from it. Truly scientific experiments cannot be performed on web sites, since even the simplest site contains far too many unknown factors.

Glitches with MS Visio

Hi,

Lately I found all dese while working with MS Visio :-
1. Every page needs to be aligned indivdually for the same view. If you have changed the view of a page to center with 75% zoom, it will not be consistent across the rest of the pages. This hurts my eyes and expectations.

2.When you copy paste common elements across a couple of pages it does not maintain its relative position across pages leading to unnecessary rework. I cannot keep on making backgrounds for everything till I get confused which background is for what.

3. The guides need - bring to front functionality. Y?? Arn't guides supposed to be on the front by nature?!

4. Evertime I click on a textbox to edit the text...the entire thing is erazed to enter fresh text. Then I have to press Ctrl+Z to bring it back...One extra unnecessary step.

5. There is no facility to duplicate a page which is required in case you are just keeping the primary page the same and making changes in the seconday windows only.

6. There are no group align buttons. If i select a couple of elements on the screen, i cannot simply press a button and align them left or right. Instead I have to specify the position of the elements according to the ruler in a text box and see the cahnges happening. y?!!

7. When i press F5 to view my screens without the toolbars and paraphanelia, i does fit to screen and does not show the actual size which is not right. Therefore, if I have made 800x600 wireframe on a 1024x768 resolution it streches the screen to full size.

8. Also, if I am frequently changing my mode of interaction from pointer tool to text tool, then why shouldn't there be short cut for the same.

9. Also, it should by default try and put all screens at the center of the screen where it is ergonically right.

10. If I select an item and change the view to 200% it zooms not on the selected item but at the center of the screen. Why doesn't it do that when it is supposed to:(

Anybody got any answers?

New Handloom Site
http://www.etsy.com/index.php

Colors in Motion
www.mariaclaudiacortes.com/colors/Colors.html

UI patterns

http://time-tripper.com/uipatterns/ by Jenifer Tidwell