Transportation nightmares

The 2008 IDEA conference was a blast again this year, especially since I didn’t have to organize and work on my feet for three days in a row this time. Being my first real conference in Chicago, I decided to scout out the city and took the Chicago architecture tour and rode the L & Metra trains around the city to different neighborhoods.

In preparation for Charlotte’s World Usability Day, the annual Usability Professionals Association event, I grabbed a few extra transport maps and snapped a few pictures of transportation nightmares. Like this one:

this sign doesn't help riders decide where to stand to catch a train

On screen deleting for techies only

Gmail is throwing all sorts of great features at users, including AIM chat integration. But from tests I’ve run recently, these delete in the display features are often troubling to regular people. It’s fast and confusing — and even if an undo is present as when deleting or labeling an email, it shouldn’t be the primary means of deleting something. It can be traumatic for someone to accidentally click the (x) and watch their shock as it goes away without a clue as to how to bring it back.