And the award for Most Unnecessary Signage goes to...

This. As Rain Noe perfectly explains on Core77, "the entire point of [the two symbols] is that they don't require an explanation and can be understood by those who cannot read English." The complicated clarifications, filled with text of three different sizes and styles and variable underlining, ruin a simple and effective design. I'll be so lost in puzzling over all this that I might just ignore the steady red hand and wander into the street!
[Core77]

Hey, pressure-washer warning label...

...if you don't want me to do it, don't make it look so fun!

Parking Signs: So much room for improvement...

Parking signs are a mess: they blurt out a verbose, sequential list of complex rules which tend to overlap, cancel out, and generally become useless jumbles in the brains of drivers. Thankfully, design is coming to the rescue: Nikki Sylianteng has an ongoing project at To Park or Not to Park, where she's iteratively refining her grid-based design. Instead of having to solve a multivariable logic problem, you can look up the day and time to get a quick read on whether you can park and for how long. A little less road rage ("parking rage?") would certainly make the world a better place!
[via Gizmodo]

Error Messages: Design flaws, not user errors!

Usability design guru Don Norman has a wonderful rant on error messages, explaining how they're more indicative of design flaws than user errors. To sum it up: "Error messages punish people for not behaving like machines.... It's time to design and build machines that conform to our requirements." He suggests replacing error messages with "collaborative messages," which prioritize working with the human to find mutually understandable interaction, instead of simply nuking non-compliant inputs and starting over. It's worth a read, especially if you're designing these kinds of things!

Popcorn with a side of acoustic sensors...

Instructions for microwave popcorn always give the same guidance: "wait until the time between pops is 2-3 seconds." And it usually works pretty well, so why shouldn't microwaves use the same method? Whirlpool's new AccuPop Cycle does, and I'm a fan - so much so that I proposed the same system in an "Introduction to Sensors" class way back in 2002! Oh well - just another missed chance to make millions, I guess...

Ultra vs Super vs Micro

A recent project needed some sanding with 3M Sanding Sponges, and I discovered a flaw in their system. You can see the three grades: Microfine, Ultrafine, and Superfine. Okay... so which is roughest and which is finest? Those three words have no default relation to each other, so the labels become useless. Adding a number to the label would help, which I did later with a Sharpie - and for the record, from roughest to finest (according to their website) it's Super, then Ultra, then Micro. Now I'm just waiting for them to develop an even finer grade - which they'll call Super-Micro? Ultra-Micro? Super-Duper-Ultra-Micro??

The dreaded "Perfectly Ambiguous Typo"

I was playing a board game the other night (I'm just that cool), when we needed to consult the instructions - and encountered what I'm calling a Perfectly Ambiguous Typo. That's where either of two possible meanings is equally likely, the context provides no clues, and the error could easily have been made either way. Behold: Nore than one playing piece can occupy a single square. It could be "More" or "No more," either meaning is viable, nothing around it suggests one versus other, and it's an easy typo to make from either original text. Fortunately, the problem was averted: the baby decided it was bedtime, so we never finished the game!

The Yellow Dog Project: Designing a message...

As a dog owner - especially since my dog is an energetic pit bull - I try to be responsible when my dog is approached by other animals or children. But it can be difficult, when even the humans don't always ask before interacting with her - and when they do, the question often carries a distinct connotation: "Is she friendly?"  I don't want to answer "no" because she is friendly, but she also needs her space, so the answer to that question is longer and more awkward than the asker expected. The Yellow Dog Project is trying to make that answer both easier and preemptive, suggesting a yellow ribbon or bow on the leash of any dog who needs this kind of consideration. It's a good attempt so far: the yellow-ribbon signal is flexible enough to be easy but specific enough to be recognizable. The trick is getting word of it to catch on, because its effectiveness will depend on reaching a critical mass. An awareness campaign by the ASPCA would be a good ol' 20th-century method, but the Yellow Dog Project currently has over 23,000 likes on Facebook. That's a start - now if only other dogs could be taught what that yellow ribbon means, too...

HapiFork nudges you to slow your eating...

Fitting squarely in that tricky category of "products designed to save us from ourselves," the HapiFork is a chubby little utensil that aims to make you, well, less chubby.  It's generally known that eating too quickly contributes to overeating, so the HapiFork detects the rate of your fork servings and vibrates if you're eating to fast.  In theory, a fine mechanism for self-control - but in practice, there could be problems. Meals are social occasions, and using a product with such a stigma (and no good looks to save it) may be a nonstarter. Still, similar user-guidance has worked for Sonicare toothbrushes which time your brushing and beep to cue a move to the next quadrant of your mouth - so maybe there's hope yet!

[via Gizmodo]

Hey, Dish: Zero is not Ten!

I feel sorry for the Dish technician who is getting totally screwed by bad design in this satisfaction survey.  Check it out: you call a phone number to rate the technician on his service on a scale of 1 to 10.  But to rate him a 10, you have to press zero; if you press 1-0 (sometimes also known as "ten"), it will only register the 1.  That means that if you're trying to give him the best score possible, but don't pay attention to the special rules of the Dish universe, you'll inadvertently give him the worst score possible.  The poor guy!  To solve this problem, why not have the ratings go from 1 to 5?  Or even 1 to 9?  Or 1 to any number but 10?  And in the meantime, where can I find a survey for my (dis-)satisfaction about the design of this survey?

Email and Bacon and Icon Ambiguity...

Seen recently on Facebook (thanks to cousin Ross!), this image is good for a quick laugh and a case study in icons.  It can be challenging to design icons without text labels - and this is a frequent goal for products, so you don't need different versions for different countries.  The currently fashionable minimalist style sometimes makes this worse - in this situation, that style would perhaps show a circle and a line, or an open circle and a closed circle, neither of which clearly communicates which function is which.  At least with the "email and bacon" icons, even though they're not very stylish, you can tell what you're getting.  And without a funny picture border, you'd never accidentally think it's a digital message or a side of pork belly!

Cheese Placement Design - Usably delicious!

Usability in design can be found in the strangest places - and the strange place of the day is inside your Subway sandwich. The idea is that the way Subway puts cheese on your sandwich, shown at right, is aesthetically pleasing but at the cost of being inefficient and uneven. So there's been some popular uprising online, including this clever shirt, lobbying to change to a tessellated design with more uniform cheese coverage as shown on the left. Lo and behold, this spyshot of an internal Subway memo suggests that the change will take place on July 1st! I've got to admit, I'm tempted to go to Subway soon and see if it actually happens - and I'm even geeky enough to care.
[via The Consumerist - thanks for sharing, Carlyn!]

Facebook Privacy: An unusable maze...

All the kerfuffle about the complex and confusing privacy settings on Facebook showed just how badly the situation needed an infographic, so the New York Times stepped up to the plate. This article and image map out the nooks and crannies of all the settings you can tweak - or could tweak, if you could find them. Hiding different settings in different places is worse than unusable design - it strongly hints of intentional obfuscation. The same article shows how Facebook's privacy policy has grown in word-count over the years, and that it's now actually longer than the United States Constitution. As I mentioned recently, long instructions indicate poor design - and if your website takes more words to define than a whole country, you've officially gone overboard!
[via Lifehacker]

If the instructions are too long, try, try again...

Here's an oldie-but-goodie, from Mark Hurst's Good Experience blog and "this is broken" Flickr group: instructions for setting the alarm on a hotel room clock (photo by Robert S. Donovan). Now, many designers may complain that usability is an elusive quality, difficult to measure and a somewhat subjective matter. But I'll tell ya right now: if your alarm clock takes 5 detailed steps to set (and step 5 is "repeat steps 3 and 4," for cryin' out loud!), you've failed. Try again.

Restroom Satisfaction Sign FAIL...

Spotted recently in a business restroom, this sign just seems... a bit much. Actually, a lot much. It smacks of legalese, or maybe a too-literal translation from another language with all possible accommodations for politeness thrown in for good measure. My recommendation:

"Feedback? www.____.com/restroom-feedback"

Conciseness is usable, folks. Look into it.

"Take Turns" - A usable new traffic sign?

This one comes to me from good friend Shouvik Banerjee, and has already inspired quite a bit of debate among my old college buddies. Gary Lauder suggested at the TED conference that we need add a new traffic sign to our roadside bag'o'tricks: "TAKE TURNS." Watch the video to get the details, but the gist is that you don't exactly YIELD (because that could screw over the yielders if there's too much cross traffic), you don't exactly STOP (because you don't always need to), but instead you follow some common-sense rule to take turns if there's a lot of traffic at an intersection. He does a neat job of justifying it with savings of drivers' time and fuel - both because unnecessary stopping-and-starting is reduced. But the debate with my college friends is whether people can be trusted to do this correctly - are people fundamentally courteous, engaged drivers? Or distracted, selfish jerks? It's a good question - the answer to which may well determine just how usable this new sign would be!

Know-It-All Pencils - More real estate for info!

If you're a gradeschool student using a pencil, you spend a lot of time with that little wooden stick in your hand - so hey, you might as well put it to good use. Etsy's Know It All No. 2 Pencil Set consists of normal pencils, each of which is emblazoned with a simple something that's worth remembering. It may seem like a piddling little effort at education - but I bet that every student who uses one of these actually has that fact memorized for life by the time it's sharpened down to a nub. Presence of information plus a captive audience equals memorization!
[via Make]

Phonewords on a Blackberry...?

Pop quiz, techies: how do you dial phonewords (of the format "1-800-LETTERS") on a Blackberry keyboard like the one in the photo? It's a problem deftly identified by fellow usability blogger Jasper of Uselog a few months back. Remarkably, it turns out that Blackberry provides a solution: Geekberry points out that you simply press "shift" and then spell out the word - the Blackberry will do the conversion and dial the right number itself. Of course, that trick isn't exactly obvious - it definitely requires you to RTFM. Usable enough? Doubtful - it will completely evade anyone who's not in the know, and even those who read about it may dial phonewords so infrequently that they'll forget the trick in between uses. Advantage, iPhone...

Remove Gmail Ads with "Decency Filter"

Gmail makes an income for the Google mothership by putting contextual ads alongside your messages - eh, nothing new with that. But it turns out Gmail has a built-in conscience, and that conscience (like most) can be used against it! Joe McKay figured out that by adding a few words to any message, all ads would disappear - specifically, words that would suggest tragedy. Iterating one more step by integrating the necessary words into a self-explanatory sentence, Lifehacker suggests the following ad-killing signature: "I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath." Nice. Of course, Gmail and Google are nothing if not smart, so it's only a matter of time before their algorithms compensate for this trick. But in the meantime, we humans can enjoy a brief lead in the advertising arms race!

Healthy Messaging, Snuck Into Snacks...

Colgate and ad agency Y&R teamed up for this little gem: a hidden message on a popsicle stick which reveals itself once you're done with the treat. It's socially responsible for the message to be healthy, of course - in this case, a reminder to brush your teeth - but a more tantalizing prize might make the whole experience even more (dangerously?) addictive. Yeah, probably best to stick with oral hygiene.
[via I Believe in Advertising, Inspire Me Now, & Gizmodo]