The Web 2.0 Blog » Usability Watch

Usability Watch - Why can’t I do what I want to do!?!

I’ve been shopping round for a new car recently and that means I inevitably have to get some (outrageous) insurance quotes. In the UK there’s a website called confused.com which is basically a screen scraper service that goes around multiple companies and is meant to get you the cheapest quote. Strangely, the cheapest quote I got from them was about the same as the most expensive quote I got when I went through the process manually, but that’s for another day.

On the the point! I’ve used the site before to get quotes, last time I was looking for a car in fact, so I duly signed in using my details. Upon sign in, I was presented with the following screen you can see to the right. So why is this such a poor screen? Well, put yourself in my shoes, I hadn’t visited the site in a while and was coming back to get a new quote. With that in mind, what’s missing from that screen? Thats right, it seems as though all I can do is visit and view existing quotes. So where do we go from here? I assumed this was just because I was revisiting and I had outstanding quotes, so I hit “Previous” in search of a more usefull opening screen, but no, nothing, nada. Turns out, that if you want to create a new quote, you have to go and visit one of your existing quotes. Why? This is the sort of interface and usability madness that drives me mad, excuse the pun. To put it simply, I’m just as likely to want to create a new quote as revisit an old one, so those options should be on par. The other option that should clearly be available is to update my details. Hell, I want to input my details once and then just reuse them over and over. At the moment, while it pre-populates the fields with your pre-entered details, theres no way to just choose a car and hit submit. With the amount of information some insurers ask for, it would save some serious time, and just seems like common sense.

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Usability Watch - Google Special

Google Google Logo is rightfully hailed as one of the great masters of user interfaces but some of their design and development practices lead to inconsistencies and poorly thought out decisions. Personally I’m a huge fan of many of Google’s interfaces. Gmail is still years ahead of anything else out there and they still have the most usable search interface around (excluding the point mentioned below). Unfortunately you can’t help but wonder what the Google suite would be like if they had someone with overall responsibility for interface design and consistency. There also seems to be an unwritten rule that no bad words may be said against Google. Unfortunately this really benefits no one. Users get lulled into acceptance and Google rests on their laurels. So I’ve taken it on myself, as part of the new “Usability Watch” feature, to point out some of the strange usability issues that you may come across when using Google’s services.

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New Feature - Usability Watch

We’re starting a new feature here on the Web 2.0 Blog, Usability Watch. The basic idea is that whenever I come across a glaring lapse in common sense when it comes to usability, I’ll post it here. I’ve already got a few beauties lined up. Oh, and for the good of us all, I won’t limit this to Web 2.0 applications and sites. Everyone is fair game. And if you’ve got a usability crime, please feel free to let us know!

To get us all warmed up I thought I’d post this victory for stupidity over common sense.

The observant amongst you would have noticed that the style of that message is very Mac Like. And you would be spot on, I am currently using a Mac. So, really, what options does this give me? I can either

Buy a new computer that has Windows on it - or -
Leave the site never to return

Can you guess what I did yet? Its never a good idea to build a service that is bound to an operating system, or browser, especially when people are increasingly accessing the web in new and exciting ways. And, for what its worth, I had never been to, or heard of, zango.com so they have lost a potential customer.

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