Theo Mandel’s Usability Blog

A humorous, poetic, simple and elegant presentation about bad usability based on the Bad Usability calendar (www.badusability.com/).

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The Onion, a famous print and online parody newspaper, has a hilarious news video parody of Google’s “Opt-Out” policy.

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New York Times (August 20, 2009) reports automobile dearlers are having trouble using the rebate forms the government designed. Yet another example of unusable forms!!

“In many cases, the administration says incomplete forms or errors in the information submitted by dealers are slowing the process. Workers have reviewed about 40 percent of the applications filed, and many have been rejected and then returned to the dealer for possible resubmission.

Laura Sodano, a sales manager at Curry Chevrolet in Scarsdale, N.Y., said dealers were not told why their applications had not been approved and were having to review the entire form to determine what went wrong.”

<< View the Article >>

Seth Godin, bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change in his Gel 2006 video.

Why are so many things broken? In this entertaining talk - one of the favorites of Gel 2006 - Seth Godin gives a tour of things poorly designed, the reasons why they are that way, and how to fix them.

 Watch the Video

Who says you can’t improve on years of well-established tradition? Wal-Mart and Costco have adopted a new gallon-sized milk container that looks to save the companies lots of money. However, there may be some usability issues they’ve overlooked!

A New York Times article describes the following impressive improvements in business metrics:

* 180% higher utilization of coolers
* 125% better delivery truck productivity
* 50% increased storage space utilization
* 16% lower milk prices for the end consumer

However, customers are reporting that it is very difficult to pour milk from the containers, resulting in constant spilling and loss of milk.

Here’s the full scoop! Video included - New York Times, June 30, 2008

Fun, somewhat tongue-in-cheek article about reading/browsing online vs. paper. He uses Jakob Nielsen’s writings as examples and goes from there.

Worth a read on Slate (Aricle by Michael Agger).

You knew it was coming…move over iPhone!

Here is a cellular phone that *really* can multitask! The Sumsing Turbo 3000 Xi mobile phone!

View the video!

Let users do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and how they want to do it.”I just received an e-mail from someone on my humor list. I don’t know if these international translations are actually true, but they do point out the problems with translations. Enjoy!!

1. The Dairy Association’s huge success with the campaign “Got Milk?” prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read “Are you lactating?”
       
2. Coors put its slogan, “Turn it loose,” into Spanish, where it was read as “Suffer from diarrhea”.
       
3. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux”.
       
4. Clairol introduced the “Mist Stick”, a curling iron, into German only to find out that “mist” is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for  the “manure stick”.
       
5. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since many people can’t read.
       
6. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
       
7. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope”(el Papa), the shirts read “I saw the potato” (la papa).
       
8. Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” translated into “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave”, in Chinese.
       
9. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as “Ke-kou-ke-la”, meaning ”Bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax”,  depending on the dialect.  Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent  “ko-kou-ko-le”, translating into “happiness in the mouth”.
        
10. Frank Perdue’s chicken slogan, “it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” was translated into Spanish as “it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate”.
        
11. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, “it won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you”. Instead, the company thought that the word “embarazar” (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: “It won’t leak in your pocket and  make you pregnant”.

And my personal favorite from my tennis travels….
       
During a US vs. Mexico Davis Cup match in the United States, a Mexican company was passing out free baseball hats. To their surprise, few people, and no women, were taking the caps. In fact, people were kind of upset! Why did this happen? Well, the company was Bimbo Bread Company, well-known in Mexico, but not well-known in the States. An you wonder why women didn’t want to wear a baseball cap with the name, “Bimbo” written on it!

Great! I found the software I’m looking for, and it’s on SALE! $325, with $75 off, ends up at $250! But wait, it says the discounted price is $395! What is going on!!!!

Welcome to the wonderful world of web usability bloopers! For more information on how to avoid usability bloopers, visit Mandel’s Golden Rules of User Interface Design. View more bloopers on Mandel’s website!

This blooper was found by Kathryn Grant, Sr. Technical Writer at FedEx

Wonderful Web 2.0 gives you instant, dynamic information - or does it? Check out the temperature and weather in Scottsdale in this screenshot between one Weather panel on the left and the other Weather web service on the right. One says the current temperature is 70 degrees and sunny and the other says it is 28 degrees and snowing! Which do you think is correct? Click on the screenshot to view it full-sized.

Now, check the refreshed screenshot. Click on the screenshot to view it full-sized.

Refreshed version of the weather information on my Google Home Page. Wow, it’s not snowing in Scottsdale any more! Surprise!!

Welcome to the wonderful world of web usability bloopers! For more information on how to avoid usability bloopers, visit Mandel’s Golden Rules of User Interface Design. View more bloopers on Mandel’s website!

Great video highlighting the usability of “new” technology and tech support. Imagine the usability problems that surfaced when books were first created!

“This video makes fun of moderns newbie computer users by illustrating - in a way fully understandable to them - how silly some of their questions are by creating a similar problem 500 years ago.It’s from a show called Øystein & Meg (Øystein & I) produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting television channel (NRK) in 2001. The spoken language is Norwegian, the subs in Danish. It’s written by Knut Nærum and performed by Øystein Bache and Rune Gokstad.”
 

View the video (Subtitles)

“Finally, it’s here: This year the Bad Usability Calendar is, if possible, even less usable than previous years.”

This is a great teaching tool for highlighting how easy it is to create unusable designs. Created by European designers.

• Read about the Bad Usability Calendar here
• View the 2007 calendar here (PDF)

If you would like to translate the Bad Usability Calendar 2007, you can download the source files (containing .eps, Adobe Illustrator, .svg and .swf files). If you translate - please tell the authors about it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of web usability bloopers! For more information on how to avoid usability bloopers, visit Mandel’s Golden Rules of User Interface Design. View more bloopers on Mandel’s website!

I’ll be updating the section on usability bloopers on my website, but meanwhile, please view the current Bloopers webpages.

If you have photos or links of web, application or real-world usability bloopers, please post them here in this Blog with a description or send me an e-mail at theo@theomandel.com. I’ll add them to my bloopers pages and give you credit for submitting them. Thanks!

Have you seen the TV commercials for the Lexus LS 460 “Park Assist” feature, or more technically named, the “Lexus Advanced Guidance Parking System?” The Lexus demos and commercials show the feature to be incredibly simple and easy to use. However, reviews and videos are being published showing the feature to be unusable. Here’s a great example of perceived (marketing) usability vs. actual (real-world) usability. Check out the links below and see both sides of the debate.

 - Lexus Demo

 - Lexus Commercial

 - Video 1 (Easy to use - “Easy as pie!”)

 - Blog Review (Unusable)

 - Video 2 (Unusable)
    [Warning - Video contains some colorful language!]

Join the discussion - have you actually seen or used the new feature in the Lexus? What do you think of the feature? Is it usable or unusable?