While shopping online for music this morning, I was reminded of one of my many pet peeves of user experience.  Since I’m in a mood to write, I thought I’d take the opportunity to interrupt my current series (Top Picks for fun and learning) and sneak in a post on a theme that I visited a while ago (with Go Global: Break down the barriers to online shopping) and which will pop up from time to time on this blog: big fat failures and major irritations people experience while using websites.

These fails and pet hates can’t be classed as faults or mistakes in the technical development of websites; they are user experience (UX) or usability problems which affect the successful use of the site, satisfaction and goodwill on the part of the visitor (also see my historic post: The importance of Usability). UX is a specialist area of web design and product design (also related to ergonomics), practiced by our sometime contributor Elizabeth Glynn, and most larger companies and web design firms are wise enough to have at least one UX expert on the staff.

Today’s pet hate is Lazy Linking. I use this to refer to any site that provides a link for more information or related content on its own or an external site, but the link doesn’t actually take you straight to the pertinent content: it either points to a larger category (e.g. an FAQ) or — worse and commonly — the homepage.

What lazy links do is give the website the veneer of being thorough and helpful or complying with a policy of customer service, but in reality it produces irritation on the part of the user. Here’s my example from this morning.

I visit the site (Play.com), find the item I want, put it in my shopping basket and start the checkout process. All, so far, is fine. I look to see what the delivery cost will be — the issue of hidden delivery charges is one for another day– and see this:

Excited by the prospect of free delivery, I click on the “find out more” link, expecting to be taken straight to the information about delivery. What I get instead is:

The information is available. I can read down through the list to find the delivery links (there are two of them) and then click through to find what I need:

When I find the correct page, I see that I have arrived on a page that has a stable url:

 http://www.play.com/en/Helpdesk/Getting_started/Play_com_delivery_policy.aspx

This means that the page is not written “on the fly” according to changing factors, which can be the case in some complex sites and which makes it technically impossible to go there  directly from a standard link. It is a reliable address that can be reached from anywhere on the web. So why did the person responsible for writing the content on the page make me go to the homepage of the Help section rather than taking me that one step further to the delivery information?

Laziness. Links to specific pages involve more work in the life of a website:

• work to differentiate between the links throughout the site and write them in separately instead of doing a large-scale “batch process” to put the homepage (or similar) in wherever a more specific page should be
• work to update all of these differentiated links whenever urls change

Technically, there is no fault. But in terms of goodwill, the only thing standing between me and a smooth and enjoyable shopping experience is the fact that whoever wrote the links preferred to make life easy for him- or herself at the expense of the user.

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As a specialist in e-learning, I work with organisations, universities and schools to find new ways for learning to be designed for, delivered to and experienced by learners. Along the way, my daily forages on the internet have led me to identify particularly interesting and valuable sites in terms of both sheer enjoyment and educational potential.

See below for a list of previous posts in this series.

3. COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers is an art and design resource, community and suite of tools with a large user-base that is truly international. I admit I’m addicted to this site and have found it extremely valuable for nurturing my fledgling desire to be creative and my beginner’s knowledge of design.

The community of “Lovers” is warm, accepting and appreciative of each others’ work, which provides an arena for enjoying art and design as both a spectator and a practitioner. Once you sign up, you get a customisable profile page (html is active) and every time you “Love” or “Fave” someone’s design, they get notified. You can also “follow” Lovers and comment on profile pages and all designs. Designs can be shared on social media, downloaded in various formats, if permission is granted by the artist, and badges (see examples below) pasted wherever html can be used.

There’s a blog and community forums with advice, ideas and occasional contests, all focused on colour and design, and external links to sites that will make products and fabrics based on your designs.

The four areas of creation on the site are:

Colours: you can “create” colours and name them for others to use.

Color by COLOURlovers

Palettes:  you can combine groups of five colours into palettes, which can then be used to create patterns.

Color by COLOURlovers

Patterns: you can use member-created pattern templates to make coloured patterns, either using existing palettes or combining colours anew.

Vector Patterns by COLOURlovers

Templates: you can use shapes and lines to create pattern templates for others to colour. This is the most advanced feature of the site, and the best template designers are proficient at creating Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) with the tool available on the CL site (Seamless Lite) and with external applications, such as Inkscape.

Vector Patterns by COLOURlovers

Groups within the site set challenges for each other, such as the Artists Palette Challenge group, which asks members to use the in-site Photocopa tool to create palettes from a particular famous artist’s work, or the Colour Lover of the Day group, where members create patterns based on a different “lover’s” palettes each day. There are also challenges to use particluar colours in palettes and patterns and groups that focus on nature or a period of history or a emotion, and so on.

The site offers huge learning potential, and I can envision lots of possible applications within education, especially (obviously) in art and design lessons. There are tutorials and similar resources within the site, but the best use would be to get students registered and stuck in creating, sharing, critiquing.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Top Picks for fun and learning: 1. Google Maps
2. Top Picks for fun and learning: 2. Zooniverse

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As a specialist in e-learning, I work with organisations, universities and schools to find new ways for learning to be designed for, delivered to and experienced by learners. Along the way, my daily forages on the internet have led me to identify particularly interesting and valuable sites in terms of both sheer enjoyment and educational potential.

In this series of posts, I outline my top picks for the start of 2013. My first post last week was about Google Maps and Streetview.

2. Zooniverse

Crowdsourced projects are on the increase: the internet provides the opportunity. Crowdsourcing refers to a process of engaging the public to assist with solving a problem or achieving a goal. Any endeavour which is data-heavy and requires many man-hours to chug through that data is a potential candidate for crowd-sourcing, and, naturally, many scientific research projects fall into the category.

Zooniverse is an umbrella site for a range of crowd-sourced university-led science projects that ask for the public’s help to sort through photos and data. The researchers gain valuable assistance and the ability to solve problems and find answers much sooner and more thoroughly than they otherwise could, and we the public can enjoy the experience and learn a lot about the particular subject along the way. They call it “Citizen Science”.

“The Zooniverse began with a single project, Galaxy Zoo , which was launched in July 2007. The Galaxy Zoo team had expected a fairly quiet life, but were overwhelmed and overawed by the response to the project…. Galaxy Zoo was important because not only was it incredibly popular, but it produced many unique scientific results…. This commitment to producing real research – so that you know that we’re not wasting your time – is at the heart of everything we do.”

The opportunity for Citizen Scientists to get directly involved in scientific research, regardless of our prior knowledge of the subject or level of education, is both empowering and rewarding. Not surprisingly, there are many ways the Zooniverse projects can be used in schools and educational settings to enhance more formal learning (Zooniverse in Education).

It’s also fun!

My two favourite Zoo projects are Galazy Zoo and Snapshot Serengeti, and I’ll say a few words about each to explain why.

Galaxy Zoo

The Galaxy Zoo project takes literally millions of images of galaxies and makes them available to Citizen Scientists to classify according to type, shape and other features, including mergers, like the photo above. This is a real photo from the project that I personally classified. I’ve always been passively interested in astronomy, but now I know more about the subject than I ever expected and there’s the added kick of knowing I might be the first person ever to see a particular image.

Roughly one hundred billion galaxies are scattered throughout our observable Universe, each a glorious system that might contain billions of stars. Many are remarkably beautiful, and the aim of Galaxy Zoo is to study them, assisting astronomers in attempting to understand how the galaxies we see around us formed, and what their stories can tell us about the past, present and future of our Universe as a whole.

As the site entices, “Few have witnessed what you’re about to see. Experience a privileged glimpse of the distant universe, observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Hubble Space Telescope.”  Many of the images are spectacular (though not all), the activity of classifying is not hard (although it makes you think), and there are ways to collect favourite images and discuss what you see. It’s a very popular project, with a large dedicated participant base, and a sense of community. The project blog shares information and a number of academic papers have been published, which not only use the crowdsourced classifications, but also cite individuals.

Snapshot Serengeti

Snapshot Serengeti works in similar ways. You see photos and simply input what animals you see, how many and what they’re doing. The gorgeous image of the adult male lion above is one I personally classified. As the site explains, “Hundreds of camera traps in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, are providing a powerful new window into the dynamics of Africa’s most elusive wildlife species. We need your help to classify all the different animals caught in millions of camera trap images.”  The purpose for this is simple:

“Much of our current research focuses on how carnivores coexist with carnivores, herbivores with herbivores, and the joint dynamics of predators and their prey. These insights will guide strategies for species reintroduction, conservation, and ecosystem management around the world.”

For the Citizen Scientist, there’s obviously the thrill of getting close-up views of African animals, but the simple, repetitive task of looking at images and making general analyses of behaviours leads to greater understanding: I can now identify a wide range of animals (and differentiate, say, a Thomson’s Gazelle from a Grant’s Gazelle); I know that hippos are camera shy during the day but come out at night; and I have also learned by observation that certain animals are gregarious not only with their own species, but with others (Zebras often hang around with Wildebeests).

Like Galaxy Zoo, Snapshot Serengeti lets you collect favourite images and discuss what you see. Researchers are on hand to answer questions. I recently classified the image of a cheetah, which could only be seen from the side.  It had a large, pregnant-looking, belly but also male genitalia. I asked for clarification and was told that cheetahs never look pregnant. However, after they’ve gorged, they get distended bellies and have to go sleep it off. This young male was on his way to a shady spot to digest his dinner!

There are at least 13 other fascinating projects under the Zooniverse Umbrella:

• Explore the surface of the Moon
• Study explosions on the Sun
• Find planets around stars
• Discover how stars form
• Explore Martian weather
• Model Earth’s climate using wartime ship logs
• Classify over 30 years of tropical cyclone data
• Study the lives of ancient Greeks
• Hear whales communicate
• Help explore the ocean floor
• Help scientists characterise bat calls
• Classify archived cancer cell samples
• Describe the Bodleian Libraries’ digitised music collections

Learn something. Enjoy yourself. Make a difference.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Top Picks for fun and learning: 1. Google Maps

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