Monday, February 13, 2006

Usability Sins 2.0

Many 2.0-ish websites manage to put up major usability barriers, like hiding their content. Here are some examples:

• When you log-in to Flickr, and you then enter Flickr.com the next day to search for something, there’s no search box. Where’s the panic button? I want a search box! The easiest way to get back the box onto Flickr.com is to sign-out, and shrug your shoulders.
• When you go to podcast directory Odeo, and you click on “Discover New Audio”, you’ll end up on a static help page without functionality. Yowza! A pink elephant lured me away. This reminds us of the importance of checking our sites with an “innocent” fresh mindset. What does the user know? What doesn’t she know? What does he want?
• ITConversations is my hands-down favorite podcast site. I like it so much, I donated a bit a while ago. I wanted to donate again, so I click on the “donate” button... and what do I see? “As of January 9, 2005 we have closed the IT Conversations Tip Jar and ask that you instead become a paid member to The Conversations Network . . . for which you get some terrific benefits.” The “terrific memberships” are recommendations, a personal program queue, and write access to their forums, none of which I need.
• Digg is a great site. But did you know permalinks often disappear after a day or so? You never quite know if the story landed in some “wisdom of crowds” trash folder. Fact is, a permalink shouldn’t disappear. (Also, recently, a digg for Sketch Swap suddenly disappeared from the front-page even though it received quite a few diggs on it... and then it couldn’t even be located by searching.)
• Technorati is a nice blog search engine. But the last half dozen times I checked it, only at 1 time could I see search results. The other times, there was a “sorry” message telling me the site is experiencing problems. Even when I can reach Technorati, the search results take too long to load. I like the gazillion 2.0 features they have, but all that fades in comparison to their major scalability problem.

What’s your “favorite” usability hurdle on 2.0 websites?

Usability Sins 2.0 by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (30)

>> More posts

Advertisement