Locality Switch

Wikipedia has had, in my opinion, one of the oddest user interfaces in the mainstream web of today. I say oddest because it isn’t necessarily bad, but it just didn’t seem to fit in with the style of the rest of the web.

While the west of the web has been opting for clean layouts with heaps of space, Wikipedia has had a very cluttered look and feel to it. And, it’s been primarily Grey. I mean, c’mon! Grey?!

The Wikipedia Usability Initiative has apparently been working on a new design for a while and been testing users to see how they interact with the design. The new interface is now ready for users to try out, as long as you have a Wikipedia account.

The design changes are minimal, which is good. I like what they have done. They Realigned, not Redesigned.

However, I believe Wikipedia have not gone far enough in the improvements of their site. Here’s two things they should have done:

• Some sort of AJAX thing for opening up the Edit tab, rather than loading another page
• WYSIWYG editor for the Edit tab. Even if it was only for some core functions, not the advanced ones, that would be good

This is a chance for Wikipedia to refine and update their interface to improve the user’s experiences. I hope they can make the most of it.

There’s a few websites I go on the internet for insight into design and usability trends: A List Apart, Alertbox, Sitepoint, Web Design from Scratch, and Signals vs Noise. I generally find these sites very useful, and I respect the opinions of the writers there. However, sometimes people are just plain wrong.

The offender today is Jakob Nielsen, who writes for Alertbox. He published an article back in July about password masking, and why we should do away with it:

Most websites (and many other applications) mask passwords as users type them, and thereby theoretically prevent miscreants from looking over users’ shoulders. Of course, a truly skilled criminal can simply look at the keyboard and note which keys are being pressed. So, password masking doesn’t even protect fully against snoopers.

In essence, he is saying we should do away with those dots or asterisks which appear when we type in our passwords. What a bad idea.

The only place I believe this may be valid for is private offices. Anywhere else, it is a bad idea. Schools, internet cafe’s, open plan offices and public kiosks are just a few example of where people type in passwords where people seeing the screen is common place.

Password masking doesn’t protect against malicious criminals who want to hack your bank account. It protects from casual hacking – where people you know look over your shoulder and grab your password to have a bit of fun with you. With password masking, this isn’t a problem. Without it, we are all opening ourselves up.

Perhaps there is a solution to help Jakob see his password on the screen: a browser extension which toggles the visibility of your password on websites. Simple. He can use it, and the rest of us can keep living our lives as if nothing ever happened.

(Just a note: I still respect Jakob Nielsen – I think most of his articles are great. It’s just this one thing I have a problem with. Even others agree with my point of view.)

Every now and again I come across things on the internet which are really unique, and awesome. Today while I was browsing the Holroyd City Council website, I found this fascinating tool which they were using to test user experiences – Loop11. Here’s the blurb from their site:

Loop11 is a web-based user-experience testing tool, allowing companies to conduct online, unmoderated user testing on any kind of digital interface. Loop11 is not a survey or web analytics tool, but a user experience tool… helping you to understand user behaviour.

Loop11 is opt-in from the user’s point of view. You have to choose to undertake the tests – they are not forced upon you. Loop11 allows you to setup tests for your users to undertake, and record the results of their experience. For example, you could be asked to find information on council waste services. When you find what you are asked to find, you press the “Complete” button. Simple.

All of your experiences are recorded, and the web developers of the site can evaluate the results to help improve the site. You can see where users have difficulties in navigation and finding information on your site.

It’s currently in private beta, but I am holding out for a public beta to be released soon. I seriously haven’t seen something like this before – it’s quite unique.

There’s only a couple of problems I can see with this approach to usability testing:

• Users have to opt-in
• Users who opt-in are more likely to be more computer literate, and may be able to complete the tests easier than non-computer literate folks

As a result of the above two points, I can see that this approach could deliver skewed results. However, if used in combination with other metrics, it could really help developers create more user-friendly sites.

I reckon we should all watch Loop11 closely to see if they deliver a successful product, and a successful approach to user acceptance testing.