It was so easy I thought I was kidding myself

I came home today to find my mantis server had stopped working. Something was wrong with the some aspect of the HDD. Not entirely sure yet, but I've put the drive in another machine and copied all the valuable data of it.

I was impressed just how easy it was to restore some aspects of the server. The physical machine I moved it to already had Apache on it. So it was a cut and paste of the Virtual Host and Listen line to configure and a bounce to get it going.

The next step was to reconfigure the router so that the server could be reach from the interwub. This was a 5 second job. Quick test, no database! Of course!

So I jumped on to the machine and quickly realised I couldn't access the existing MySQL install. Argh, what was I going to do? Try and reconfigure the current install of MySQL to point at the dodgy servers data? I thought I would have a look in the MySQL folder to see how the data was stored. There was a folder called data, and in that a folder with the same name as the database.

I wonder what would happen if I just cut and paste that

So I tempted fate (I have backups) and logged into MySQL, show databases and there it was. Ha! How awesome is that? OK, now for a real test. to access it via the mantis web-app. Works perfectly. Once again, awesome! Awesome like a million hot dogs.

Now, allow me to digress. I love it when applications don't bind themselves to the system that they are running on or force uses jump through some farcical ceremony just to perform a simple task. For instance, my brother has a Toshiba Gigabeat for his mp3 player. I remember him trying to get his songs onto it. You had to install their application and then work this ghastly interface just to transfer some songs. I think it was more than 24 hour period before he had everything working.

My Creative MuVo is literally a flash drive that I could drag and drop files onto. The music player app was smart enough to work out folder structures and to not trust the file system state as it last remembered it. My Nokia N95 8GB thankfully supports both methods.

Last time I checked most users know how to drag and drop a file and while it might not be immediately obvious that your application can support such advanced functionality, it is nothing that good documentation can't fix. If you have to spend lots of money writing an application, try making it one that wraps a GUI around the cut and paste process. You will save money if nothing else.

Anyway, I have just finished copying some music onto my phone. Time to go to sleep with some soft tunes ghosting through my headphones.

Usability: What is the ideal date control?

Mace is not the right answer, effective though. As exciting as date controls are they are pretty easy to get wrong. Date controls have the unfortunate problem of trying to represent a large period of time whilst trying to provide a good level of granularity over that time.

Users want to be able to specify a date and if the date control resembles something they are familiar with (i.e. a calendar) then even better. From what I’ve experienced being able to supply a date as quickly as possible doesn’t come into the equation with most non-technical users. That being said, users do not want to waste time trying to operate an unwieldy date control. They want to supply a value in as many steps as few steps they can conceive in their minds.

Developers and experienced computer operators (data entry personnel, power users) tend to want to do things as quickly as possible. This is at odds with user experience. This is also me. I can type over 120 words per minute. Most users can't. Remember that.

Application Platform
Where the application is running has a big impact on how the user is going to interact with the date control. Console applications obviously are going to use a keyboard mechanism. GUI Applications are a mixture of keyboard input and mouse control depending on how many fields need to be supplied. Web applications are mouse driven, and mobile/pda applications are pen driven (essentially mouse), arrow-navigation driven or touch pad.

The type of mouse also impacts usability of a date control. Touch pad mouses and nub mouses are a different user experiences than the standard hand-held mouse.

Date Selection
The types of dates the user selects is also important. How far in the past will the user be selecting a date? If it is a web-site where someone must be 18 years or older or an student records application that requires the date of birth, the date control is going to require the user select a year at least 18 years to something old like 30 (kidding, I mean 40… no 90.)

Are the dates in the past even allowed? Travel booking sites would rather you booked in the future. Does the user need to select a second date based on the first? Can the user supply a partial date? Is the user required to include a range of dates? Simple date range selection is non-trivial whilst keeping it simple, intuitive and aesthetic.


The Options
There are many examples of date controls out there, so I’ll try to provide a real live example of each one.

Drop Down City:

To be honest I had a worst example available but thankfully I can't seem to find it on google (if I can find it again I will post it as it was atrocious. Note to self: bookmark epic failures under "hindenburg"). To be honest it's one of the few times I have been glad to not find an example. A friend told me Immigration Australia had a drop down city control but I couldn't find it either. FYI Some aspects of their site are rubbish and I'll post that under at separate topic in a day or two once I collect my thoughts.


Above, the wordpress one isn't great. Personally I don't like it. Too many controls for something that could be done visually. Furthermore, the month selector doesn't always respond to user input forcing me into mouse input. Some may claim that this is a browser or OS issue. News Just In: The user does not care what you think, only what they experience.

Anyway, back to my original impressions: for starters, lots of drop downs look hideous. Secondly to select a specific date the mouse user has to click on a variety of drop down controls and then the keyboard user must supply some other values. A date control should support either all keyboard or all mouse and preferably both.

Single Box Date Control
Examples: (seriously, I had several examples planned. Perhaps people learn. I know I do so it's entirely plausible. When I find a relevant example again I will so post.). Anyway you have all seen it. The 12 character input control with '/' for dividers!

This option is the equal fastest date control for keyboard users and not usable at all for mouse users. However if you have a number of text fields before this date control then having a keyboard only field, I feel, is OK. The user will already have two hands on the keyboard at this point and it is only a jump away from the date control.

If the user has to take their hands off the mouse just to use the date control then this option is not a good choice.

This option is not aesthetically pleasing unless there are similar looking input controls near by.

Triple Box Date Control
The other fastest date control. Depending on the look and feel of the user interface this option can be aesthetically pleasing. It can also be ugly [here]. This date control is functionally similar to the single box control, or a completed entry should skip the user to the next field. If your users can specify partial dates then this option beats a single box hands down. It provides the easiest way of allowing the user to select which aspect of the date they may wish to supply (month for instance) whilst still displaying that the other two fields are empty.

One caveat with the three box date control is that you will need to make it clear which box is for the month and which is for the day. US date controls tend to be month first while day first is common in countries like the UK and Australia.


Calendar
The most visually appealing date control, the calendar gives the user a date selection control akin to the calendar on their desk or on the wall in their garage. This is a good thing. Your average non-computer literate user can work a calendar with ease. Unless implemented correctly a calendar is also a nightmare for date selection within a few months or a few years.

This website (Dynarch) has a calendar control on the right hand side. It works fairly well, its an odd concept to work in even years on the right, odd years on the left. Personally I don't like it. To find 2012 I have to go to 2013 and then back a year. Too much work, I would rather scroll than have to click on one side of dialogue and then click on the other side to fine-tune my search.

Still kudos go to them, because the calendar control is trying. My only other criticism of Dynarch is the word "Today" is in the middle of the control, it implies that the current date selected is today, like it is on my physical desktop calendar. It doesn't mean that. It means go back to today. This threw me off. With anything there is a usability vs education issue, personally that text should give a short hand notation of today. Quicklinks should be included below the control with other concepts like "next week", "next month". Depending on your content (always, of course).


To make a calendar usable for larger date ranges the following features need to be supported:

• Click on the month to activate a dropdown control to select a month. The month should open on June/July so that there is minimal distance to move to the desired month.
  
• Click on the year should allow the user to control the year more easily. I see couple of different options implemented here.
• Up Arrow / Down Arrow – this is a bad idea. Your date control should already contain double arrows for going forward or back one year
• Enter a year, this is useful if the year is a long way away from the current year
• A year slide. Looks like a drop down menu with about 5-10 years visible above and below the current year. At the top and bottom are two buttons for scrolling. These should be on-mouse-over activate or click-and-hold activated.

Other usability requirements that are a must:

• Let the user know that if you click on the month your can select a different month. The same applies to the year. Users rely on your visual feedback to let them know what is wrong and what is right within the confines of their education. Step outside those bounds and you lose. I've done it, you've done it. Don't be ashamed, realise a mistake and move towards the user.
  

What isn’t good for calendars? Scroll bars are a bad idea. It is far too difficult to find a specific year using a scroll bar. On one application I tested each scroll click moved 50 years.

Here is an example of someone that is pretty darn close: http://www.basicdatepicker.com/
They're date control only misses the need for auto-scroll one year, and supply forward one year, back one year options.

Some Other Thoughts
Do you need a date control? Seriously. For the beta registration page for No Horizons we used an age attribute. We don't really care about the specifics of someones age as long we could gather their age. This is very valid for websites where someone must be 18 years or over? Seriously, making someone work a serious of dropdowns and input controls to state they're 18 is ridiculous. A simple "I am N years age" where N is a supplied value is just as effective. To memorise: understand your demographics.

Much like piracy "cautionary messages" the only people you hurt are the people who do the right thing. Pirates leave off such messages when duplicated films and people who enter your site underage, etc, are lying.

Conclusion
So what is the best date control? It really depends on the application environment, whether dates are optional, but generally you should try to provide both, the input box input as well as the calendar. A set of input boxes for the keyboard users, this is especially relevant if you have a number of input fields that the user can supply. For visual applications and especially web or mobile applications you should provide calendar functionality.

Bonus Content: Date Ranges
Asking the user to specify date ranges is a non-trivial task. Often I am expected to supply a start and an end date. This is fine if I know the specific range I am searching. If I don’t then it’s trial and error until I do. A better solution is to provide that functionality for users that do know the date range as well as functionality for those that think in terms that users are familiar with. "It was last week" or "I am pretty sure it was in January" are concepts the user understands. Hell, as a developer/tester it's a concept that I think in.

Being able to search one to four weeks ago, and then in terms of months or years is more ideal. Show me all emails sent between June and August last year. That’s closer to how users think and it’s a lot easier to do than, show me all emails from the 01/06/2007 till the 31/08/2008. It’s a subtle difference but one the users prefer.

How would you implement this? You can allow partial dates in your input boxes for keyboard users. Secondly, you can let people double click on the month header to default to the first of that month and then close the window. Furthermore, quick options, like “last week”, “this week”, “this month” are handy shortcuts that make life just a little bit easier.

Usability Case Study: Facebook Advertising

A short case study on usability. It is all of a sudden relevant to me (because everyone is doing it wrong) and because I myself have learnt more about usability over the past six weeks than I thought I would. Therefore I feel I have an obligation to share my knowledge with you.

The other day I was investigating Facebook’s social advertising mechanism. Half of it was business related, the other half curiosity. I clicked the "advertise" link and was taken to a screen that pitched their advertising. After scanning that I clicked the “create ad now” button.

This took me to stage 1 of 4 of creating an ad.



This is also where I started to groan. All I wanted to know was how much it would cost to advertise on Facebook. I am not ready to start advertising, I am not even convinced that Facebook advertising is even a viable alternative.

The last step is called “Set Budget”. So I figured I could skip past the first three steps to find out. No Dice! I had to supply my URL, name and a brief description before I could continue.

Page 2 wanted my expected audience and the third, images and the advertising text. Luckily you can supply an image later, but dummy values in the advertising text were rejected as illegal words. At this point I quit. Seriously I said, fuck off.

Some advice to people who are looking to solicit services via the Internet. I don’t care who you are or what you think you know about what I want. You don’t. Secondly, I am not going to give you real information if I am looking for a quote. I just want a quote, be thankful I even know who you are and that I am interested in your services.

In my opinion this application would fail usability testing. It's target audience is businesses. What do businesses want from your service?

• They want to know what it is you do
  
• They want to know how much it costs
  
• They want to be able to purchase the services when the time has come
  
• They don’t want to wait to find an answer out.

The last point holds true for anyone, anywhere. It’s not like I can’t just click somewhere else. Seriously, realise how far your competitor is away in Internet terms and then meet them.

So, how should the Facebook advertising web-app have been written?

If prices are fixed based on simple conditions, put them on the second page or have a link called “prices”. If the prices are based on a complex algorithm, then place all the controls on a single page and let the user tweak the setup to match their needs. It is not that hard.

My reasoning is so, firstly from a business perspective you are being open about your pricing policies. Honesty is good. Dishonesty equals zero business.

Secondly, as a user I want, when I want. I don’t have to jump through your hoops to achieve my goal. I don’t care about your hoops. I only care about my goals.

Thirdly, if you only display one price at the end of four pages of clicking one of three things will occur.

• The price is less than the budget for the advertiser. They may sign-up, but you may not be maximising your business potential. Secondly, they may have been willing to spend more but don’t know how to get those services from you.
  
• The price matches their budget. Not likely.
  
• The price is over their budget. Without a means to reduce their expectations to value they will go somewhere else.

If you display all the controls on one page then the following can occur:

• The user will tweak the control to what they wanted from you at a service level and the cost comes under their budget. This would have happened anyway using your existing setup.
  
• The user will tweak the controls to the absolute maximum of their budget. This is a win for both parties.
  
• The user will play with the figures and may end up spending just a little bit more if they can justify a potential benefit from it. This is a double win for you and a win for them.
  
• The user can’t find anything they like and they leave. However, they now know all about what you offer and what you cost. This is in their mind now and they won’t forget. There is a chance they will come back in the future.

By tailoring the application to the user’s needs rather than your own you do the following:

• You increase your chance of doing business.
  
• You appear to be a honest business entity.
  
• Your application
• Your application won’t piss people off and build a burning resentment within them.

Usability starts at the very beginning of software development and flows all the way through to User Acceptance Testing. You have to have in mind who you are developing the software for the end users before you write a line of code, before you write down a single requirement. For without a user, you have no need for an application.

Happy to discuss this delightful topic further, just drop me a line,

Please Sir, Can I have some more?

Facebook has a “More Ads” button. Who in their right mind would willingly request more advertising? Is this insanity of the highest order by the developers, or perhaps naivety?