STC Usability SIG Newsletter
Usability Interface

Pulse of the SIG: 
Elections and Hurricanes Don’t 
Intimidate Me!

By Karen Bachmann, SIG Manager

Elections

As I write this, November 2, Election Day in the US, looms large here in Florida. And I do not want to talk about it. If the rumors and political satirists are right, lawyers are already booking the hotel rooms so recently occupied by those left homeless by the hurricanes, insurance appraisers, and the deeply appreciated aid workers from government and charity organizations. It also seems that the media is very quick to share the problems with early voting but devotes far less time to the happy fact that so many people seem to want to vote and get involved.

Of course, as a usability professional, I do not want to have to acknowledge that usability and user experience have still not been considered enough in so vital a project as ensuring fair, accurate, and accessible voting. I do not want to have to comment on media reports that voters are still confused at our snazzy new touch screen voting terminals. I do not want to hear quotes by election officials that show a clear disregard for the quality of the user experience even as they claim to care. Instead, I want to report that voting machines have been a success story for our profession and have made user-centered design a household term.

Those success stories are coming. Government moves slowly while media criticism comes quickly. I know I am impatient, but I take heart that efforts are underway to ensure usable voting is a key priority in ongoing attempts to improve the voting system.

UPA’s Voting and Usability Project is working to connect election officials with voting usability experts, to involve usability experts in projects to improve voting equipment and processes, and to inform professionals about progress in this area. Members of the project are involved in developing voting standards and elections guidelines that for the first time include usability guidance. This work is not only valuable for US elections, but also for similar efforts in other countries. As this effort continues, I look forward to learning and talking about how usability contributed to improving the success and experience of one of the most fundamental rights of democratic societies.

Hurricanes

With Florida being a meteorological punching bag this summer as four major hurricanes and one tropical storm slammed into us for a record-tying hurricane season (in 1886, Texas was the last state to have four major hurricanes make landfall in one season), like most of my fellow Floridians, I spent an inordinate amount of time watching the weather and visiting meteorological Web sites. The part of my mind that wasn’t preoccupied with worry and stress was greatly impressed by the apparent usability of the meteorological software that the meteorologists used to show predictions, detailed tracking, and up-to-the-minute information about rainfall levels, lightning, and tornadoes—side-effects that can be just as deadly as the direct effects of the hurricane.

With non-stop coverage, weather reporters often revealed more about the behind-the-scenes work than usual. One chief meteorologist kept referring to another person as the resident expert of the relatively new software he was using, but he seemed to drive it smoothly on camera with few mistakes that were easily recoverable. Highlight and click, and the view zoomed into areas to show rainfall on a street-by-street basis. Click again and rotate, and the wind shear and speeds displayed in a cross-section of the hurricane model. Another click and rainfall levels were given for each city and even the smallest towns in the inland counties.

The software was in each case branded with the television station’s logo, so I don’t know who created each of the applications I saw over the course of two and a half months. I would like to find out so that we could ask the development team—and their usability staff, I hope—to share the secrets of their success.

I was somewhat less impressed by the usability and information architecture of many Web sites, including the sites of the same meteorological teams I had watched on television. Getting to the information I wanted and usually knew was there required multiple clicks and, when I first started, much backtracking. Even though timely storm update links were provided on the home page for most sites, the detailed information that I needed was often buried under links that did not use intuitive language for me or others I spoke to. Promising links often looped me through several intervening pages to arrive at my goal. Sites that provided quick and easy-to-use searches to locate weather about my area did not also include details about the approaching storms or even a link to the main storm pages. On some sites, the page design and content changed slightly depending on how you entered, sometimes depriving you of clues to get to the next information nugget. I eventually learned the twists and turns, but I am an experienced and fairly persistent web user. Once I found it, the quality and accessibility of the information was usually excellent. That fact helped raise the whole quality of the user experience for me. The detailed charts and satellite imagery available on sites such as Weather.com, NOAA.gov, and wunderground.com kept me well informed leading up to each storm and during landfall. Once I arrived at the correct pages, the charts were easy to access, and they included information about how to read them. On NOAA’s site, there were also details about how the information was generated.

In the midst of stressful events, a quality user experience mattered. Highly usable and quality information (if not represented equally from all sources) was calming to me personally because I felt more informed and prepared for what was coming. Even when I was not the primary beneficiary of usability with the meteorological software, I felt that the information was trustworthy, free of human error, and helpful. It also reaffirmed that being an advocate for usability, even though it’s sometimes frustrating to be the lone voice, is worthwhile and has the potential for greater consequences than might be immediately apparent.