iterativelearning

On the bus ride home today, I noticed a small poster behind the driver’s seat that announced upcoming changes to the arrival and departure times.

With time to kill, I thought a little about the usability and design of this list. Gripped with this momentary fever of design geekery, I dramatically concluded that it didn’t seem very likely that riders would look at this posted notice of changes nor even be aware of its existence; it would just be too hard to read from just about any seat on the bus unless a rider was sitting right next to it.

So, what’s a design geek to do? With a few free minutes before my stop, I brainstormed … What might be some options for improving usability? Hmmm… Perhaps,

• integrate these announced changes with the digital reader board that is used primarily for announcing the date and time as well as requested stops;
• add a pre-recorded announcement to run every _x_ minutes (the pre-recorded announcement could be customized so that it would be loaded on to the computer/PA systems of only those buses whose schedules were impacted)

Strange coincidence … yesterday, I blogged about possible improvements to Netflix’s UI and today, Ars Technica reports on a streaming technology from LG that would do away with the set-top box via Broadband HDTVs.

The holidays are often that time of year when most of us have a little more time than usual to catch up on various movies we’ve been wanting to see. Like many out there, I’m a fan of Netflix. Especially if you don’t live in a city that offers lots of film options, Netflix works as a great opton.

One of the things that I think has helped Netflix’s success is how their website makes it very easy to search and add movies to a queue. Most of the time when I search for a film it’s because a friend or relative suggested it, and if I’m not too busy, I typically want to move it to the top of my queue while the conversation about it is still fresh in my mind.

In terms of usability, their bright, red button that appears immediately below the film title makes it a breeze, of course, to add to the queue; however, what about those times when you want to move it to the top of the queue? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do this as part of the same task sequence? As it is right now, you have to click the Queue tab, manually search for the title in your queue list, and then click the Top button — three additional steps!

There are at least a couple of ways they could simplify this. One would be to place a “Top of Queue” button adjacent to the “Add” button.” Theoretically, the Top button could allow users to complete two actions at once. Another option would be to place the button as part of a two-step sequence where the second step presents the option of moving the title to the top of the queue.