How easy is it to print?

This article is for those of you who have been hardened on word processors for what seems like your entire life.

To you, the idea of having trouble printing is nonsense. Printing is one of the core functions on a computer. In fact, when you first got your Commodore 64 one of the only things it could do was print, so when I say that printing is hard, you should find it hard to believe. But it is.

Last evening I spent about 45 minutes with my father trying to guide him to print a document from Microsoft Excel. Now, my father is not a dumb man, he may be a bit on the technology light side, but in general he can navigate around pretty well. But, when he needed to print his document so columns were not being cut off he was lost.

Step 1: Hidden Options

Starting from the beginning, Microsoft has decided to hide options at random from menus. So, to print, you can’t simply select “print”, first you need to expand the menu to show all the menu options. Not ideal, but definitely doable.

Step 2: The print menu
You might think this is where our story begins and ends, but on the general print menu there is no option to change the print orientation. This is odd, since most pages are set up portrait orientation, but most spreadsheets are landscape orientation.

Step 3: Properties
The properties option contains our orientation menu, along with a host of other options, most of which would confuse my poor father. The problem here is there is no preview to see if your data fits on the page. And, there is no easy way to get to the place to see the data (the previous screen), so you need to click ‘ok’, then preview to see the result.

Step 4: Clicking preview
If the preview is not to your liking, there is a handy “setup” link, which, you would think, would lead the user back to the complication whence you came. But alas, is brings you to a different ‘setup’ menu.

Step 5: Send the file to me and I’ll fix it.
In then end, my father was not able to print his spreadsheet in its current format for many reasons. Some of which were technical and some because he did not have the knowledge of Excel to make the modifications necessary to fix it.

While many of us have reached the point of Excel wizardry in reformatting screens to our liking, I would suspect there are just as many who are confused and end up taping together multiple print outs unnecessarily. To this, I say the failure is in the system. The system should be smart enough to know the orientation of the document and be able to change (or suggest to change) the orientation to our needs. The system should also make it simple for the user to find commands, and present the most used options in a single location without the need to navigate several screens. Additionally, the system should make it easy to navigation to a single representation (one view) of user options and make it easy to go back and modify them without the need to guess or start over.

And the user... well, the user should learn how to use Excel.

Recognition in young children

At the heart of advertising is rote memorization. In the advertising world they call it ‘branding’.

Branding is the process by which name, logo, slogan, or design scheme becomes associated with a product or service. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to the product and serves to create associations and expectations around it (from Wikipedia).

Through these associations a company wishes you to make one choice over a competitors choice. A side affect of these brands is the snippets of information about the products that get stuck in the brain. It could be as simple as a logo, like in the classic Coca-Cola logo or the iconography of the Pepsi Cola logo, it could even be the colors like the red and yellow of a McDonalds logo, or it could even be the jingle associated with the product like the famous B-O-L-O-G-N-A, which brings me to the interesting snippet of this discussion.

If I were to speak to any child that grew up in the 70’s how to spell ‘bologna’, every one of them would get it right because of the mark of Oscar Meyer’s advertising has made on our consciousness. Today’s children do not know how to spell bologna.

But what they lack in bologna skills they more than make up with a myriad of other products, which is what led me to thinking on this subject. There is a product I was introduced to called “PROMPTZ” which utilizes product imagery to focus young children to learn letters, words and sounds though cognitive mapping these associations for active learning.

Cognitive maps are a method used to structure and store spatial knowledge, allowing the "mind's eye" to visualize images in order to reduce cognitive load. This is where it gets interesting, because to a 4 year old, it is much easier to remember Eeyore than to remember that what sound an ‘e’ makes, and then they can get on to remembering who all the Powerpuff girls are.

This mapping is how many user interfaces work today. A designer or usability person develops an interface based on something familiar. Excel is designed like a checkbook, and PowerPoint designed like slides in a slide carousel. It is actually these links to the familiar, which increases our initial adoption of functions and features within software. Mental mapping puts things in a familiar environment in our minds so it can be cataloged and understood. Once these are present in our minds it is easier to expand this base of knowledge to less familiar territories, to learn new skills, but keeping the basic framework of the familiar to fall back on.

Elevator Usability

At first glance you might think that elevators are pretty usable form of conveyance. There are however many circumstances where the usability of an elevator may be in question.

The use case is simple.

1. The user wishing to go up (or down) pushes a button to indicate to the system that a passenger is waiting. Based on the other passengers waiting on various floors the elevator eventually arrives to retrieve the passenger.
2. The doors open and existing passengers get out, the new passenger gets in to the appropriate elevator (if there are multiple elevator cars).
3. The passenger depresses the button corresponding to the floor of his or her choice.
4. The elevator stops at all floors corresponding to buttons that are pressed between the current location and the final destination.
5. When the passenger arrives at the destination requested they exit the elevator.

If an elevator was actually as simple as it seems there would not be ten pages of results in google on elevator etiquette.

Apparently this is a real problem for some people. My favorite is a site called elevatorrules.com, which contains written rules and comments on how to use the elevator. These include requesting passengers who are going up or down a single floor to take the stairs.

The simple decisions necessary to determine if you should enter an elevator become complex based on the affordances (things to make using something easier) built around the elevator and what you find before entering the elevator.

In simple terms, if it’s full, you don’t get in. If people are getting out, you let them before entering the conveyance. It is surprising to observe how many people get this part wrong and stand directly in front of the elevator when the doors open. Unfortunately for the people leaving the elevator the person looking to enter has given little thought to the onslaught of people exiting. This Moe can either act as a bowling pin and get knocked aside by the exiting passengers or as the bowling ball (which is more common) trying to get into the elevator before passengers leave.

On the elevator there are visual cues to the floor you are going to. These are usually indicated a lit up number, or in the newer displays, an 8x10 video display combined with an auditory message of the floor arrived at, and sometimes the direction you are traveling. All of these are designed to facilitate the entrance and egress process.

There is no part of the use case that has more problems that the simple decision of choosing to go up or to go down. The decision is simple, but the visual indicators are the area where design liberties are taken, and as such may not be the most usable.

One of the most often seen indicators is the lit up arrow, which combines two visual indicators, the first of direction, and the second of selection. By using two methods of indication, recognition is easier for riders, and usable for colorblind and the visually impaired.

The least usable versions seen are the ones developed in the 70’s and designed to be hip and sleek. These utilize only a single light and two colored bulbs - one white, and one red. Unfortunately, color alone is not a good indicator of direction, even if these indicators are for heaven (white) and hell (red). These indicators become even less usable as time goes by when the frosted glass panes used to cover the bulbs are not regularly cleaned, making it all look grey. This forces users to guess as to the direction of the conveyance, a process the would-be passenger is doing standing right in front of the elevator asking, “is this going up?” to people who are already annoyed that you are standing in front of the elevator while they are trying to get out.

In fact, even Superman had problems with this as parodied in the 1978 “Superman the Movie” as Clark Kent trying to get to the lobby stood right in front of the doors to the ire of the passengers.

Even the buttons in an elevator are fraught with indecision when the standard ‘L’ or ‘1’ buttons are replaced with an ‘M’ which may or may not be where you are headed.

Common user errors in an elevator happen when passengers push the wrong button, or get off (or not get off) on the correct floor. These are usually followed by a sheepish look by the offending passenger, telegraphing, “What, it wasn’t me who pushed ‘7’, it was some other guy who got out at ‘4’.” Errors can also due to mechanical problems. Burned out lights behind buttons deprive the user of the visual cue that the system is aware that you have initiated action, leaving the user to press buttons multiple times.

Modern developers have actually looked at improving the time-honored elevator system to improve efficiency by placing a panel outside of the elevator to indicate the floor the passenger wishes to go to before the elevator arrives. When the user enters the elevator, it knows where to go. This is a remarkable system for habitual users, but for visitors it is a new learning experience. Many a time I have observed delivery people walking into these elevators only to find there are no buttons to press, and then being at a loss as to what to do.

It is surprising that these developers have not tried adding a cancel button and directional buttons next to each floor button, because as we all know, sometimes you might just want to change your mind.

There are times when inefficiency can actually be more efficient.