Toilet user experience ...

Recently I attended a meeting in a major Danish company. Before the meeting I had to go to the bathroom and the only one near by was equipped for handicapped people (e.g. wheel chair users). The door was wide, there was plenty of room next to the toilet to park the wheel chair - BUT the toilet paper holder was placed on the wall approximately ½ meter behind the toilet. What's with that? Do they really imagine that someone using a wheel chair can twist themselves to reach there?

To top of the experience: When I washed my hands (as my mother has taught me) it felt strangely sticky. It wasn't until I read from the soap dispenser (there were two identical ones - one on each side of the sink) that I realised that I was washing my hands using hand moisturizing cream - the soap was in the other dispenser. The dispensers were labeledd - but the labels were so small that even ants would find them hard to read.

More on Media Center - or rather having a PC in the living room ..

Well - Media Center PC is up and running and everything works as a dream. There are, however, other user experience related observations that I'd like to share. The PC is of course online and is therefore also used for general surfin' - and this is interesting; I've always been aware that usability also to some degree is a matter of accessibility - but it has been a theoretical knowledge. Now I know.

Sitting in the sofa some 3 to 4 meters (9 to 12 feet) from the screen (even though it is 26") makes almost everything hard to read. I had to tweak both Windows to use larger fonts and set the browser to overrule fonts specified on websites - something I never had to do. And everything looks crummy. More surprising, though is the fact that you very quickly become accustomed to the crummy look and it doesn't even distract you (except if the design is so ill thought out that it becomes impossible to use it).

Even though I've always checked designs for how they handle this it was always on a normal computer screen and I had no problems viewing the design in it's intended lay out - therefore it was more of an academic test than anything else. This experience has really thought me something about accessibility - that it is necessary, and that you get used to a lot as long as it doesn't obstruct your goals.

Media Center Follow up

All righty - I guess it's about time that I do a small update on my home entertainment system. I ended up outsourcing the task of defining hardware and software to an intern at my job. All I did was specify my requirements (should fit in bookcase and look cool - be able to record tv, play DVD's and CD's).

I now have it up and running (we assembled the pc together and it wasn't that hard). Connecting the various parts were no problem as the different wires can only go one place - only the sound system uses the same kind of small jack plug for all the connections but they've done a good job color-coding the so you can't mix them up.

Microsofts Windows Media Center is a dream usability-wise. It can be operated using a special remote control and you navigate through menus which are intuitive and easy to use. Setting it up was also a breeze (it's been quite some time since I had to install a pc from scratch). The only issues were some hassles with drivers for the motherboard but that was solved fairly easily, as was seting up the wireless network.

All in all not to scary an experience.

All we need now is that my wife actually will venture into the brave new world of media on a computer - can't be long: today I even got the radio to work ... ;-)

User experiences traveling

I recently attended CHI2005 to hone my skills. It is always interesting to go abroad when you focus on user experience. A couple of observations:

1. On the plane over I sat next to large (not fat, just large) Norwegian woman. She was about my mothers age (65 going on 70). I observed her struggle with her headset and she never asked for any help (I volunteered at some point when she looked especially forlorn). During the 10 hour flight from Copenhagen to Seattle she never watched a film (we were at the emergency exit and thus did not have a screen in front of us but rather a fold-up version below the seat). Did she not want to watch a movie or was she too shy to ask for help? I'm still wondering because she sort of fell asleep and invaded my private space rather seriously (leaning her head against my shoulder) - that's not what shy people do is it? I don't have an answer - it just baffles me. Just like the next one
2. Did you ever really have to navigate a new airport when arriving? Or did you just follow the stream (like a lemming)? Who knows where to go? Interestingly enough the signage may have very poor usability without any significant consequences because it will almost always be someone familiar with the lay-out of the airport going first.
3. And finally: What's with Portland? Everything - and I mean everything - was in both English and Spanish. Is Portland some old Spanish bastion? Or do they get a lot of immigrants after they are kicked out of California? It's actually rather a good service - but also makes navigating and getting around a bit distracting (especially if you're not familiar with Spanish).

Starting up Bloggin' (a little late I guess)

Well, here I am starting out a new life in a world of Blogs. Or maybe.

Anyway - what prompted me to start this was actually several things; I read the article in BusinessWeek about blogging (not that I didn't know the phenomenon) and got curious. And I've had some thoughts lately that somehow relates to my field of expertise that I wanted to share. I'm a user experience professional.

I'm moving to a new house in a couple of months and I'm seriously considering dumping the old stereo in favor of something a bit more sleek (i.e. should take up no room what so ever, be stylistic to look at, and take me into, well not exactly the next century, but at least the age of Internet). During my research I've come up with several alternatives.

• My first choice was the Beocenter 2 from Bang & Olufsen which is really cool looking, but will set me back the approximate cost of a second car (oh! and it's also not exactly state-of-the-art in terms of Internet-readiness).
• Next on my list were the Tivoli 2 designed by Kloss - advantages being that it would go into my bookshelves and be fairly un-obtrusive AND could be used with my computer (i.e. it has a mini-jack in the back ;-)). I still wasn't really happy as I wanted some more computer into this (using it for radio and storing music) - BUT I don't want a Computer in my living room.
• So I came up with a (brilliant?) idea - I'll get me a Mac Mini, an LCD TV/Monitor, a pair of decent computer speakers and a wireless keyboard/mouse for the Mac. The mac will go into the bookshelf, the TV will double as computer monitor. Neat and clean.

Now - and here comes the user experience part - through all of options I've been, worried is perhaps too strong a word, but then, anxious that I would be able to put all the parts together and make them work. I've never ever had that kind of anxiety before - used to be it was a challenge. Is this because I'm getting old? Is it because I'm going into unchartered territory here? Or is it because I'm suddenly aware of it (from a professional point of view) and never have been before even though it was there the last time I bought some stereo?

Anyway - I'll let you know how it turns out. I have a feeling that my next post will be about a Danes user experiences with USA.