Conf-User Interface: Barracuda Anti-spam

Our mail server at work goes through a Barracuda spam firewall. We’ve had this setup for years and it’s always been fascinating to see what ends up in the spam filter and what gets through. Despite whitelisting valid emails from the same senders numerous times, they continue to go to the spam inbox instead of being delivered as they should.

This morning I was processing the spam inbox and noticed that in addition to a Whitelist button, there is another button that reads “Whitelist + Not Spam”. I had to take a second look at that one to be sure I was reading it correctly.

My eyes were not deceiving me, which brings up the question of the day:

Why would I whitelist spam?

Seems to me that if I whitelist something then it’s not spam by definition. Apparently, Barracuda disagrees.

I really wish the people who design user interfaces would send along some of whatever they’re smoking so that it makes sense to the rest of us, too!

John The Geek

Gizmo’s Vista Kool-Aid

The latest paid version of the Windows Secrets newsletter contains an article by editor Gizmo Richards touting the superiority of Windows Vista over Windows XP. Sorry, gang, but I couldn’t resist. Below is the email I just sent to the Windows Secrets crew:

Hi, guys,

First, let me say that I have the utmost respect for Gizmo Richards and have been a subscriber to his TechSupportAlert newsletter for some time. In general, his reviews are helpful and accurate.

So, after reading the latest column under Gizmo’s byline regarding the alleged superiority of Vista over XP, I’ve gotta ask: who is that guy and what’s he done with Gizmo?

I’ve owned a Vista laptop for almost a year and been through the initial version as well as SP1. While I will admit there are a few things about the Vista interface that are actually improvements, in general, I’ll take XP over Vista any time. The big reason: it actually works! Things do what they’re supposed to do, even if they don’t look quite as cool.

Vista’s Wi-Fi management is terrible. XP’s Wi-Fi management is simple and straightforward. Vista wants to connect to whatever network it can find despite being told innumerable times to remove offending networks from its list. Sometimes it actually connects to my own network on the occasions when the random-order generator puts it at the head of the list. In these days when virtually every Internet user has a Wi-Fi network broadcasting all over the neighborhood, the list of networks Vista finds gets pretty long and there’s no way I can find to tell it to ignore all but mine and any others I’ve approved. At least XP only connects automatically to those networks to which I’ve specifically connected in the past AND in the order I specified.

Vista’s Windows Explorer apparently has a random view generator, as well. When I create a new directory, it’s a real adventure to see which view configuration it will decide is appropriate. The defaults have the file name…period. No date/time stamp, no size, no file type, all the things XP users take for granted. I carefully set the directory view the way I want it, go into the Tools | Folder Options menu and tell it to set that view for All Folders and the little folder gnomes inside must bust a gut laughing. The next time I go into a directory it’s decided to Group things!

What genius decided that it’s necessary to group my file listings by 0-9, A-H, etc? Alphabetical order is sufficient, thankyouverymuch.

Exploring in Vista is more exciting than ever because I can attempt to access certain directories and be told that I don’t have access to them. Excuse me? This is my machine and I’m the administrator thereof. By definition I have access to whatever I want access to!

Before you ask, of course I’ve turned off UAC, another stroke of genius by the Microsofties. Apparently, there were numerous meetings of the design team to find ways to make Vista as annoying as possible for users who have a clue. If I want a machine that insulates itself from me, I’ll buy a Mac.

I could go on, but suffice to say that I beg to differ with Gizmo on this one. The only reason I haven’t downgraded my laptop to XP Pro is a lack of the required time to do so. The real improvements in Vista are so few and so far outweighed by its stupidities as to be meaningless.

All the above notwithstanding, thanks for Windows Secrets and the work you guys do.

John The Geek

The User Experience – How Not To Provide a Good User Experience Part 1

One of my mantras is that people who design things should be required to use them for at least 6 months. Every time I encounter a web site, application or any other user interface that defies all logic, I have to wonder if the person(s) who designed it ever actually tried to use it for the purpose for which it was intended. In most cases, I’m betting the answer is no.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of poor user interface design and very few that can be considered good user interface design. User interface design is an art and a science, just like programming. Really good user interfaces provide a pleasurable user experience and brilliant user interface design is so intuitive that the user can just pick up the device, or run the application, or visit the website and get around in it as though they’d been using it all their lives.

Obviously, that’s the ideal and it’s very rarely achieved. For one thing, different people prefer different things in a design, and for another, it’s extremely difficult to provide a truly seamless experience for the majority of users. There is almost always something that requires the user to get used to the way the interface works, but of course, the goal is to have as few of those as possible.

So, now that we’ve established what the ideal is, we’ll be looking at various examples of bad user interfaces from time to time. It happens to be one of my pet peeves and as a result I seem to encounter them on a regular basis. Sure, maybe I’m too picky, but I’ve gotten to where my time is too valuable to be spent trying to figure out what the designer was thinking when they implemented the particular interface that’s driving me up the wall.

Here’s one I encountered recently. I have a frequent flyer account with a major airline that has accumulated some 22,000 miles. I haven’t flown for going on two years now, so the account has been sitting there idle. The airline has decreed that if the account sits idle too long, they’re going to deactivate it and I lose my miles.

Okay, I have no beef with that. They gave me a deadline and said I had to either have some activity in the account or pay them $25 by that date or my account would be closed. The email that I got on this subject gave me several alternative ways of contacting them to pay my $25 one of which was a link to their web site. I like doing things online so I clicked that link.

After digging up my user ID and password out of the archives, I managed to get logged into the account and tried to navigate to the link given. I got an error 404 – page not found. I spent a bit of time surfing around their site looking for anything that looked promising, but found nothing. So, I went to the “Contact Us” page and sent them an email asking the whereabouts of the page referenced in their email.

A day or so later, I got a response that said, in essence, “Oh, that page doesn’t actually exist. You can call the 1-800 number to pay your $25 and keep your account active.” Gosh, thanks, guys. If I’d have wanted to call, I’d have done so in the first place and avoided this whole problem. I have to assume that the designer of this particular campaign did just that: assumed that everyone would call and only tested that scenario: “Hey, it worked when I tried it.”

So, I called the 1-800 number and got a very nice lady on the line who didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. She put me on hold for several minutes while she went to find out what was up with this $25 deal. Upon her return, she announced that I could accomplish the same goal by going to their web store and buying something there. Purchasing anything via the web store adds miles to my account which constitutes activity which would keep my account open until the next deadline.

Peachy. The only problem with that was: A) that wasn’t specified as an option in the deadline email (they only referred to “activity in the account”), and B) I’d be paying about double what I’d pay from most any other outlet for the same item if I bought it through their web store.

I told the nice lady that I really didn’t want to shop in the online store and that I was perfectly happy to pay the $25 and resolve this issue for another year or two. Back on hold I go while she checks into how to actually put this into the computer. Some time later she’s back and we spend another 10 minutes or so navigating the computer system until she finally gets the info entered and my card charged and a confirmation number spewed forth.

Apparently, the concept of someone actually wanting to pay them $25 to keep their miles active was so far from the process designer’s mind that they hadn’t bothered to actually test the process to see if it worked. Somebody managed to get it into the requirements, very possibly as an afterthought, and the implementers blew it off as so unlikely as to not need any real testing. They threw the link into the email to meet the requirement and left it at that.

The lesson here is obvious: if you’re going to provide a path down which a user can go, make sure it actually goes where the user wants to go. This applies to programming, web site design and any other discipline where a user has to interact with your product. Making your product easy to use should be a top priority right along with making it work correctly. Given the choice of two products, one of which is easy to figure out and use, if the other is a beast, consumers who are aware of both products will choose the easy one every time.

John The Geek

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