Cooper’s Interaction Designer Test and my response

PART ONE (my response)

Suggestion: Incorporate the Commands in the ‘Table’ Dropdown Menu into Other Dropdown Menus

Reason: If most Microsoft Word users are like me, then when they want to insert a table into a document, they think to themselves “Insert Table” and try to find this option from the menu bar. For this reason, I would be tempted to eliminate the ‘Table’ dropdown menu and move the insert commands (Insert Table, Insert Row, etc.) from the ‘Table’ dropdown menu to the ‘Insert’ dropdown menu and move the formatting commands from the ‘Table’ dropdown menu to the ‘Format’ dropdown menu. But even if the ‘Table’ dropdown menu is kept, there are some improvements that can be made.

Suggestion: Make the ‘Create a New Table’ Command Easier to Access

Reason: It’s the first and most basic function that someone dealing with tables is likely to perform. Wherever the ‘Insert Table’/‘Create a New Table’ command is—under ‘Table’ or under ‘Insert’—it shouldn’t take as many steps as it currently does. In the described situation, a user must (1) Click on ‘Table’, then (2) Go down to ‘Insert’, and then (3) Go over to ‘Insert Table’. The number of steps in this process can be reduced. It could be two steps: (1) Click on ‘Table’, and then (2) Go down to ‘Create New Table’. (Or: (1) Click on ‘Insert’, and then (2) Go down to ‘Insert Table’.) And of course the process could also be simplified further, to just one step, by providing a shortcut button (which exists in my version of Word).

Suggestion: Rename the Section Called ‘Table size’ to ‘Table dimensions’

Reason: ‘Dimensions’ seems like a better word to me since the size of the table is determined by things like the width of the columns and the height of the rows, not the number of columns and rows, which is what is being selected in this section.

Suggestion: Add a Picture to the ‘Table size’ Section

Reason: Some people, maybe even most people, can see faster than they can read. This might (as always) just be my personal preference. I (like Donald Norman) prefer stoves that offer a visual representation to the ones that say ‘RIGHT REAR’. At any rate, I think pictures are helpful. Here is the picture I would add:

Suggestion: Remove the ‘5’ from Columns and the ‘2’ from Rows and Start with Empty Fields

Reason: Unless there’s something I don’t know about tables (which is quite possible), there is no reason that a table with the dimensions of 5 columns by 2 rows should be particularly popular. So I see no reason to start with those numbers filled in. The user probably has a certain number of columns and rows in her mind as she comes to this dialog box and I think the presence of pre-existing numbers is distracting.

Suggestion: Remove the Control from ‘Number of columns’ and ‘Number of rows’

Reason: The function that it serves is served better in another way. When a user wants to set the number of columns to, say, 9 columns, she can do so either by pressing ‘9’ once or by moving the mouse above this up arrow and clicking several times (or by clicking on the up arrow and holding the mouse button down and releasing the button at the perfect time in a very skilled manner). I think most people will prefer to just press ‘9’, so this arrow control is just unnecessary visual clutter. Even in the best-case scenario for using the control (when one needs to click an arrow only once—say you want to change it from 5 columns to 6 columns), the control is no better than the alternative. The user would have to move the mouse above the up arrow and then click on it once and the alternative is to press the ‘6’ key once, which is at least as easy. The further away the desired number is, the more cumbersome the control becomes and even at its best it is not better.

Suggestion: Reorganize the Options and Add Options to the ‘AutoFit behavior’ Section

Reason: I think the most-used options should usually (if not always) be listed first, and I would guess that the most-requested autofit behavior for tables is ‘Autofit to contents’, not ‘Fixed column width’ (which is currently listed first). I find it a bit strange that the default setting for ‘Fixed column width’ is ‘Auto’ because this (I believe) makes the table’s behavior the same as ‘Autofit to contents’. If a user wants the table to autofit to contents, then it seems natural to choose ‘Autofit to contents’, and less natural to choose ‘Fixed column width - Auto’. If the behavior is the same, I would remove this option. I also find it a bit odd that the user is allowed to fix the column width but not the row height. I would add an option that allows the user to fix the row height. I imagine that quite a few people might want a table with the smallest equally sized columns and equally sized rows that accommodated the largest piece of entered data. So I would add that as an option too.

My ideal version of the AutoFit section would look like this (perhaps without the words within parentheses—it looks a bit too wordy):

Suggestion: Remove the ‘AutoFormat...’ Button and Move Its Contents to the ‘Insert Table’ Dialog Box

Reason: The user won’t have to press an extra button. There’s enough room to make the ‘Insert Table’ dialog bigger and add the contents of the ‘AutoFormat’ dialog alongside the current contents. Then the user deals with only one dialog box while creating a table.

Suggestion: Change or Remove ‘Category’

Reason: I would change the word ‘Category’ to ‘Show:’ because the word ‘category’ makes me think about something (but I’m not sure what) that is more complicated than what is intended here. I think this limited display option would be better placed if it were off to the side or at the bottom because I think the first thing on a user’s mind will be choosing a style, not limiting the search for styles. But maybe I’m wrong. What I’d really like to do is get rid of this limited display option altogether and just have a few recently used styles at the top, just like how they do in the ‘Font’ dropdown menu. If ‘Category’ is kept, then I would delete the words ‘Table styles’ underneath it because I think it seems fairly obvious that that is what they are. In fact, I think removing the words ‘Table styles’ would connect the ‘Category’ box more nicely with the boxed list of styles.

Suggestion: Change Wording of ‘Apply special formats to’ to ‘Do not apply this style to’

Reason: To me, ‘Do not apply this style to’ seems to describe what’s going on more accurately. I’m not sure what the difference is between ‘style’ and ‘format’ in this context (and I suspect I’m not the only one) but it seems like what’s happening is this: I choose a style and then if there are certain areas of my table that I do not want this style applied to, I can say so. For me, the fact that the word ‘format’ is used instead of ‘style’ makes me feel like I’m dealing with something different from what I just chose (something different from a style). And even if the word ‘style’ were used, the word ‘special’ would make me feel like I was dealing with something different. It would say, “Choose a style,” and then “Apply special style to...”. I just chose a style—why is it now referred to as a special style? Maybe this is why they used word ‘format’ instead of ‘style’, but again I don’t think most users will pick up on this subtle difference. But maybe I’m wrong.

The negative phrasing just seems more natural to me; it seems like what you’re doing is choosing a style and then if you don’t want it applied somewhere, you say where you don’t want it. The positive phrasing makes it seem like a discrete activity to me.

In addition to the options listed (first row, last row, first column, last column), I would think that another area that users would often want left unstyled is the top left cell, so I would add that to the list of options.

If my recommendations were implemented, the ‘Insert Table’ dialog would look like this:

PART TWO (my response)

ATM Improvements

Case Study: My Local Washington Mutual ATM

• When it takes my card, it takes it really slowly. You wouldn’t think that that would make that much of a difference but it does. It’s kind of like a cashier handing you your change back verrrrrry slowly. Kinda creepy. And it doesn’t inspire much confidence in the abilities of the machine.
• After I enter my 4-digit PIN, I have to press enter or some other button. Seems like they should just know that when I’m done, I’m done. Maybe some PINs are more than 4 digits. I don’t know. But if that were the case, then I would vote for making them all the same length.
  
• My ATM makes me indicate that I would like to continue in English. I live near Chinatown and Little Italy in San Francisco and although I do think that they should offer at least Chinese and Italian and Spanish in my neighborhood, I don’t think that they should make English speakers press a button to continue in English. They should just assume that I want to continue in English (by saying "Enter your PIN" in the English language) and at the bottom of that page have the option to change the language.
  
• Wording. It asks me two questions before it lets me get my cash— whether I want a receipt and whether I want to see my balance first. These seem like reasonable things to ask, but my choices for answers are ‘Sure’ and ‘No, thanks’. What’s wrong with ‘Yes’ and ‘No’? I just want my money. I don’t need the machine to try and be friendly. I see all the metal. I’m not fooled. If my choices were words like ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, then I think that the whole process would go more quickly. I’d also be tempted to not even ask questions and just present the user with pairs of buttons: ‘Receipt’ and ‘No Receipt’, and (on the next screen) ‘See Balance’ and ‘Don’t See Balance’.
  
• It would be great if my ATM could remember what I usually do. I usually ask for $100 from checking, no receipt, no balance. If I entered my card and then my PIN and then saw a button that said ‘$100 from checking - no receipt’, that would be great. That would be my favorite button. And then it could just offer me the other options if I needed some unusual amount of cash.
  
• Forgetting your ATM card at an ATM is a potential problem. One thing that can be done to prevent this is to return the card before you dispense the money. Also, some ATMs have the user swipe their card through a card swiper instead of having them insert their card fully into the machine. I would recommend installing a card swiper.
  
• I saw this really cool keypad in Germany as I was entering my friend’s apartment building—the keys were clear and plasticky and numbers on the keypad were generated digitally underneath and the positions of the numbers changed. This means that the top row wasn’t always 1 2 3 and the second row wasn’t always 4 5 6. They might have been 7 4 3 and 9 1 6. This (I assume) was so that people looking at you from far away watching where your fingers moved wouldn’t be able to deduce your access code. If one of those were on my ATM, then I would never have to worry about what someone standing 10 feet behind me could see while I was entering my PIN.