Good UI Design: Make It Easy, Show Me You Care
When researching FuseCal this morning, one of the things that made it so appealing to try was the fact that you could just enter in a URL and see the service in action right away. No sign-up forms, no logins. This got us thinking about UI design as it applies to today's web services. Lately, it seems that less and less services are using sign-up forms...at least, they aren't requiring you to sign up right away in order to try them out. Instead, the trend seems to be to let you jump right in and get to work. This is definitely a good move, in terms of usability of the site, and it's not the only UI trend we've noticed lately.
Trend #1: Try It Now!
An excerpt from an upcoming book by Luke Wroblewski, "Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks," posted on A List Apart helps to point out the issue with sign-up forms on the web. When you're recommended a new web service to check out, Luke writes "you arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what’s the first thing that greets you? A form. We can do better."
Instead of forcing users through a dreadful sign-up process when really they just wanted to take a look, he promotes the idea of "gradual engagement." After you play around with a web service and get an idea about what it does, you can then choose to take the path to complete your profile in order to create an account, save your work, share the results of your creation, etc.
Luke uses a few examples to make his point: one, Geni, an online family tree creation tool lets users make a family tree as soon as they visit the web site. Of course, as you fill out your name, you also enter in your email, so while you're busy building your tree, you're also being sent an email from the service, reminding you of your account details if you ever want to return to work on your tree. However, this vague "did I just create an account?" design may have worked for Geni, who generated 5 million profiles in 5 months, we would argue that it should be more obvious whether you are creating an account or not.
Geni's "Sign Up" Process
Another example of gradual engagement came from TripIt, a service which lets you plan your trips. The interesting thing about TripIt is that the service also ditches the sign-up form for a more interesting option: you just email plans@tripit.com when your travel plans, be them airline confirmation email, hotel confirmation emails, whatever. TripIt extracts your name and email from the form instead of forcing you to enter these details yourself.
Personally, I recall Twiddla (our coverage) an online whiteboarding service, as implementing the "try-before-you-buy" option really well. Upon visiting the Twiddla homepage, a big button "Try it now in the sandbox," lets you test out the service along with other users in a public sandbox. This way, you can not only try it out for yourself, but you also might see someone else testing a feature you would have otherwise missed. You could also just click "Start a New Meeting" from the homepage and instantly use the Twiddla app with the others who you invite via email, no signing up required.
Twiddla's Buttons
Trend #2: We Really Care
Another trend spotted in the wild is UI design that shows customers that the company cares about them. Take Samatha Warren's experience with Wufoo, an app that helps you design and build online forms. After finding herself in need of tech support, she noticed an odd form field on the Support Request page: "Emotional State."
The drop-down included choices like excited, confused, worried, upset, panicked, and angry. Samantha chose the feeling that best described her mood ("worried", by the way), and then made a startling discovery:
"As I made my selection and moved the curser to hit the submit button a feeling washed over me that was unlike anything I had ever felt with a webservice online. I felt like they cared. I felt confident that my problem would be solved. I felt like I was contacting PEOPLE who have beating hearts, and families, who had felt worried about their missing contact e-mails too. How very humane of them!"
WuFoo's Support Form
Some say this is cheesy, others find it annoying, but WuFoo isn't the only service to utilize this idea.
Xobni (our coverage), the "social network in your inbox," also asks for user feedback by asking you how you feel. They built the "Are You Happy?" box. From a Xobni employee's blog, Gabor Cselle describes why:
Instead of a popup, we add a little box on the bottom of the sidebar every couple of weeks and ask: "Are you happy?" There are two buttons, Yes and No, and an optional comment field. This is the most lightweight method of collecting user feedback. Note that:
- We're not popping up an annoying window.
- We ask a simple question.
- There are only two options – "yes" and "no" - and no Send button.
Xobni's Emotional Feedback Pop-Up
While an argument can be made that opting out of the happiness check should be more readily available, apparently most of their users don't seem to mind. The feedback is 90% "Yes."
A more obvious place to find "emotional feedback" form fields is on people-powered customer service site, GetSatisfaction.com, (which, by the way, also forgoes a long sign up process by allowing you to fill in a basic form - name, email, CAPTCHA, with further profile information optional.)
Company feedback, ideas, and questions can tagged with a smiley/frowny face depicting how you feel. After you select the face, a box pops up to allow you to pick out a related word like "happy," "anxious," "indifferent," or "unsure."
GetSatisfaction's Emotional Feedback
While emotional feedback doesn't work for everyone - some find it patronizing, especially when they're reporting a critical issue - an opt-in emotional feedback box could at least gather information about requests/complaints and help a company analyze and prioritize their incoming feedback.
Conclusion
Gradual engagement and emotional feedback are only two of many UI trends seen lately, but two that stand out as they seem to be ramping up in terms of usage by web companies. Hopefully, more companies will take note that there are a number ways to generate accounts for their service besides the traditional, boring sign-up form, or at least start supporting OpenID as an alternative.
As for emotional feedback? It's a more risky choice since some users detest it, but done right, it could bring a new level of information about to product feedback while making users feel valued by the company.
Do you have any examples of either of these trends that you want to share? And...how does that make you feel?
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Sarah, this post is awesome. I'd add Sched.org as another example. They've got two boxes - username and pw. If you've never created an account, then filling out those fields registers you. If you have, then doing so logs you in. I love stuff like this, it's why OpenID is so great and why oAuth could be. Nice to see you getting off of the "standards standards standards" kick that I focus on too much :) Keep up the awesome work.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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March 26, 2008 12:52 PM
Sounds blissful - must look.
I might have thought the emotional feedback was patronizing too, if not for two experiences.
First, I taught one those super-large classes at Canterbury (South Island of NZ). I always tried to arrange things so that if a student was frustrated they could hit a button and get a quick response. It seemed to me that people appreciated that and doubly appreciated my not taking offense if they had sounded off a bit. A 'countable' emotional feedback could have been pretty good and an honest way of reporting to a large group on an ongoing basis what they thought of our service. And a set of buttons when they acknowledge correction of a problem would save them time too.
Second, Chief Happiness Officer on www.positivesharing.com posted two weeks ago on customers being wrong. The vehemence of comments suggests that customer service people are really having a bad time. It might help them first to get information on someone's emotional state and of course, we could add a button so they could return the favour!!
Posted by: Jo | March 26, 2008 2:25 PM
Someones reading hackernews.
Found these yesterday.
Posted by: dmix | March 26, 2008 3:36 PM
Sarah - love the examples, your perspective, and your work on RWW in general. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: David | March 26, 2008 5:41 PM
I like the idea of choosing an emotional state. Instead of writing a long note explaining how you feel, you can simply choose the word that describes how you feel in a single word. Anything that helps humanize or bring familiarity to a process through a picture, a word, etc... is an idea worth considering.
Posted by: Peter T - Webshop | March 26, 2008 8:53 PM
Gradual engagement is definitely a natural evolution of marketing for online services. However, the emotional status is something different and I don't expect to see it everywhere. It should depend on the site and the audience.
Posted by: Son Nguyen | March 26, 2008 10:10 PM
It's really wonderful how applications are presenting themselves more personally everyday. These great examples only break the surface.
Posted by: James Carlos | March 26, 2008 10:42 PM
Hey Sarah - another great post. Thanks very much for pulling this one together. A fresh perspective with enough weight to make us stop and think.
M.
Posted by: Matt | March 27, 2008 5:11 AM
It is nice to see more companies becoming creative in how they interact with their users. It sure makes for a much more enjoyable web 2.0 experience.
Chris
http://www.propertystampede.com
Posted by: Chris Mancini | March 27, 2008 11:27 AM
Thanks for sharing this article. People who actually think about UI and about their customers will always have an edge over the rest.
Posted by: Tom Caswell | March 27, 2008 4:11 PM
My analogy of this is: If you go to a restaurant and order a steak... you don't pay first. You eat it and then you pay and leave the tip. The same should be applied for most web apps.
Two weeks ago, my company went to Boston and with help from Creative Good we came to the same conclusion as this article (by eating copious amounts of chocolate and watching users in listening labs).
The old school method of register before you use the app first is mainly down to the web's past being very heavily run by developers and then people just got used to it being bad. I bit like how Mac's OSX is better than Windows. But if you're used to windows, you just get used to that horribleness. Okay so that wasn't the best example... but hopefully you get my drift.
One of the biggest problem with trends is that when you break them for the first time, it sticks out lick a sore thumb. Even if the change is good! I think now enough sites have been doing this method long enough now that it isn't taking the fish straight out of the water though.
I also believe that OpenID will be the big thing over the next two years following this. I'd be shocked if people aren't tired of filling in a forms by now. So even though this article is right, I think forms should die totally asap.
The main concern of mine with OpenID is, where does my data sit and who the heck are these people. Sure we sign up to loads of different sites - but one person owning all my data? It's the same thing with Netvibes not using https in my opinion... it puts me off doing it.
I really hope Yahoo go from strength to strength and lead the way forward. With Flickr and Delicious they have in my opinion 2 of the potentially best web apps around. Let's hope they do it right though...
Posted by: kai chan vong | March 28, 2008 2:11 AM
Thanks for posting this article. Our company owns an online project collaboration tool called Joint Contact (www.jointcontact.com) so we are always interested in learning about different services and how they manage the online registration process.
The Geni interface is great, but I feel this simplistic UI only works in certain cases. Demographic client information that would normally be captured in the registration process can be left for the user to fill in later in process. Also, Geni can be confident that users will provide this information as the goal of Geni is to provide personal and demographic information to family members.
The WuFoo "Emotional State" list option is fun, but one would have to be confident in their target market to ensure this type of informal communication would be acceptable.
Posted by: Wayne | March 28, 2008 12:26 PM
Thanks for posting this article definetly a great evolution
Posted by: elena | March 31, 2008 8:06 AM
Emotionality is important, but in the world of fast computing and net speed freaks, we all just need to take a fat chill pill. Most net users are quite impatient, and will most like say they are upset when they really have loss sense with reality. Interesting evolution none the less.
Posted by: George | March 31, 2008 1:11 PM
Thanks for your post. It's so timely for a design investigation we're in the middle of. Just in time.
Since you asked, I've seen a community/support site, DailyStrength, also ask users how they're feeling.
And, I guess I see that these 'how I'm feeling' rating schemes do a few other things too. 1. We humans like to share how we feel, and it's even better when we have an audience 2. It also functions to make me aware of my state of mind. When I used GetSatisfaction awhile back, it made reflect that I had gone from confused to happy. And, that made me even happier about my experience there.
Posted by: kirby | March 31, 2008 4:18 PM
Well written, I liked the forms examples, they really make you feel wanted and shows that the website cares for you. It makes the visitor feel unique. Thanks for the ideas! :)
You have worked hard to create a site / blog. Now, comes the real part to make it known to the world. There are so many offers across the internet to promote the same.
I came across this website, http://www.whoistopofthelist.com. You can write about your site, post and link, as well as a photo. The service is free.
Posted by: twitter | April 2, 2008 6:47 AM
Well written, I liked the forms examples, they really make you feel wanted and shows that the website cares for you. It makes the visitor feel unique. Thanks for the ideas! :)
You have worked hard to create a site / blog. Now, comes the real part to make it known to the world. There are so many offers across the internet to promote the same.
I came across this website, http://www.whoistopofthelist.com. You can write about your site, post and link, as well as a photo. The service is free.
Please comment.
Posted by: twitter | April 2, 2008 6:48 AM
iwant some person be online with me
Posted by: samim | April 7, 2008 9:43 PM