The Weilers version 1

Jack, Maggie and their 5-year-old, Melissa, approach the entrance to the brand new shopping mall that just recently opened in their hometown. Melissa, thrilled with the opportunity to finally go to a Build-A-Bear Workshop store, skips ahead in pure excitement.

Just inside the main walkway, Jack sees the large vertical store directory and map. Rather than getting lost in such a large place through exploratory wandering, he decides to use the directory to figure out exactly where in the mall the Build-A-Bear store is.

The directory in front of him is typical. A floor plan is illustrated that labels each store using apparently arbitrary numbers. Those numbers are referenced and sorted by category making up the store directory.

Immediately, Jack’s frustration begins building. He struggles to determine what category Build a Bear falls into... he’s looking under Gifts, then Baby, both without luck. Maggie chimes in and finally finds the store under of Fun & Games with a label of "L34."

Once again, frustration builds when neither of the family members can locate their current location. Or determine where L34 is. They can’t seem to see any “You are here” indicator. Annoyed by this barrier, Jack and the family give up, and walk further inside the mall in hopes of eventually running into the store.

The Weilers version 2

Jack, Maggie and Melissa are excited about visiting the Build-A-Bear Workshop in the new shopping center. As they approach the inside for the first time, they see a crowd of people gathering at the story directory kiosk.

As they approach the crowd, they are amused to see that the mall is using a multi-touch interactive table to display the shopping centers layout and directory. Jack places his fingers on a portion of the screen to begin. That portion of the interface lights up and generates a pop-up where with option to locate a store or to begin a video chat with the Mall’s general Customer Service.

Jack is presented the option to filter his search by general category, with proxemics to his current location, or by alphabetized store name. Jack selects the alpha search, which reveals a vertical list of stores with location jump controls, as well as a text field with touch keyboard.

Excited about this experience, Melissa engages with the table and uses the location jump control to find the stores that begin with “B.” The "Build-A-Bear Workshop" label displays within the list. As she selects the name, an interactive floor plan of the mall immediately populates illuminating the stores location.

The floor plan at first shows the entire mall’s layout with call-outs to their current and Build-A-Bear location. Then, the display slowly zooms and reorients to the family’s current position and animates an eye level view of the walking route path from their location to Build-A-Bear’s.

Having visually seen that the store is located on the second level next to the food court, one level above them and slightly to the right, the family heads that way still excited by the engaging user experience.

The difference

The two different scenarios provide polar examples of how a common task of locating information can lead to a frustrating or an enriching user experience. The solution was not just the power of the technology. It was also, and more importantly, how the content was organized, displayed, and made available to the user, in a manner useful to their immediate needs and their current context.

In the first scenario, all of the information was presented at one tier, without the user’s ability to use controls to drilldown, sort, and filter information for their current needs. This lack of control placed too much burden on the user, and resulted in a failed experience.

In the second scenario, the Weilers had access to a variety of information controls, such as location jump, search within, zoom and scale, and sort and filter, which made searching for relevant information much quicker. Each particular control provided a unique way of revealing different types of information.

Information Controls in the Mobile Space

• Provide controls that afford their functionality by resembling their intended function -- A control using + or – buttons will be understood to zoom in and out, as opposed to using controls with arbitrary labels such as A and B.

• Make the controls visible. Users need to be immediately aware that controls exist to access and control the amount of information visible. Keep the control placement consistent across the OS or application. Because mobile screen real estate is valuable, consider using revealable or fixed menus patterns.

• Use appropriate metaphors to establish learnability through familiarity -- As Dan Saffer explains, “Metaphor is not just about language; it’s really about thought. We conceive of things in terms of other things" (2005). When using metaphors, be aware that they may have various meanings across cultures, and match the metaphor to the content, not the content to the metaphor.

Consider how we understand the use of a magnifying glass to see detail. Some zoom and scale controls use this metaphor to communicate ability to see more or less information.

• Provide immediate and appropriate feedback -- A control must produce immediate feedback to communicate a change of state (contrast, color, shape, size, sound) that is measurably different from its initial state. Delaying feedback can result in the user performing other actions in the belief that the intended action failed.

• Provide constraints -- Provide only the control functionality that is needed to complete the user’s task. Use a control for its purpose only. Do not assign it multiple, unrelated functionalities.

• Follow wayfinding principles -- Make sure your users know where they are in the control’s current state, while providing information to communicate its range of control. For example, when using an alphabetical Location Jump widget, the current letter selected must be visible within the range of letters, while also communicating its relationship to other letters.

For more information on designing controls for people, refer back to chapter 5: Revealing More Information, A suggested read is, The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman, 1988.

Patterns for Information Controls