A UX IRL Ep. 33: UX in the wild
Hello! Here are our show notes for episode 33 of UX IRL: UX in the wild. We hit the highlights in this article, but get the full context by listening to the episode:
In this episode, we’re actually talking about UX in real life! We dive into some good and bad UX finds out in the wild. We hope this inspires you to find examples and please send them our way! Talk to us on the zeroheight Slack community! (bit.ly/zheroes-signup), comment below or reply on Twitter @uxinreallife or Instagram @ux.inreallife.
Round 1: Good UX
Mary Fran wanted to highlight the video game What the Golf? It’s an excellent example of progressive disclosure and eases people into the game’s mechanics. It’s not a traditional golf game; instead, it’s a much more fun and wacky game. This game does a great job of balancing the amount of challenge with ease of use, so players don’t get frustrated.
Michelle’s pick comes from her work travels and a recent trip to Istanbul. While there, she noticed that medicine boxes at the pharmacy had braille on them. It was super cool to see! She also noticed that the crosswalk call box (the box with the button to cross the street) had braille and a raised diagram to indicate traffic. The diagram shows how many lanes you’re crossing, lane direction, tram lanes, and medians! Talk about accessibility!
Michelle’s pick comes from her work travels and a recent trip to Istanbul. While there, she noticed that medicine boxes at the pharmacy had braille on them. It was super cool to see! She also noticed that the crosswalk call box (the box with the button to cross the street) had braille and a raised diagram to indicate traffic. The diagram shows how many lanes you’re crossing, lane direction, tram lanes, and medians! Talk about accessibility!
Round 2: Bad UX
Mary Fran and her fiance recently played several video games at a charity event. This is an example from a video game that Mark’s been playing called Legend of Dragoon. When you are about to enter an area, there’s a prompt with two choices, “Enter” or “No entry.” While it’s still understandable, the translation is a little off and can lead to more cognitive effort. We’re fascinated by localization in video games, so we’ll probably do an episode on it in the future!
Similarly, Michelle’s bad UX example is around wordy signs. In London, she came across a sign that said, “Unsuitable for long vehicles.” In the U.S., you’d typically see “Compact only,” which is much more concise. Some parking spaces have “Compact” painted on them; can you imagine if a parking space had “Unsuitable for long vehicles” painted on it? 😆
Round 3: Good UX
Mary Fran’s next pick comes from playing the game Unpacking on a PC. The premise is that you’re unpacking objects from boxes as your character moves from one living space to another. The PC controls made it easy to unpack and place items. And whenever she wasn’t sure about the controls, there were contextual clues to remind her. It’s another excellent example of progressive disclosure, where you see the information when needed.
Michelle’s pick is free museums. They’re a great way to learn more and be inspired by various subjects. When traveling, she likes to see what free museums there are. Growing up in the Washington, DC area, she’s enjoyed all the Smithsonian museums, which are entirely free. It’s also a great way to learn about things differently from your typical routine of searching online, reading books, or attending class. Consider doing an online search for free museums where you live or for your next trip. Sometimes museums might have free days or evenings, too.
Round 4: Bad UX
When two-factor authentication goes wrong is Mary Fran’s next pick. She had a frustrating experience when trying to log into her PlayStation account. She recently switched devices, so two-factor authentication wasn’t working. She could log in with a secret backup code but couldn’t easily find it. So she tried to resolve her issue by visiting the support site but got stuck in a frustrating loop of clicking through pages and not getting anywhere. She got stuck in a superficial conversation loop with a bot when using the chat. While waiting in a queue, she found her backup code to resolve things, but it wasn’t without some agony.
This isn’t specifically just PlayStation, but she noted that other customer support experiences could be frustrating to accomplish some simple tasks. Something to consider is that these customer support experiences might not involve someone from UX to design a smoother experience. Mary Fran notes that it’s worth supporting identifying what scenarios users will not be able to solve on their own and how the team can address them.
Michelle’s next bad UX is with her car’s lock and unlock button. There’s one button with three icons — a printed locked icon; a printed unlocked icon; and a locked icon that lights up when the doors are locked. It’s not a toggle button, but it probably should be. The frustration is that when you open the driver’s side or front passenger’s door, the unlock icon light will turn off,indicating that the doors aren’t locked. If you try to open the rear doors, they’re still locked, but because the icon isn’t on, you think it’s unlocked. To unlock those doors, you have to push the button, which doesn’t unlock the doors — it locks them all again. You then must press the button again to unlock the rear doors FINALLY. Just like reading this explanation, it’s pretty annoying.
Round 5: Good UX
Mary Fran’s next great experience comes from her wedding planner, Sierra from Plain with Sprinkles. Weddings are complicated, but having a wedding planner has made things much easier and less stressful. Sierra considers “the user experience” during the process by keeping in mind what Mary Fran and Mark value and ensuring they reach their planning milestones comfortably.
This ties in nicely with Michelle’s next good UX item — SPRINKLES! Her sister-in-law started adding sprinkles to ALL her baked goods — cookies, brownies, etc. She said they made everything better — so true! She pointed her to a fantastic sprinkle shop, Sweetapolita. So now, Michelle loves adding sprinkles to baked goods to add delight, just like when we talk about adding delight in UX. It just puts more pep into your baked goods.
Mary Fran feels the same way about chives and green onions for savory things. Savory sprinkles!
Round 6: Bad UX
For the finale, Mary Fran’s worst pick is a video game dating sim called My Bewitching Perfume. For context, there isn’t a lot of action in dating sim games. Instead, they’re still shots and dialog, almost like a visual novel. The translations for some of them can be terrible. These games are inexpensive to make, so they’re very barebones. The ridiculousness makes them fun to play though — Mary Fran and her friend like to play the free demos and do voices for the characters.
The navigation makes My Bewitching Perfume’s UX so terrible — it’s nearly impossible to use! What looks clickable isn’t, and vice versa. They struggled to get past the main menu and navigate subsequent screens.
Michelle’s worst was the Istanbulkart machine. You can purchase and refill an Istanbulkart with these machines for public transportation in Istanbul. While the transportation was great, the machines were the worst to use. On the kiosk, there are several bubbles with flags representing the different languages you can switch to, but it was hard to figure out how to change to your language. While English is the most common language outside of Turkish, it was one of the last picks. Once you get that figured out, the machine sets a timer for each action you’re going to do. If being confused isn’t enough, the time pressure makes things more stressful. The other frustrating thing is that they only accept one bill per transaction. If you added a small bill and wanted to add more, you’d have to start from the beginning. At one point, there were five of us trying to navigate this machine at once. She compares it to being in an escape room!
We’d love to hear from you!
What good and bad UX examples have you seen in the wild? We love seeing these, so let us know!
