Perspective of a UX designer as the user of certain products in everyday life.

During my first lesson in Human Computer Interaction many years ago, our professor mentioned that we will never see the world the same way every again. It is true, absolutely true! Since then, I can’t go around without thinking about how something might be quite hard to use for some people and it could be so much easier if it was changed this way or that way. Today, I sit to write about some such thoughts of mine. I have seen my near and dear ones struggle with and get frustrated by some of the things you are about to read about. Dear readers, I would love to know what you think about them.

IKEA unavailable articles:

I love Ikea and I have been a regular customer for a long time now. But, when you are shopping from Ikea online and you have spent a lot of time deciding what to buy, it is really frustrating to find out at the very end that some products are actually not available. While you are skimming through product lists or looking at details of the products, sometimes there is no indication that the product might not be available.

What tiny tweak could make it better?
Informing the customer upfront that something is not available for XYZ reason. In this case, limited stock available for delivery. This information must be available to the customers when they are deciding to buy something, so either on the product details page or even better, on the thumbnail of the product in the list, which in some cases will prevent people from wasting time on unavailable things.

Close All Notifications Icon:

When I bought my current android phone, I assumed that it was just me who accidently closed all the notifications even though I wanted to read them. But, turns out, this button with three horizontal lines was not clear to anyone who used my phone. Many people also ended up unintentionally closing the notifications.

Reasons for this problem seem to be quite straight forward.

• The icon used in this button does not signify ‘close all’. Looks like some kind of list to me. Similar to a hamburger menu you could say.
• Its position is another problem. You tend to accidently hit on it as it so close to your thumb. Much closer than anything else on this screen, for that matter.

What tiny tweak could make it better?
Using a ‘X’ icon with text ‘Close All Notifications’. Assumption: when you know what something does, it might be easier to work around it.

Amazon Prime content description on Television:

We have enjoyed Amazon Prime for watching movies or TV series for quite some time now and we recently bought a new TV. Usually after watching something we like to read about the actors in it. But, surprisingly, on the TV, you can’t read everything as there is no way to expand the content.

What tiny tweak could make it better?
At the end of the visible text, a button/hyperlink saying ‘read more’ could be really helpful.

Zoom ‘End Meeting for All’:

Are you a consistent user of Zoom for most of your meetings? How many times have you and others in the meeting been kicked out of a meeting room unintentionally? Yes, this happened many times with us that when the host was supposed to leave the meeting and everyone else had to stay, in a haste, he ended up closing the meeting for everyone. Even though, this person felt he was the one at fault, I believe it was in the design that perhaps this special case of hastily closing the application was not considered.

• The ‘End Meeting for All’ button lies closer to the close (X) button, so it is easier and quicker to access.
• It is red in color so grabs more attention as compared to the ‘Leave Meeting’ button.
• When someone is in a hurry, he/she doesn’t have the time to read all the options.

What tiny tweak could make it better?
I think it would be more helpful in most cases, if the ‘Leave Meeting’ button is first option and the ‘End Meeting for All’ button is the second option. This is because it is a normal tendency to read from top to down and having encountered the leave meeting option first, it is likely that users might not accidently close the meeting for all. But, this is an assumption for now as I haven’t validated it.

Commenting in Atlassian JIRA:

In JIRA, a new comment window shows up at the bottom of the page while comments are sorted by date such that the latest one is shown at the top. If you need to refer to the last comment while adding a new comment and there are many comments in a particular issue, you might have to scroll up and down multiple times, which gets annoying sometimes.

What tiny tweak could make it better?
I believe it would be more suitable if the new comment box is on the top of the comments, close to the latest comment. Also, people don’t have to scroll to the bottom of the page to add a new comment.

So, have you faced anything similar? Would any of these tiny tweaks help you? Please let me know what you think about them and share along if you think this might be an interesting read for someone you know. Please don’t forget to give some claps, while you are here.. Thanks for reading! :)