Usability

When people started making applications available in the browser a number of interaction challenges appeared. How do you launch a web app compared to a desktop app? How do you prevent people from navigating away from your app? The Mozilla people have been hard t work with Prism - basically a customized version of Firefox, which lets you create desktop apps pre-configured to load a certain URL at startup. The desktop app is launched like any other application. Pretty sweet as the user experience becomes more consistent. You can also customize the application icon and other parameters. ...

This will be a field day for industrial designers and usability experts. The new ticket vending machines for the Stockholm public transport system have been met with a lot of criticism lately. People are finding them difficult to use and apparently there are very few tickets sold. On top of that they look like the machines seen in parking lots. Oh wait, they are apparently from the same manufacturer. Stockholm public transport has a tradition of being late to the 21st century. Pre-paid tickets are still paper based and stamped by the bus driver. Previously you could buy them directly from the bus driver. However, robbery prompted the public transport authorities to remove all cash handling from the bus drivers, hence the increased need for outdoor ticket vending machines. ...

(Please note that this post is from 2007 and things have become much better). When you are on parental leave you have to register which days you are away fro work with the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. To access the online services of an agency you have to have an electronic ID. In Sweden this is a locally installed certificate issued by your bank or large telecom provider. In my case my identity is checked by my bank and then I am forwarded to Telia, which handles the process of generating the ceritificate and installing the appropriate software on my computer. What could have been a simple well guided procedure is instead an exercise in ambiguity and a complete lack of usability: ...