Bad Usability Calendar 2008 under construction – give us your ideas!

I had a quick think and I came up with the following ideas for your usability calendar.

Be consistent
Month with for example a different font for each day of the month and/or different abbreviations for the days of the week and different formats to present the numbers. See example calendars in attached png.

Do not cover content by pop up advertorials.
Should be self explanatory, but may be a bit similar to June 2007.

Use the correct way the present information
Written number in full could be an example of how not to.

Week Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Twelve One Two Three Four Five Six Seven
Thirteen Eight Nine Ten Eleven ...
Fourteen
Fifteen

Users language
I just noticed. I was looking for a contact form/email on http://www.iallenkelhet.no but I couldn’t find it as the whole site is in Norwegian. Maybe you can do something with that.
A calendar using a different language for each piece of information:

Monday Dinsdag Mercredi Donnerstag ?eµpt? Sab Domingo
jedan dva tre vier viisi six sieben
????? kilenc dieci juuichi tolv tretten


In case you want to use counting numbers in different languages, have a look at my hobby site: http://www.marijn.org/everything-is-4/counting-0-to-100/all-languages

How about something about user generated content…

E.g. days ordered based on user feedback – as a comment to why user generated content should be used with care, and why controlled/purpose driven content generation probably is a better idea.

Difficult to come up with something new when I look at the previous years. But here is one very simple idea based on misspelling.

Let the graphical design be OK, but put in misspellings of every weekday (e. g. nomday, tusday, ewdnesday, ..). Also, put in wrong numbers: (e.g. 11, 2, 3, 5, 4, 6, .. )

I wrote this on last year’s feedback, but why not repeat myself

Be consistent

…. so one month needs to have the dates vertically aligned, or right-to-left, just not to be consistent with the other ones. Or why not have different number of days per row. Or at least align the dates differently in the boxes. Or use different fonts or colours.

If it’s consistent, it sure isn’t art

You could inverse the calendar to make it look like authentic at a glance but instead you’re kind of looking at it from behind the paper. This case could pass testing if the testers don’t really read the content but just look at the page to see if it seems ok.
Also you coud write from left to right. It’s valid in some coultures or languages but not used everywhere.
Or start the week with some other day than Sunday or Monday which is not usual.
In these cases all the information would be there but it wouldn’t be as readable (quick to read or even glance) as the user would expect.

Know your audience
A calendar that tries to everything to everybody–like those that list every holiday from every country and every religion, then try to apply a complicated color scheme for each kind of holiday to readily identify everything. No focus, no identifiable audience, no use.

Keep content updated
How about a nod to outdated information–layout one month using last year’s dates.

Bad usability on the bad usability calendar

http://www.uxunleashed.com/2008/05/yellow-teethed-dentist-or-recursive-bad.html

Bad Usability Calendar 2008 Open For Proposals... Just a quick note to mention that my friend Eidar and his colleagues at Netlife Research in Norway are now preparing the 2008 version of the Bad Usability Calendar. Please do post your proposals as a bad usability calendar is a perfect wallpaper and I ...