The worst 12 usability problems – give us your ideas for Bad Usability Calendar 2007

My first suggestion is that you announce to release it under some sort of Creative Commons license. This way, it could be translated into even more languages and benefit more people.

Thanks!

We are planning to do so for the 2007 calendar; we just have to look into it a bit more. We are happy that so many enjoy our examples of bad usability,- we hope it can contribute to increase awareness of usability problems in a positive way. Thanks for your help, Jesper!

Here are some ideas:

#1 Forcing the user to make too many decisions and/or technical decisions:

e.g.:

1 _Configure display_ >> 2 Show month

Display month:
Display year:
Font:
Font Color:
Font Size:
Align:
Start from:
Show holidays:
Hide weekend days:
Show trivia:
Encoding:

etc.

[Next]

#2 Bad error messages

e.g.: unknown error, using codes, technical errors

#3 Paradigms that confuse the user because they don’t match their mental model

e.g.: days shown vertically

Sun 7 14 etc.
Mon 1 8 15
Tue 2 9 16
etc.

How about this?

A variation on the consistency would be to show one month with the weeks going downwards instead of left-to-right (indeed i have seen such calendars). Or you could just make it right-to-left for effect, though it might be seen as overly comical.

- Use plain language : not “the month of the god of war” for “mars”

Match the content to your target audience.
For example, the week in a Hebrew calendar begins on Sunday, but if a calendar with “Sun Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat” is intended for a Christian audience it can cause confusion, and vice versa.
Same applies to dates in a US format: 12.11 is December 11 or November 12?

We’ve got a Slovak translation of the Bad Usability Calendar made by Spravodaj. Thanks a lot!

Make sure that content that is the same, looks the same;
make sure that content that is different, looks different –
completely different.

Mo Tu We W Th Fa Sa Su
2 3 4 5 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 6 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 7 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 8 26 27 28 29
30 31 9

Thank you for the information…….

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