Extreme Usability - The Toddler Test and the Grandma Test
August 26th, 2008 by Anand Rajaram
I got a near surreal reminder of the power of usability yesterday. I was showing some recent pictures to my 3-year old son on my new iPhone 3G and he instinctively started advancing to the next picture using his fingers. This is really what user interface and human computer interaction ought to be about. A 3-year old with no other defined mental model should be able to just use it.
On the other hand, I wonder if the iPhone would pass the so-called Grandma Test, which we employ quite frequently at Pixily. The Grandma may have some mental models to unlearn before she can use the iPhone (or she may choose to just stick to her jitterbug). Around here, the user interaction related conversations evoke the most discussion, since we all care a lot about it. Our product’s usability reflects it loud and clear.
The snippet view is a stellar example of our extreme usability. The thumbnail (to the left) gives a telescopic/big-picture view of the page, and the snippet (to the right) anchors our vision to familiar logos, and patterns (such as Billing Date and Account number) mimicking what we do when we flip through stacks of paper. The labels and other metadata (below) provide the necessary context. All in all, they are discrete nuggets of information in perfect harmony. Our users love it.
So, what tests do you employ as you design your user interaction? Where do you draw the line between the toddler test and the grandma test?
August 27th, 2008 at 4:31 am
I haven’t come across your service until today but it seems like a really good idea
It’s especially nice to see that you are trying to make it more usable for people to use, with the layout , structure and search functionality.
My only question if all the electronic copies are available online, is there no security risk..?
thanks!
Lara
August 27th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Wake me when your kid can use the mess that is iTunes, or make an undropped call.
I gave my 3G iPhone to a coworker in exchange for his yea-old Blackberry. 2 weeks later — after getting all the account info straightened out — he wanted to call off the deal. And my iPod runs Songbird.
Usability blog posts fawning over Apple is, like, so 2007.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:06 am
@Lara: Thank you for the compliments.
We take security and privacy very seriously and every aspect of our solution are designed with utmost importance to them. To your question about online security, once the documents have been scanned they are encrypted and stored in two locations in Amazon.com data centers. When you access your documents, all information goes through encrypted channels similar to how credit card information is transferred online. We run third-party privacy and hacker-safe tests daily to ensure that our servers are hacker-proof.
I also invite you to take a look at the Security and Privacy section in our FAQ at : http://www.pixily.com/help/category.php?catID=7