Finally, a website that understands how people use search results. If you’re like me you will have spent hours pouring over search results for important purchases. You might do this over the course of days or weeks, returning to those same results as you narrow down your choice. This is especially the case when it comes to decisions such as buying a house or choosing a hotel. You will also know how annoying it is to see properties that you’ve previously discounted for one reason of another. Enter booking.com where you can now remove items from your search results. Admittedly, the way in which booking.com has chosen to implement this feature is a little rough around the edges. The control is a transparent ‘no entry’ icon that sits a top the image of the property, only revealing its function upon hover over. Initially it looked like to me that there was a problem with the image or that the property was unavailable. It might have worked better as a simple ‘x’ icon accompanied by a short label underneath the image. It's also a little difficult to see where these deleted properties go and how to recover them. This feature is on the left hand side navigation. Well done booking.com nevertheless.
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I've written before about the importance of not assuming that your audience speaks the language of your interface design. This is a photo of my friend's Dutch washing machine. Knowing my interest in the design of everyday things my friend asked me to open the door. As you can see there is no physical door opening mechanism on or near the door itself. Look at the buttons on the control panel. They look the same and the labels are in Dutch. Which one opens the door? Ok I got it after a few minutes because 'duer' sounds like door in English. I got lucky but what if a person whose language bears no resemblance to Latin or Germanic languages was trying to operate this machine? A more straight forward solution would be to place a door icon below the label. An even simpler solution would be to put a door handle on the door itself.
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WelcomeI'm Frank Gaine. Strategist, Designer, Manager, Founder, Educator. Archives
April 2022
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