Zoho CRM User Experience & Interaction Design Blog

There are 1000s of reviews out there.. praising or criticizing Yahoo mail beta. But my short review is the result based on my experiences for the past 6+ months usage.

Mail Client
I was  feeling good to use Yahoo Mail beta for the first time. Reason? It uses the Thunderbird/Eudora style interaction. No page scrolls (but obviously, there are internal scrolls) that make me put my finger on the scroll-wheel. I do not have to learn anything new… it is the same user-experience as a binary email client. Folders on the left. Subjects on the top and message in the bottom.

Shortcut Keys
Shortcut keys are not used widely by web-users. The fact is 98% of the web applications do not offer shortcut keys. Only the rest 2% have shortcut keys support. Yahoo mail beta uses shortcut keys, that you would normally use in your regular email client. “R” for reply, “F” for forward etc. And the most important feature I love is group delete. Just click on a subject, press the arrow keys and select multiple subjects, then press delete. All gone!

In Gmail I have to click on the “Select” boxes (Check boxes technically) and then press the “Delete” or “Archive” button.  Sometimes I find this very tedious, when there are lot of messages to be deleted at once.

Folders/Views
Yahoo mail beta sticks to the”Folders” concept.This is one reason I always prefer to use Yahoo mail beta, probably because I am used to that Folders concept. Though Gmail style “Views/Tagged” approach is not different from “Folders”, Folders makes me feel comfortable.

Speed
Yahoo mail beta is quick and easy. Not to mention that, at times I get some XML errors, which I suspect happens because of packet loss or some other connectivity problems. Or even, that may be because of a some glitch at server level. Whatever it is.. I never faced any critical situations.  On the whole, I am okay with the speed and responsiveness of the UI and service.

Problems
The problems start with resolutions. Yahoo mail beta definitely requires screens larger than 1024×768. My computer at home uses 1024×768 and it is barely fit to display the yahoo mail UI. The browser occupies the 20% of vertical space and Yahoo mail’s top headings occupies another 10% of vertical space, leaving the rest 70% for mail UI.

Because of this real estate problem, I can only see 7 or 8 subjects and just-bare-minimum of the message body at any time.

Conclusion
Yahoo mail beta is good. And the UI is targeted at corporate users or assuming that all users will prefer this mail-client style UI. I guess that will be a bad assumption because people do not have time to learn.

Every software has its own USP (Unique Selling Point). Most of the time it would be the features, or it would be the concept or its application in the real world. Software developers always work on improving the software more and more so that the software gets enhanced and improves the productivity of its customers.

In such a process, the software will reach certain stage, where it requires a complete over-haul or partial over haul. If this over haul pertains to engineering in the back-end, then mostly there would be no impact on the front-end UI. But, if the over-haul happens in the front-end UI, then there would be a heavy impact on the front-end.

One such classic example is Microsoft’s Ribbon UI which was introduced in Office 2007. Though the concept behind the UI pattern is absolutely great, many regular users of Microsoft Word find it difficult to adapt. Which means, people were used to the old UI and they are not ready to learn the new UI all of a sudden. This is one of the disadvantages of binary applications. The applications gets updated once in a year or once in two years, and when a change is applied in the UI, it definitely creates a setback from regular users.

In general, any UI change will take some time to get used to. Micorosoft’s Ribbon UI will take some time to gain the old users back. But it is evident that some people may decide to remain happy with earlier versions itself. And this gap of the user base will be eventually filled by new users. All Microsoft has to do is - wait. It certainly takes time for a UI change to get criticized and then gets slowly adopted. On the graph plot, this period of time will make the pointer go downwards, but after a certain period of time, it will go upwards gradually. In software business, sometimes this is a must-to-take risk.

In web applications, one can avoid such a setback by doing incremental UI change. Apply the changes in small amount, educate the users about the changes applied and after a certain period of time, the complete change will be applied. Thus user’s will not have a alien-feeling towards the application. This way you can retain your customers/users.

Another approach in applying a change is providing two paths. One leading to the old UI and other leading to the new UI. To initiate change, offer an option to try the new UI and let the users to switch back if the new UI is not upto their liking. When they switch back, get feedback and analyse.

In any case, changing the UI is not a simple process. It deals with user’s loyalty. Unless the UI change dramatically enhances productivity or solves any existing problem, users may take more time to adopt the change. It is every IxD/UX designers responsibility to ensure the change is carried successfully without losing any existing users.

- Rajesh Sundaram

In a typical CRM system, accessing the related info of an entity should be quick and easy. For example, the related info for a Account could be , Contacts for the Account, Quotes/Documents/Invoices that are related to the Account, Products related to the Account etc. A good CRM should provide all such related info in a neat and quickly accessible approach.

Based on the user feedback and general studies, we found that CRM users prefer to see all the vital information on top of the page. The next-level-vital information like related information or other ‘accessory/tools’ stuff could be presented in the first page-scroll. If additional real estate is available, then the related information can be shown in the right side.

And in a Web Service scenario, determining the optimal layout is very difficult. Because users are different and their usage pattern is different. The best solution is : Provide a setup wherein the user can choose the layout he prefers - either placing the related info in the second scroll, or placing the related info on the right side.

- Rajesh Sundaram

For any web service or application, the VIPs are the first-time users. Make a good impression in the first page, then they will enter inside. Else, they will move away. Success of a web service business depends upon how fast you can make a first-time visitor into a user/subscriber/customer. Here is my little post based on my observations.

The Human Face Analogy
In Interaction Design, Pulling the first-time user’s attention is an important factor. Let me explain in simple words. Whenever you look at someone’s face, what are the places you normally look at? It is the eyes and lips. Because they are the two moving parts and psychologically your mind notices and registers non-static parts. Have you ever heard anyone saying ‘u know? i met a girl with beautiful forehead’? I bet, you had not. But it is common to hear ‘u know? i met a girl with lovely lips’! Thats natural.

Dont let them search
Okay. Based on the similar analogy, whenever a new user visits a website or web application for the first time, make sure your page captures attention. Ensure the questions like ‘what site is this?, what can i get fr

om this site?, what should i do now? okay site opened, what’s next?’ etc are answered. By usability standards, a good UI should never let the user to search for information.

Highlight is a good key
So how can you make the information reach the user? A simple approach is “highlight” them. There are multiple ways to highlight a particular text, image or screen area.

- Make the to-be-highlighted text as ‘BOLD’ ones. Or color them or, increase the font size.
- Or use CSS and paint their background with light yellow (You can see this approach in 37signals.com).
- For images, Draw a thick border around the image. Or introduce a shadow effect. Or increase white space padding (though this closely depends upon the visual appeal)

Convey the story
From a web based product/service perspective, it is very important to convey - what this service is? and what it can do for the users. Use simple metaphors to convey the story to the users. Check out tripit.com for a clear example. The home page explains the storyline within a single shot. They use the highlighters (1) (2) (3) to capture the attention and make the user understand how Tripit works. Notice the simple metaphor icons they used. They are more like standard symbols rather than jazzy images. And then, they placed the “Get Started” button just below the (3)rd box. So if a user reads the story starting from (1), he will reach (3) and end up clicking the bright colored “Get Started” button. So this type of follow-storyline approach enhances user experience by letting the users to understand and jump start in less than a minute. Also this ensures more sign ups creating smiles in marketing and management depts.

Classify Vital, Important and Less Important information
Depending upon the product/service you are working on, you should classify the vital, important and less important information. Then promote the message/information accordingly. In tripit.com, the vital information is “how the system works?”. The important information is “what is this product?” Less important informations are the Tripit news, promo information, privacy policy etc

Keep it simple, capture the attention
In any complex web UI, keeping things simple is the key to success. There may be few exceptions where you cannot implement simplicity due to restrictions posed by technology or resource. But in all other cases, keeping it simple will work. Capturing the attention using call outs, highlights etc will enhance the rate of success.

- Rajesh Sundaram

I haven’t seen this feature earlier.. but today, when I was browsing through the menus I found this Bar Code generator app. I am very much impressed. It starts a wizard, which lets you choose a bar code standard and type the characters/numbers you would like to convert. Finally it generates embedded bar code vector object in the document. Nice handy feature !

- Rajesh Sundaram

Right now, I am consulting for a new feature which will print address labels using a collection of data from DB. I did some research to get some standards regarding address labels. And the results showed that there are multitude of standards which are varying for each country. So we opted for the standard 5×2 layout - 10 labels per sheet of paper.  I am surprised to see so many standards existing, making the job tough to write softwarethat supports all standards.

Doing a Address Label software is not a simple task as I thought earlier!

- Rajesh Sundaram

Ever since I drove in that highway, it became one of my favorite highway road. 4-laned with median and good leveling, this highway ensures good safety for motorists. Whenever I travel to Erode by car, I use this highway.

I start from Velachery, then reach Guindy-Kathipara junction and enter Nandhanbakkam. Then I cruise along the heavy traffic till Poonamallee and join the NH7 Bangalore highway outside Poonamallee. It usually takes 40 mins to reach Poonamalle from Velachery. After that I cross Hyundai Factory and reach Sriperumbudur. There, the traffic decreases slowly and  road becomes a proper highway. From there on, I will press my Alto’s gas pedal and cross Ambur, Vellore and reach Krishnagiri-Hosur bye pass junction, covering some 250KMS stretch @ 100KM/h speed. There I take diversion towards Krishnagiri and cruise at 70KM/h and reach Dharmapuri. Sometimes I visit my uncle’s shop and have Tea at Dharmapuri. Then I accelerate to Thoppur and take a quick drive down the ghat section. From the downhill, the speed becomess slow and it takes nearly an hour to reach Omalur from Thoppur. I usually do not go to Salem, but take a diversion before Salem and reach Omalur. From there an hour drive will lead to Sangagiri and another hour will lead me to Pallipalayam and next 20 mins, I will park the car in the Garage. 

This is one drive I always love.. Plenty of highway to quench your highway drive thirst and good+bad roads to improve your driving skills. I wish I had a Honda Civic !

Busting the myth that “Indian Lorry drivers are dangerous”, I found that they are the most civilized during night. The notorious are no one, but the KPN and other bus services.  Night driving is a pleasant experience… but do not try, if you are not used to late night drives.

I am eagerly looking forward this year’s Diwali , during which I will be driving back to Erode in my lovely Alto.

- Rajesh Sundaram

PSBalaji is back from US.. with two big bags full of chocolates! I am consuming them in a fast pace.. and till now 3 mini-bars of Snickers and Crunch gone! Following are the onion shaped Kisses!

- Rajesh Sundaram