$ whoami

I have two twitter accounts: my personal account and my developer account. I do not like to mix these two accounts and be very careful about it. I even login from two different browsers just to make sure that I do not update a wrong account by mistake.

I recently received an email from twitter when someone started following me on twitter. I clicked on the link which took me to the account detail page of the account which started following me:

Before I return the compliment by following this account, I wanted to make sure that I have logged in with my right account so that I do not follow someone from my other account and spam them.

I spent about a minute to identify which account I have logged in from. I was surprised by that fact that there is no way to know which twitter account I logged-in to. There is simply no way to know whether I logged in from my personal account or from my developer account! What happened to good old "Welcome Viraj Turakhia" or "You are logged in as virajturakhia"??

This design flaw clearly violates "Recognition rather than Recall" heuristic of design principles!

May be it is not common for people to have more than one twitter account and that is why this flaw went unnoticed!

I hope this blog escalates the need to this information on Twitter account detail page and Twitter finally fixes the issue. Share this blog with your friends to spread the news. :)

Providing Location Information - II

After my previous blog on providing location information on websites of businesses, I received questions from my readers asking for examples of websites which has provided location information in a better way.

It didn't take long for me to find a website where location information is easily accessible.

Take a look at http://www.kylieschicagopizza.com/ and compare how easy it is to find location of the restaurant as compared to examples I enlisted in my previous blog.

Challenge yourself to perform following tasks on these websites and you will get the point:

• find address of the business
• get directions from your home/office to the business location
• try to send the address in an email to your friend
• try to use a different maps application and pin point the location of the business in that app
• find out business hours from the website
• zoom in to the map to find out minor details
• zoom out in the map to see its relative location with your city

Drop a comment on how easy/difficult it was to perform these tasks on the websites.

Providing Location Information - I

It is very important for a services website to have their business's address so that potential clients can find them easily. It is extremely irritating if this information is not given in the right way and may result into lost customer.

Following are some common mistakes designer commit while providing this information on websites:

Information is Hidden: For businesses like restaurants/clinics/salons, one of the most important pieces of information is their location. Users expect this information available on the website in big bold letters. It is very irritating when you have to click on "About Us" or "Find Us" links to find their address.

For example: http://www.dilettante.com/ - see the image below. You will have to click on "Contact Us" to see address of Dilettante cafes!

Inaccessible Information: Having address information in obvious location is certainly a step forward but is of limited use if information is not accessible. It is amazing to see how many websites are using images for their address. This makes it terrible because you can see the address but if you want to copy paste it in maps website/app, you can't do it. You have to memorize the address or switch between tabs to enter that address in that map app.

For example: http://www.eyesonthecity.com/ - address is right there on their home page, but is not selectable. Its an IMAGE!

Inflexible: Some websites try to do the smart thing by having maps widget on their webpage with a pin pointing to their location. Yes, sometimes it is a better experience to see the location on map than just seeing the address text/image. But you have to maintain the consistency with the maps widget and/or give a link to map's website where they can perform all the operations they are used to on that maps website. Common issues I have seen with such widgets are:

• clicking on pin has no effect. No information balloon is shown when you click on the red pin. (users expect that)
• there are no zoom-in or zoom-out controllers. (users are used to these controls on any map now)
• there is no "Directions" link from that pin. (this would make it so much more easier for users to reach to you)
• there is no way to switch from satellite view of the map which they usually default to.
• worst is when websites are just capturing screenshot of the maps website and their pin and put that as an image on their website. In such cases, it is better just not to have anything at all!

For example: http://www.lighthouseroasters.com/directions.cfm - they have just captured the screenshot of Yahoo maps and pasted it on their webpage.

Unreliable: WORST thing you can do with this kind of information is to give the wrong/out-dated information. It is not a design issue but still worth mentioning in this blog. I have encountered few websites off late which says that they are open from x:00 am to y:00 pm mon-sat and when you go to their location, they have either moved to some other location or have decided to change their timings or are simply closed permanently! Other than any issue mentioned in this blog, this issue hurts the brand most.

It is hard to gain trust of your users, very easy to lose it and next to impossible to regain it.

I hope you find this information useful and consider these points while designing a website for your cafe, salon, restaurant or bar!