
Big buttons are great, but they'd better make sense - relix
http://www.davidverhasselt.com/2013/09/21/big-buttons-are-great-but-they-better-make-sense/
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vinhboy
Ha! This looks like the result of an 8-hour meeting between engineering and
PMs.

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hcarvalhoalves
You nailed it.

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TamDenholm
I recently had to setup a few mailchimp campaigns for a client and so found
myself using the new UI quite a lot. Their new design has quite a lot of UI
bugs and things that make no sense. Its all fixable with feedback, but it
would've been nice if they'd beta tested this design first. It feels rushed.

~~~
relix
Yep, although it's still 10 times better than their old interface.

It's been a couple of months now I think (?) since the redesign and if they
had been proactive about it, most of these should have been fixed already. It
makes me believe that they're not using usability testing, which makes no
sense for a company their size. Or maybe they do, and that really is the
unintuitive outcome their tests have shown to be the least confusing to users.
Would be hard to believe, though...

~~~
sfrjay
Usability testing is hard to get right. If you have 2 bad ideas, all it will
show you is which is the least bad. They probably A/B tested this two-step
layout with a text-only prompt and it did better.

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ricardobeat
Those circles doesn't look like buttons at all to me, just eye candy. Failings
of the flat design trend?

At first I thought he was talking about the 'Drafts' and 'Create campaign'
buttons on the top right.

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Sharlin
They may not look like traditional buttons, but if something has a verb-an-
object phrase like "Create a list" as a caption, I damn well expect it to do
what the caption says when clicked.

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earlyriser
I'm a new user of MC after the redesign and I think they really made sense.
They are not actionable buttons, but "instruction buttons". They help the
beginners to understand the UI and know where are the things they're going to
use often. I remember have used once the old UI and it wasn't as clear as this
and normal people don't mind clicking.

~~~
jamestnz
Such 'instruction buttons' and other notices/signs sprinkled through the UI
can be an indicator of bad design, an insufficient consideration of
'affordances'[1].

Which is to say, a good user interface (and not just software, but anyplace
human/device interaction occurs) should probably be as intuitive/discoverable
as possible, featuring behaviours which can be inferred/suspected from an
element's inherent properties (e.g.: in an aircraft cockpit, make the "flaps"
switch resemble a flap), from the user's general experience in other contexts
(an on-screen control that looks like a "button" should act like a "button"),
or which preclude incorrect actions entirely (on a door which only swings open
in one direction, install a flat plate on the "push" side and a pullable
handle on the "pull" side, so the incorrect choice becomes impossible, and no
signs are even needed). Putting actual instructional labels onto interface
elements, whether in software (e.g. using words "Click here to..." in the text
of a hyperlink) or in real life with the push/pull signs, is oftentimes a cop-
out in lieu of a more thoughtful/obvious design.

In computer software interfaces (particularly web apps), I would suggest that
a large, prominent, colored circle with a gloss effect and an action
written/iconized on it, has the affordance of carrying out that action
immediately when clicked (for some value of "immediately") -- i.e. being a
button.

If substantial UI changes have taken place within an app that already has a
customer base, I agree it may be valuable to bring these to the attention of
the users. But a highlighted notification box appearing at the top of the
app's regular UI screens, which persists until the user reads and dismisses
it, is widely used -- rather than sprinkling "push" and "pull" signs around a
wrongly-conceived interface[2].

Even the venerable "tool-tip" (aka HTML "title" attribute) seems often
overused, becoming a crutch to support a mystery-meat navigation[3] philosophy
which requires users to hover and wait to figure out what the hell _anything_
does.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance)

[2] I'm not suggesting that the MC UI itself is wrongly-conceived or even
particularly bad, just continuing with my general point.

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation)

[n] The examples about cockpit design and push/pull doors come from actual
published studies in ergonomics. I do not have the resources available at the
moment to cite them further.

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ricardobeat
The goal of these instructions is to guide the user on how to use Mailchimp,
the e-mail system, not the UI. The plane cockpit won't show you by itself how
to start the engine, that's in the manual/training.

~~~
pwg
> The plane cockpit won't show you by itself how to start the engine, that's
> in the manual/training.

The plane cockpit is also _not_ intended to be used by first-time users having
to discover everything themselves as they go along. It is assumed the new user
of the plane cockpit will be given detailed training on how to use the
cockpit.

UI's, and esp. web UI's, don't tend to come accompanied with _detailed
training on how to use_ them. Which is why UI's _need_ discoverability and
plane cockpits do not.

~~~
jamestnz
>UI's _need_ discoverability and plane cockpits do not

Interestingly enough, Boeing has a world-class ergonomics
research/implementation department focusing on solving problems just like this
within the cockpit.

You see, it turns out that pilots were occasionally activating the switch for
Undercarriage when they meant to activate the Flaps switch, because the
switches were near each other on the console and they looked identical. This
despite the switches being clearly labeled, and despite the intensive training
that pilots undergo. Apparently this was enough of a problem that a habit
developed amongst some pilots, of sticking a tiny paper cup over the
Undercarrige switch shortly after each takeoff (the kind of tiny paper cup
that they serve you your tiny cup of water in).

The Boeing folks were tasked with this issue, researched likely causes and
tested potential solutions, and (IIRC) came up with the idea of
physically/visually distinguishing the switches, and furthermore to actually
design each switch to be visually reminiscent of the feature it controls.

(Hopefully I related this story correctly, it comes from a textbook-level
source I read ages ago).

~~~
deafbybeheading
General usability is important in pretty much all interfaces, but
discoverability isn't. There's a big difference between designing an interface
a user will be instantly familiar with, and one that's optimally suited to the
task at hand.

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movingahead
Those big buttons seem more like a bad onboarding implementation than call-to-
action buttons.

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dredmorbius
The images themselves appear to be iconography, not control elements. Unless
there were some specific affordance (say, tooltips, a feature which is missing
from _FAR_ too many interfaces), I wouldn't think to actually click on the
images. The links below them, yes.

The whole greyed-out control cluster on the left side -- I'd probably ignore
almost completely. Grey-on-grey does not suggest importance.

[http://www.contrastrebellion.com/](http://www.contrastrebellion.com/)

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pbreit
MailChimp's UX has always been quite miserable. The new redesign is better in
some ways, worse in others. I'm pretty convinced that it leads because it has
the best freemium plan.

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devx
I find the Mailchimp UI very confusing. I always forget where to get my API
key for example. So many important items seem to be hidden in hidden menus and
submenus.

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mailarchis
Slightly tangent

the new ui has no modal popups. Its either a new page or the ui element slides
from up , down or sides. It makes an interesting redesign.

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alan_cx
I would click on the Show Me links, not the , er, big filler images above. Is
that right or wrong?

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relix
This is UI, as a user there's no right or wrong. The designer should
accommodate you clicking on the "Show Me" link. I guess that way this works
how you would expect it.

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darmen
They seem like a banners, not buttons

