Re: Is it acceptable to post a URL to request review of Userability?

tatata9999@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Thanks, Chris, the idea is simple, create a useful and yet Real Simple
web app. URL, http://www.mytata.net/


Major issues:
1) It doesn't handle time correctly.
It uses a specific timezone and doesn't specify which it is. It's 10:47 where I live (UTC+02:00), but it's displayed as 4:47 am. On the web, giving a time without specifying the timezone doesn't make sense.
You must either use UTC and clearly specify that you're using UTC or better, use the local timezone the user wishes. Ideally, you should also handle daily saving times, if possible. Even if you use the local timezone specified by the user, you should show the timezone in the table.
The am/pm time system is used by US people, but, most other countries use the time system on 24 hours (e.g. 14:30 for 2:30 pm). You should either use the system on 24 hours (the only good system for people who travel), or give the choice of the display system.
2) It doesn't handle date correctly.
What does 10/14/2007 means? I know that we're October the 14th and understood that your app was hosted in the US, so I understood after a few seconds that it used the middle-endian notation Month/Day/Year. To make things clear, either use the ISO/IEC 8601 big-endian format (2007-10-14) or specify the month in whole letters or let the user specify the format.
If you use the ISO/IEC format, please, specify it in the table header: Date (YYYY-MM-DD).
3) The pages that displays the table don't display the current date and time. That's a vital information!
4) Remove all your JavaScript links. JavaScript links in so many ways that I cannot count them. They're just fake links that neither work correctly for advanced users nor for newbies. Use good old anchors, without target=_blank, please. Everybody surfing on the web is able to handle navigation (new windows, back button, etc.) himself. And if they don't, JavaScript links will only worsen things.
5) It's very unclear what your application is supposed to do, from the main page.

From the main page:
This is a simple and yet powerful Time Management Tool. Simple, initially there're only 3 functional buttons; powerful, as you become more familar with it the tool advances and 'grows' with you (additional functionality will automatically render itself where and when appropriate).

You praise your system without giving any information about it! You could shorten this paragraph to "This is a time management tool", without any loss of information!
You'd rather specify what it does more accurately.
For example:
"
With this time management tool, if you create an account, you'll record your activity, whatever it is, by tagging it with a name and specifying its start and end at the time you start or end it. It'll automatically keep track of the date, time and duration of every of your activity.
Below is an example of recorded activities:
<show short sample table below>
"
6) The http://web.mytata.net:8000/myTA/myTA_logout.cfm resource has side effects when an HTTP GET request is sent.
This is a very bad thing, because HTTP GET must never have side effects. User agents rely on that fact by:
1. Caching the request.
2. Crawling the pages before any user action is taken (there's a FF plugin that does that).
Moreover, a user or user agent should never be taken responsible for a HTTP GET request he did.
Solution: Use a HTTP POST request for that. To do so, use an HTML form with a logout button.

Same issue with the [Like it?] link.

7) I cannot find any way to login from an existing account without creating a new one when the cookie is deleted (all my new cookies are deleted when I exit my browser)! Maybe there's one, but I cannot find it!

Medium level issues:
1) The login system from the main page is very unclear.

It's unclear what the differences between "Everyone else", "Business" and "Student" are.
In particular, the meaning of "Everyone else, follow me!" is incredibely unclear.
It's unclear where to login.
It's unclear that the student and business account can be the same.

This first page needs refactoring.
I think that the business vs student thing should only be set as an option in the account preferences, and as a question in the account creation process.

In the main page:
1. Shortly explain what the service is, as I described above. The sample table could maybe be put in the tutorial page.
2. Give a login form or a "login in an existing account" link for existing users.
3. Give a "create new account" link.
4. Maybe, give a "tutorial" link.

Then, once somebody is logged in, go to the activity page, and provide these links:
[Logout] [Account options] [Home]
In account options, let the user change his password, choose the timezone, the date & time format, whether he wants to record personal activity or business activity.

The create account screen should clearly state the policy. Whether it's permitted to create more than one account for an individual, describe the privacy rights, the service continuity and data persistence rights.
2) Using a very long obfuscated login as password is very weak (browsers don't display stars when it's typed) and unconvenient.
Just let the user choose his login and password.
3) There should be a way to use HTTPS when logging in or when creating an account, or you should use a standard HTTP authentification rather than an HTML form.

Minor issues:
1) In the table, you use a table header "Hours Spent" but display times such as 5m. This is incorrect. One could think that 5m means 5 milli-hours! So, rename "Hours Spent" and "Total Hours" to "Time spent" and "Total time".
BTW, it's very unclear what "Total hours" measures... Is it the total activity time? The time between the start of activity in the day and the current time of the day? The time between the start of activity in the day and the last saved activity? This should be somehow specified.
2) It would be nice to give a HTTPS to the activity pages.
3) The three buttons activity recording system is unclear. What does saving an activity means? The term "update state" would be better.
Things would be simplier if you integrated the idea that a human person has an activity 100% of the time, even if it's "doing nothing", "not working" or "unspecified".
Then, there would basically be a single button "Next activity". In the list of possible activities, there would be two default activities: "Not working" and "Unknown".
For saving user time, there could be a shortcut button: "Work pause" (e.g. coffee/cigarette pause). Another shortcut: "Stop activity" would jump into the "unknown" activity.

Notes should be understood as a different system.
You could either keep the current idea that a note is attached to a specific activity, and, in that case, provide a separate form with a text box and a single button [update note] that would update the note for the current activity, or use a system where notes would be independent of activities. They would simply be dated and integrated in the timeline of the work.

HTTP issues:
1) Why do you use non-standard ports? Many people at work cannot access non-standard ports because they must use a specific proxy.
There may be reasons. Could you give them.
2) Please, use simplier, more intuitive URI.
http://web.mytata.net:8000/myTA/index2_so.cfm?utype=s is unclear.


HTML issues of the activity page:
1) I don't like having an horizontal scollbar. I've a 1152x864 screen, but I use a left panel, and I don't use maximized windows.
Please don't use this ugly non-semantic table layout that requires a huge maximized page.
2) Remove this big whitespace at the top of the page.
3) Validate your page.
For example:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
What is this '/' doing?
It's HTML, not XHTML.
4) What's the point in fixing the font family? What's wrong with the user CSS font?
5) Remove all this &nbsp; cr*p.
6) Don't abuse <br>.
7) What's the purpose of this display:none table with id="99999"? Remove this thing on the server side! BTW, you should use more descriptive identifiers.
Same issue with the CFForm_1 form.
8) Remove this onSubmit ECMAScript that serves no purpose.
9) Get rid of all these nested tables. This is awful.

I give up. Refactor the HTML code to get something much more semantically correct and much smaller. This 10 kilobytes page could easily use one kilobyte.

Don't take everything I said for an expert advice. But, I think you should understand my concerns and take them in account.

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