Our users are precious about their time and we must stop wasting it. On each project ask two questions: “Am I saving myself time at the expense of the user?” and “How can I save the user time here?” What is the single most precious commodity in Western society? Money? Status? I would argue it is time.

We are protective of our time, and with good reason. There are so many demands on it. We have so much to do. So much pressure. People hate to have their time wasted, especially online. We spend so much of our time online these days, and every interaction demands a slice of our time. One minor inconvenience on a website might not be much, but, accumulated, it is death by a thousand cuts.

Steve Jobs claimed that improving the boot time on the Macintosh would save lives. A 10-second improvement added up to many lifetimes over the millions of users booting their computers multiple times a day.

Steve Jobs was obsessed with saving the user time, and we should be, too. (Large preview)

Millions of people might not use your website, but millions do use the Web as a whole. Together, we are stealing people’s lives through badly designed interactions. When I work on a website, one question is front and center in my mind:

“Am I saving myself time at the expense of the user?”

That is the heart of the problem. In our desire to meet deadlines and stay on budget, we often save ourselves time by taking shortcuts via our users’ time. Let’s explore some examples of what I mean.

Taking Time To Improve Performance

The most obvious example of wasting users’ time is website performance. This is what Jobs was getting at with boot times. If our websites are slow, then we’ll waste our users’ valuable time and start to irritate them. One more cut, so to speak.

The problem is that improving performance is hard. We became lazy as broadband became widespread. We cut corners in image optimization, HTTP requests and JavaScript libraries. Now, users pay the price when they try to access our websites on slow mobile devices over cellular networks.

Optimizing your website for performance not only saves your users time, but improves your search engine rankings. (Large preview)

Making our websites faster takes time and effort, but why should users suffer for our problems? On the subject of making our problems the users’ problem, let’s take a moment to talk about CAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA: The Ultimate Time-Waster

CAPTCHA is the ultimate example of unloading our problems onto users. How many millions of hours have users wasted filling in CAPTCHA forms? Hours wasted because we haven’t addressed the problem of bots.

CAPTCHA forces the user to deal with something that is really our problem.

Just to be clear, I am not just talking about traditional CAPTCHA either. I am talking about any system that forces the user to prove they are human. Why should they have to prove anything? Once again, another inconvenience, another drain on their precious time.

We could solve this problem if we put the time into it. The honeytrap technique helps. There are also server-side solutions for filtering out automated requests. The problem is that throwing a CAPTCHA on a website is easier.

Not that CAPTCHA is the only way that we waste the user’s time when completing forms.

Don’t Make Users Correct “Their” Mistakes In Forms

Sometimes we even waste the user’s time when we are trying to help them. Take postal-code lookup. I have been on websites that try to save me time by asking me to enter my postal code so that it can auto-populate my address. A great idea to save me some time — great if it works, that is.

The problem is that some lookup scripts require the postal code to have no spaces. Instead of the developer configuring the script to remove any spaces, they just return an error, and the user has to correct “their” mistake. Why should the user have to enter the data in a particular way? Why waste their time by requiring them to re-enter their postal code? This doesn’t just apply to postal codes either. Telephone numbers and email addresses come with similar problems.

We also need to better help mobile users interact with forms. Forms are particularly painful on touchscreens, so we need to explore alternative form controls, such as sliders and the credit-card input system in Square’s mobile app.

Then, there are passwords.

Why Are Passwords So Complicated?

Why do we waste so much of the users’ time with creating passwords? Every website I visit these days seems to have ever more complex requirements for my password. Security is important, but can’t we come up with a better solution than an arcane mix of uppercase, numbers and symbols?

Why couldn’t we ask users to type in a long phrase instead of a single word? Why can’t my password be, “This is my password and I defy anyone to guess it”? The length would make it secure, and remembering and typing it would be much easier. If your system doesn’t like the spaces, strip them out. You could even provide an option for people to see what they’re typing.

A long password phrase is as secure as a short password with numbers and symbols yet easier to remember. (Large preview)

If you can’t do that, at least provide instructions when the user tries to log in. Remind them of whether your website wants uppercase or a certain number of characters. That would at least help them remember their password for your website.

The important thing is to recognize that people have to log in all the time. The task demands extra attention so that it is as painless as possible.

Pay Special Attention To Repetitive Tasks

We should ask ourselves not only whether we are unloading our problems onto users, but also how we can save our users time.

Take those common tasks that users do on our websites time and again. How can we shave a quarter of a second off of those tasks? What about search? If the user enters a search term on your website, will hitting the “Return” key submit the query? They shouldn’t have to click the “Search” button.

Drop-down menus are another good example. Navigating country-pickers can be painful. Could we display countries differently, or make the most common countries faster to access? In fact, so much could be done to improve country-pickers if we just take the time.

Something as simple as a country-picker can waste a surprising amount of time, especially if you are British! (Large preview)

For that matter, a more robust solution to “Remember me” functionality would be nice, so that users are, in fact, remembered!

I am aware that this post might sound like a rant against developers. It is not. It is a problem faced by all Web professionals. Designers need to pay close attention to the details of their designs. Web managers need to ensure that the budget exists to refine their user interfaces. And content creators need to optimize their content for fast consumption.

Help Users Process Our Content Faster

We waste so much of our users’ time with verbose, poorly written and dense copy, making it hard for them to find the piece of information they need. The real shame is that we could do so much to help. For a start, we could give the user a sense of approximately how long a page will take to read. I offer this functionality on my personal blog, and it is the feature most commented on. Users love knowing how much of their time a post will take up.

We can also make our content a lot more scannable, with better use of headings, pullout quotes and lists. Finally, we can take a leaf out of Jakob Nielsen’s website. At the beginning of each post, he provides a quick summary of the page.

The Tip Of The Iceberg

We could do so much more in all aspects of Web design to save users’ time. From information architecture to website analytics, we waste too much of it. Sometimes we even know we are doing it! We need to be forever vigilant and always ask ourselves:

“How can I save the user time in this situation?”

What are your thoughts on this topic? Please share your experiences and opinions with us, and join in the discussion in the comments section below.

(al, il)

The post Stop Wasting Users’ Time appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Some icons are so commonplace that we’ve come to not think twice about them—until they’re changed. One such image undergoing a makeover is the ‘International Symbol of Access’, commonly known as the ‘Wheelchair Symbol’.

There’s no doubt that the existing icon is easily recognizable; the problem, especially for the people it is supposed to represent, is that it portraits wheelchair users as passive and inactive—the original variation even depicted wheelchair users as headless. Combatting the problem is the Accessible Icon Project, an initiative designed to help change perceptions of wheelchair users by redesigning the classic icon to focus on the individual, rather than the disability. The new design is as easily recognizable, and ADA compliant but also features a person in control of their own movement and navigating the world under their own power.

Each element of the icon has been carefully judged to ensure the new symbol carries none of the negative connotations of the previous icon. Certainly the new design is less in-keeping with the 1960s view of people with disabilities that produced the original.

The Project encourages grassroots efforts to replace old signs with the new forward-thinking symbol. Both stencils and stickers are available for those that wish to enact change.

The Accessible Icon Project is a great example of how design can change the world for the better.

400+ Scalable Vectors from T-Shirt Factory – only $17!

Saturday, May 3, 2014: PROMISE AGEP Family and Friends Celebration of Graduates Cookout

You are invited to come, bring your friends, family, and anyone who supports your journey through graduate school. This event is free. Graduate students from all schools within the University System of Maryland (USM) are invited!

Here is a list, if your school is listed, you are invited! http://www.usmd.edu/institutions/

Alumni, faculty, and staff are invited.

Friends and family members of students who have participated in PROMISE are invited. 

If you are from another school, e.g., Howard, Hopkins, GW, and have come to a PROMISE event in the past such as SSI, you are also invited to participate.

Please register below.

Register for the PROMISE Friends and Family Cookout and Celebration of Graduates:

If you are graduating from a USM institution with an M.S. or Ph.D., please send an email to promisestaff@gmail.com by Wednesday, April 30, with your name, school, department, and degree, so that we can recognize you at the event.

LOCATION:

Centennial Park – Pavilion D

Main/South Entrance

10000 Route 108

Columbia, MD 21042

Directions:
Main/South
PDF | Google Maps

This event provides food, fun, connections, and networking. Please plan to attend.

Saturday, May 3, 2014: PROMISE AGEP Family and Friends Celebration of Graduates Cookout

You are invited to come, bring your friends, family, and anyone who supports your journey through graduate school. This event is free. Graduate students from all schools within the University System of Maryland (USM) are invited!

Here is a list, if your school is listed, you are invited! http://www.usmd.edu/institutions/

Alumni, faculty, and staff are invited.

Friends and family members of students who have participated in PROMISE are invited. 

If you are from another school, e.g., Howard, Hopkins, GW, and have come to a PROMISE event in the past such as SSI, you are also invited to participate.

Please register below.

Register for the PROMISE Friends and Family Cookout and Celebration of Graduates:

If you are graduating from a USM institution with an M.S. or Ph.D., please send an email to promisestaff@gmail.com by Wednesday, April 30, with your name, school, department, and degree, so that we can recognize you at the event.

LOCATION:

Centennial Park – Pavilion D

Main/South Entrance

10000 Route 108

Columbia, MD 21042

Directions:
Main/South
PDF | Google Maps

This event provides food, fun, connections, and networking. Please plan to attend.

The NIST National Cybersecurity Center for Excellence (NCCoE) is seeking full- and part-time paid interns from UMBC graduate students studying cybersecurity at the Universities at Shady Grove (USG). The program is part of NCCoE’s ongoing efforts to build and sustain academic partnerships in the Montgomery County region.

The NCCoE internship will identify and immerse students in practical cybersecurity experiences at the NCCoE in Rockville, MD. NCCoE’s Cybersecurity Graduate Researchers will work in a state-of-the-art facility with expert cybersecurity practitioners from government and academia, along with engineers from some of the largest and most influential IT and cybersecurity companies in the world, including Intel, Microsoft, Symantec, HP, Cisco, Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, and Hytrust.

During their internships, NCCoE’s Graduate Cybersecurity Researchers may assist NCCoE staff and contractors in areas such as:

the design and building of cybersecurity reference designs to demonstrate platform capabilities that address one or more challenges identified by industry.

mentoring undergraduate cybersecurity researchers and helping build teams to work on research projects.

working with NCCoE industry partners and collaborators to identify relevant commercially available technologies that can serve as a component of these reference designs.

supporting the NCCoE lab infrastructure, including the provisioning of hardware, creation and management of both virtual and physical equipment, and the installation and configuration of cybersecurity tools and components.

These NCCoE internships are open to UMBC cybersecurity students enrolled at the USG campus who are US citizens. The deadline for Summer 2014 consideration is Monday, May 5, however internships are available during the 2014-15 academic year as well.

For more information and/or to apply, please contact the USG Career & Internship Services Center at 301-738-6338 or Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

This is the second in a series of articles on the four focus areas that are part of UMBC’s strategic planning process.

The primary goal of the Collective Impact in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Achievement focus area is to elevate UMBC as a nationally recognized and regionally relevant research university. The key drivers in achieving this goal are: creating an inclusive environment for faculty and students, developing excellence in new intellectual frontiers, and fostering multidisciplinary and inter-institutional approaches that build research, scholarship and creative achievement across the campus.

Strategy group co-chairs Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor and chair of information systems, and John Schumacher, associate professor and graduate program director of sociology and anthropology, primarily envision their group as a means to reach out to the entire campus community and make sure all the voices across campus are heard. “It’s important to look at research, scholarship and creative achievement across the colleges and ask ourselves how we want to develop as a university – as UMBC,” says Schumacher.

Group members are charged with engaging the campus community to examine current strengths in research, scholarship and creative achievement; to identify areas that will elevate UMBC’s national prominence in the next five years; to articulate connections with local communities and regional assets; to consider multi- and inter- institutional initiatives; and to develop priorities and metrics to track progress and success.

“We need to create the right environment for people to succeed and grow,” says Gangopadhyay. “People come here because they see a top class research university with great potential and people. The will and expertise are here to go to the next level. We want to examine what needs to get done, what roadblocks exist, what changes need to be made in the infrastructure and how we actualize the creative ideas people have. We’ll be successful if 10 years from now we see a measurable impact in our research, scholarship and creative achievements.”

Both Gangopadhyay and Schumacher believe that promoting research, scholarship and creative achievement across colleges and exploring how interdisciplinarity contributes to addressing important issues are critical to the strategic planning process. “We’re tackling problems of interest to the entire world. In today’s world, we can’t just look to one area for solutions; no one person alone can solve these problems. It’s our intra- and interdisciplinary research that brings solutions,” says Gangopadhyay.

Gangopadhyay and Schumacher add that their university roles and committee participation keep them engaged in campus-wide processes where they hear diverse perspectives from faculty, staff and students, and learn about projects and programs on and off campus. These experiences inform their work as co-chairs. “People on campus want to know what other people are doing,” says Schumacher. “Part of this process is to develop bridges of communication, and to build on these connections to ensure future success. In addition, we want to highlight UMBC’s location in the Baltimore-Washington corridor that provides a rich environment attracting faculty and students, as well as emerging partnerships with government agencies and universities. These connections, and new ones, will help us provide unparalleled experiences for our students to gain practical experience and find fulfilling jobs.”

Following Provost Philip Rous’ lead, Gangopadhyay and Schumacher reiterate the importance of an open and engaged process to articulate UMBC’s collective voice in strategic planning. They are pleased at the overwhelming response to the call for strategy group members, and will use focus groups, town meetings, surveys and other activities to engage with the entire campus over the next year. “This is a very important process,” Gangopadhyay says, “We have an exceptional group of people from across campus working on this focus area, and we will be reaching out to see what everyone thinks.”

Schumacher adds, “We need the whole UMBC community to be involved. We need everyone at the table, everyone’s voice represented, for this to be successful.”

Comments and questions on the Research, Scholarship and Creative Achievement focus area can be sent to gangopad@umbc.edu and jschuma@umbc.edu.

Today the XML Query Working Group and the XSLT Working Group have published seven First Public Working Drafts, four of which are jointly developed and three are from the XQuery Working Group.

The joint documents are:

• XML Path Language (XPath) 3.1. XPath is a powerful expression language that allows the processing of values conforming to the data model defined in the XQuery and XPath Data Model. The main features of XPath 3.1 are maps and arrays.
• XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 3.1. This specification defines a library of functions available for use in XPath, XQuery, XSLT and other languages.
• XQuery and XPath Data Model 3.1. This specification defines the data model on which all operations of XPath 3.1, XQuery 3.1, and XSLT 3.1 operate.
• XSLT and XQuery Serialization 3.1. This document defines serialization of an instance of the XQuery and XPath data model into a sequence of octets, such as into XML, text, HTML, JSON.

The three XML Query Working Group documents are:

• XQuery 3.1 Requirements and Use Cases, which describes the reasons for producing XQuery 3.1, and gives examples.
• XQuery 3.1: An XML Query Language. XQuery is a versatile query and application development language, capable of processing the information content of diverse data sources including structured and semi-structured documents, relational databases and tree-bases databases. The XQuery language is designed to support powerful optimizations and pre-compilation leading to very efficient searches over large amounts of data, including over so-called XML-native databases that read and write XML but have an efficient internal storage. The 3.1 version adds support for features such as arrays and maps primarily to facilitate processing of JSON and other structures.
• XQueryX 3.1, which defines an XML syntax for XQuery 3.1.

Learn more about the XML Activity.