Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Bob
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It's not obvious. If you go to the Members Only page, click on the My Account tab, and then scroll down to the bottom of that page to Transactions, you can bring up some bare bones descriptions of the purchases you've made. The Transactions portion of that page allows you to specify a date range and then you can press View Transactions for those falling in that range. Pressing View Transactions without a date range brings up all of your transactions.
Jim
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Thank you, egertoni. I found my purchases. It's not a very intuitive web site.
Bob
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One astute observer noted that, it all being so new (back then), there can be no such thing as 'intuitive' software.
Rather, most of the time, we've adapted to the world of computers, and have come to expect things to work a certain way and, when they do, declare them to be 'intuitive'.
While one might argue that a old-fashioned wired-up mouse is intuitive - what can be more natural than pointing - one can also read reviews where the reviewer declares that the drop-down menu system is intuitive. How could that be?
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Hi ikey,
Yes, there is such a thing as intuitive software design.
Users enter a website with existing levels of knowledge and understanding. We develop software which needs new levels of knowledge and understanding. A developer has to build an intuitive interface that minimizes the gap between what users already know and what they will need to know.
The difficult part of intuitive design is the significant size of this gap. If you make the software very simple (i.e. ‘step-by-step wizards) you lose the more skilled users. If you make the software it too complex, you lose the less skilled users. So almost by definition intuitive design is pragmatic; it is middle of the road in order to capture the majority of users.
Don
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I enjoyed the comments about software design and agree there's a fine line between being too simple and controlling (e.g., wizards) and too complex and "free range." I appreciate software that gives the user an option of using a wizard or doing the heavy lifting himself or herself.
That said, in this instance, Bob's problem was the design of the APS website. The APS has buried the information about a member's purchases and the word "purchase" is not used at all. Even when the user gets to the My Account page, the Transaction link is way at the bottom of the page, out of sight, I suspect, on most computer screens. Something simple like a tab at the top of the Members Only page labeled Purchases would help. (I'd also like the purchases to show the scans of the stamps as they appeared in the store.)
There's a virtue in websites that are easily navigated. StampoRama is quite good in this regard.
Jim
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Hi Jim,
Years ago site navigation was fairly simple; the design criteria was simply to make sure the users were never more than 3 clicks from any page. This is easy to achive by simply implementing typical multi-level drop down menus in a navigation bar at top/side/bottom of every page.
But everything got turned on its ear about 10 years ago when website had to start supporting mobile devices. Menus that we used in 2003-2008 are no longer acceptable. Mobile users cannot navigate with multiple level, complex drop down menus like is found on this site or even the ones that the brand new APS site is now using. Mobile users do not have a mouse, they have fat fingers.
The issue is that mobile users now account for well over half of all website visits. When you look at a website’s statistics, you can see the mobile users leaving by the truck load within seconds when they first access the opening page. It takes them only seconds before they realize the site navigation sucks on a mobile device and they leave.
So designing website navigation for a good website is really quite difficult in this day and age. Menus should have only a handful of selections and avoid multiple levels. Doing this and still keeping users within a few clicks of every page when you have a large website takes quite a bit of skill and vision.
Don
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Don
That's certainly a key challenge and one that is, as you point out, often not very successfully addressed. When I set up the website for a club I belong to (fossils, not stamps), I remember having to decide whether (1) to program it so that folks coming to it via mobile devices would be served with a different, mobile-focused configuration, or (2) to create a layout that both mobile and computer users could navigate relatively easily. I chose the second option with its attendant compromises because it seemed, at the time, to be a lot less work. I kept things simple for everyone involved and it seems to be okay. It helped that I was rebuilding the whole website - nothing was grandfathered in.
My experience with StampoRama is that the layout is the same regardless of how you come to the site, and, I think, it seems to work well. In contrast, the APS site is laid out differently depending upon the kind of device you're using, and I find that I only interact with the APS on my computer.
Jim
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Kudos to egertoni for his comment,
"There's a virtue in websites that are easily navigated. StampoRama is quite good in this regard."
The original StampoRama web site was designed by our sponsor, Roy Lingen, with big inputs several years later by our webmaster, Tim Auld. But we should give a nod to my son, Paul Ingraham, a health-science writer and publisher here in Vancouver. If I recall correctly, and I'm sure I do, Roy based the design of the StampoRama web site on Paul's web site, and by extension on mine, which Paul designed. Paul's a member of the Church of the Intuitive Web Page, and we have all benefitted from his fervent beliefs.
Bob
PS — One definition of intuitive: "(chiefly of computer software) easy to use and understand."
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.
Yes, but that secondary definition demonstrates the re-purposing of the word:
using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning
Website navigation only feels to be true after you have, well, navigated some websites.
Website navigation is a learned behavior that, like most learned behavior, becomes second nature once it is learned ... but it was never intuitive until we re-purposed that word.
Q/ Why the re-purposing?
Intuitive sounds nice. Compare it with conforming, or expected, or ordinary, or typical.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who consdiers website navigation no more intuitive than, say, racism or sexism)
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I'm a staunch believer that software should be easy for the average user to understand and navigate. I've been working with websites and CAD macros since the 8th decade of the last century myself. Drives me nuts when something isn't intuitive and obvious.
Back in the day I used to manage a department using an AutoTrol Series 5000 Cadd system. The original ones were stations hanging off a dedicated mainframe. Later we moved to mini computers. The software was difficult to master and there wasn't much in the way of application packages, but the software had an excellent user macro capability, and I pretty much wrote the package we used.
I had two older gentlemen (probably younger than I am today!) both named Raymond. They were very slow to transition from the drafting board to the CAD environment. And they'd get themselves into odd situations. It wasn't a full day at work if at least one of them didn't call me over with something perplexing on their screen. I had difficulty figuring out some of the things they managed to do, so I ran a log on them so I could trace it and write it out of the system if I could.
Anytime I wrote new macros, I'd ask them both to try it. We called it "Ray Proofing" the system. We called it that long after they both had retired.
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Does anyone know if there's a way to check purchases from the APS Stamp Store. I've searched and searched and can no link.
Bob
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re: APS Stamp Store purchases
It's not obvious. If you go to the Members Only page, click on the My Account tab, and then scroll down to the bottom of that page to Transactions, you can bring up some bare bones descriptions of the purchases you've made. The Transactions portion of that page allows you to specify a date range and then you can press View Transactions for those falling in that range. Pressing View Transactions without a date range brings up all of your transactions.
Jim
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this post
re: APS Stamp Store purchases
Thank you, egertoni. I found my purchases. It's not a very intuitive web site.
Bob
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this post
re: APS Stamp Store purchases
One astute observer noted that, it all being so new (back then), there can be no such thing as 'intuitive' software.
Rather, most of the time, we've adapted to the world of computers, and have come to expect things to work a certain way and, when they do, declare them to be 'intuitive'.
While one might argue that a old-fashioned wired-up mouse is intuitive - what can be more natural than pointing - one can also read reviews where the reviewer declares that the drop-down menu system is intuitive. How could that be?
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
Login to Like
this post
re: APS Stamp Store purchases
Hi ikey,
Yes, there is such a thing as intuitive software design.
Users enter a website with existing levels of knowledge and understanding. We develop software which needs new levels of knowledge and understanding. A developer has to build an intuitive interface that minimizes the gap between what users already know and what they will need to know.
The difficult part of intuitive design is the significant size of this gap. If you make the software very simple (i.e. ‘step-by-step wizards) you lose the more skilled users. If you make the software it too complex, you lose the less skilled users. So almost by definition intuitive design is pragmatic; it is middle of the road in order to capture the majority of users.
Don
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this post
re: APS Stamp Store purchases
I enjoyed the comments about software design and agree there's a fine line between being too simple and controlling (e.g., wizards) and too complex and "free range." I appreciate software that gives the user an option of using a wizard or doing the heavy lifting himself or herself.
That said, in this instance, Bob's problem was the design of the APS website. The APS has buried the information about a member's purchases and the word "purchase" is not used at all. Even when the user gets to the My Account page, the Transaction link is way at the bottom of the page, out of sight, I suspect, on most computer screens. Something simple like a tab at the top of the Members Only page labeled Purchases would help. (I'd also like the purchases to show the scans of the stamps as they appeared in the store.)
There's a virtue in websites that are easily navigated. StampoRama is quite good in this regard.
Jim
Login to Like
this post
re: APS Stamp Store purchases
Hi Jim,
Years ago site navigation was fairly simple; the design criteria was simply to make sure the users were never more than 3 clicks from any page. This is easy to achive by simply implementing typical multi-level drop down menus in a navigation bar at top/side/bottom of every page.
But everything got turned on its ear about 10 years ago when website had to start supporting mobile devices. Menus that we used in 2003-2008 are no longer acceptable. Mobile users cannot navigate with multiple level, complex drop down menus like is found on this site or even the ones that the brand new APS site is now using. Mobile users do not have a mouse, they have fat fingers.
The issue is that mobile users now account for well over half of all website visits. When you look at a website’s statistics, you can see the mobile users leaving by the truck load within seconds when they first access the opening page. It takes them only seconds before they realize the site navigation sucks on a mobile device and they leave.
So designing website navigation for a good website is really quite difficult in this day and age. Menus should have only a handful of selections and avoid multiple levels. Doing this and still keeping users within a few clicks of every page when you have a large website takes quite a bit of skill and vision.
Don
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re: APS Stamp Store purchases
Don
That's certainly a key challenge and one that is, as you point out, often not very successfully addressed. When I set up the website for a club I belong to (fossils, not stamps), I remember having to decide whether (1) to program it so that folks coming to it via mobile devices would be served with a different, mobile-focused configuration, or (2) to create a layout that both mobile and computer users could navigate relatively easily. I chose the second option with its attendant compromises because it seemed, at the time, to be a lot less work. I kept things simple for everyone involved and it seems to be okay. It helped that I was rebuilding the whole website - nothing was grandfathered in.
My experience with StampoRama is that the layout is the same regardless of how you come to the site, and, I think, it seems to work well. In contrast, the APS site is laid out differently depending upon the kind of device you're using, and I find that I only interact with the APS on my computer.
Jim
Login to Like
this post
re: APS Stamp Store purchases
Kudos to egertoni for his comment,
"There's a virtue in websites that are easily navigated. StampoRama is quite good in this regard."
The original StampoRama web site was designed by our sponsor, Roy Lingen, with big inputs several years later by our webmaster, Tim Auld. But we should give a nod to my son, Paul Ingraham, a health-science writer and publisher here in Vancouver. If I recall correctly, and I'm sure I do, Roy based the design of the StampoRama web site on Paul's web site, and by extension on mine, which Paul designed. Paul's a member of the Church of the Intuitive Web Page, and we have all benefitted from his fervent beliefs.
Bob
PS — One definition of intuitive: "(chiefly of computer software) easy to use and understand."
Login to Like
this post
re: APS Stamp Store purchases
.
Yes, but that secondary definition demonstrates the re-purposing of the word:
using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning
Website navigation only feels to be true after you have, well, navigated some websites.
Website navigation is a learned behavior that, like most learned behavior, becomes second nature once it is learned ... but it was never intuitive until we re-purposed that word.
Q/ Why the re-purposing?
Intuitive sounds nice. Compare it with conforming, or expected, or ordinary, or typical.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who consdiers website navigation no more intuitive than, say, racism or sexism)
Login to Like
this post
re: APS Stamp Store purchases
I'm a staunch believer that software should be easy for the average user to understand and navigate. I've been working with websites and CAD macros since the 8th decade of the last century myself. Drives me nuts when something isn't intuitive and obvious.
Back in the day I used to manage a department using an AutoTrol Series 5000 Cadd system. The original ones were stations hanging off a dedicated mainframe. Later we moved to mini computers. The software was difficult to master and there wasn't much in the way of application packages, but the software had an excellent user macro capability, and I pretty much wrote the package we used.
I had two older gentlemen (probably younger than I am today!) both named Raymond. They were very slow to transition from the drafting board to the CAD environment. And they'd get themselves into odd situations. It wasn't a full day at work if at least one of them didn't call me over with something perplexing on their screen. I had difficulty figuring out some of the things they managed to do, so I ran a log on them so I could trace it and write it out of the system if I could.
Anytime I wrote new macros, I'd ask them both to try it. We called it "Ray Proofing" the system. We called it that long after they both had retired.
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