How far would you go for help ?

 

 

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Junk folder

Just realized why my junk filter was being ineffective!

With four potential options, the mind somehow imagines two options for blocking, and two for marking safe. (Is it just that or is there a muscle memory  where an older version of Outlook had a "add Sender's domain to blocked list?)

 

Simple grouping would make this UX more usable. Just a seperator line between the first and the second option.

Better still, the option label starting with the actual action. For example "Block Sender...", "Block sender's domain", "Allow Sender..." etc. In the current form, you need to read to the third or fourth word to know the difference...

Excel tech writer, where art thou?

Remember those Attachments?

coffee.fetchNow();
post.History(initial, followUp);

User Scenario (for the Problem Statement)

Dave Burton has just finished working the sales forecast for the quarter. His boss, Lee Hunt, asked for the document by the end of the day. Dave switches to his Outlook window, and creates a new email. He types:

Lee,

I’ve attached the sales forecast you requested for. Please review and comment.

Dave.

Dave clicks the “Send” button, and goes out for his well deserved coffee break. When he’s back, he sees the following reply from Lee.

Dave:

I didn’t receive any document in your email. Please check and revert asap.

Lee.

“Whoa!” thinks Dave. He forgot to attach the document. This time, doubly careful, attaches the document in reply to Lee’s mail. His email body reads:

Lee,

I guess I forgot to attach the document the last time. Please find it attached here.

Dave.

The Solution

User Scenario

Dave Burton has just finished working the sales forecast for the quarter. His boss, Lee Hunt, asked for the document by the end of the day. Dave switches to his Outlook window, and creates a new email. He types:

Lee,

I’ve attached the sales forecast you requested for. Please review and comment.

Dave.

Dave clicks the “Send” button, thinking about going for a well deserved coffee break, when he sees a message pop-up.

Dave clicks on “Yes”, thinking “phew, thank you for reminding me!”

Feature Specification

Outlook should be able to automatically detect the user’s intention to send an attachment with an email by unobtrusively looking in the email body for words, which we shall call “attachment-indicating” words or phrases.

Following is the set of attachment indication words & phrases [Note: this list will be revised after the usability tests.]

• Attachment
• Attach
• Here you go

Normal Flow

The user is in the Compose Mode. The Compose mode includes New Message, Editing a Draft Message, Reply, Reply All & Forward email options.

The attachment auto-detect feature is turned on. This could be implemented as a separate thread, process or program. The spec will use “thread” as a metaphor to describe its functionality.

The thread checks whether there is an attachment to the mail already. If there is, it stops.

If there is no attachment, then the thread periodically scans the new content in the email body for any attachment indicating words or phrases. As soon as it finds one, it sets off a flag.

If the any of the email content is deleted, the thread runs its checks again, and updates the flag accordingly (if any word/phrase still exists, then keep the flag on, else turn it off).

When the user clicks on the Send button, check for the status of the flag before sending email. If the flag is on, then prompt the user with the following message.

If the user clicks

• Yes: Close the message dialog, and focus the cursor on the “Attached” field of the email. Display the “Attached” field if it wasn’t displayed earlier.
• No: Close the message dialog, and send the email.
• Cancel: Close the message box, and place the cursor in its last position in the email body.

Alternate Flows

The user decides to save the email to send later

Behavior: The flag status is stored as well, and the checks resume when the user opens up the message in the drafts folder.

The user cancels the message

Behavior: The flag status for that message is also deleted.

The user has multiple windows open in the Compose Mode

Behavior: Each message has its own flag, and each flag status is maintained even if the user switches windows.

Also Applies to:

New Appointment, New Meeting Request

p.s.: This is the first post I've written with some commercial interest. At last I'm making money by blogging.

The other "traveling salesman" problem

This dialog box - in it's current state - works just fine if you use it for that once a year vacation... For users on the move, people who are OO 3-4 times a month, ability to "schedule" OO is a must.

Here is a recommendation. (Thanks, Sid, for the screen design)

It takes one thing off the checklist before one shuts the laptop before heading out of office.

Ux without a UI

I had posed a problem in one of my older thought units welcoming suggestions to help users remember to attach a file in a mail (when intended).

Good user expereinces make things happen - the way you wanted them to - without you having to. By being a natural extension of the thought process. Compensating for dicipline or memory or structure.

Better user experiences are not noticed. Just enjoyed at a subconsious level. Like a walk on a quite beach at sunrise.

Hence the suggestions around "aditional check box", creating a new message of type attachment, do not cut it.

Sowmya's idea stands out. It works the way auto-spell check in MS Word does. (Parsing between keystrokes. Dictionary looks up by multi-threading. Correcting without interrupting.)

User expereince without a user interface.

She gets a nod and tip of my hat. She knows what she needs to do to earn the $10 Barnes and Nobles card.

Right Sowmya? :)

Better meeting requests

Here is another suggestion for improving the "responding to a meeting request experience" in Outlook 2007.

Here is suggestion I had in the past

Crtl + F in MS-Outlook

Ctrl+ F is a standard keyboard shortcut to search in MS- Office, browsers and most of

the standard applications.

But have you ever tried to search in a read mail window in MS Outlook?

Just try it out….

You will see the forward mail window rather than the ‘Find’ pop-up/ search box, the read
mail window will remain open in the background.

So in MS – Outlook, one of the Microsoft applications to search you need to press F4 and
not Ctrl+F…!! :)

Apart from that just press Ctrl+F …

• On the mailbox (root for inbox etc...); you will get a find box.
• On the inbox (root for folders), you will not see any response.
• While browsing through your mails in a folder, you will see a forward mail window for the selected mail.
• In a new/forward mail window and the find pop-up will come up.
  

So here I can see four different functions of Ctrl+ F within the same application MS- Outlook.
This is one of the biggest examples of inconsistency..!!

What printer is that, again?

A label in the print dialog box of Outlook 2007 threw me off.

Does this mean, if I choose a printer other than my default, the attachments would not print? Or would they just not print on the printer I selected?

And without nitpicking - a good UX designer should- the spacing and allignement between the checkbox and the label does not conform to the Microsoft standard user interface guidelines.

MS Office Consistency..!!

When you select different words in MS Word of different fonts what would you see in the font details drop down box?

- You would see the font details drop down box is blank as the fonts are different which is expected behavior.







Try doing the same in MS Excel and you would find that it show the font of the first cell you started selecting from. Being consistent with MS word the font details should be shown as blank.







I found that this is the not just the problem with word 2003 but even the Microsoft's latest release word 2007. That’s the consistency in MS Word and MS Excel…!!

Shaping it up

The Format AutoShape dialog box in Word 2007 and the Format Shape in PowerPoint 2007 look unnecessarily different despite serving the same functionality.

Fig1 : Format AutoShape dialog box in Word 2007

Fig 2: Format Shape dialog box in PowerPoint 2007

And what is automatic about the shape in Word?

While, the dialog boxes look different, the formatting ribbon is uniform and simply fantastic - unleashing the power of professional looking formatting to non-power users.

And not to forget the wonderfully implemented "hovering toolbar" on the context sensitive menu..

Powertip for PowerPoint Users: Struggled to draw a straight line on a slide? Keeping the Shift Key pressed draws either perfectly horizontal or a perfectly vertical line.

Anybody wants a perfectly diagonal line ?

Sent in error. Please ignore ...

Auto fill in the Outlook address field is a fabulous feature. Very handy when it comes to selecting a frequent email recepient.


The features is not without problems though. Have you inadverently send a mail out to an email address you did not intend to?

While there are quite a number of mini-features that I can think around this problem, the least I would like to see is some demarcation for suggested names that are not in the Global Address List.


Would love to do a usability test to see if this reduces these errors.

Better Outlook meeting requests...

Meeting request (as you see it today)

Meeting request (as it should be)

I will leave the UX for recurring meetings as an exercise for the readers...