Hal Shubin

User experience designer, baseball fan, frmr library trustee, chair of the local Farmers’ Market cmte, home cook, cyclist, fan of music & newspapers (in print)

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@Acrobat Why is selecting text harder in Acrobat than anywhere else? Why is printing and saving files so different from anywhere else?

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@the_ILRC Looking at the Spanish language one, I see that the text is different from the English on the reverse. I thought they'd be the same, so an English speaker and a Spanish speaker got the same info. Is there a reason for doing it that way? Thanks.

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

…could only tell me that the regular rate has occasional increases, but the senior rate does not. So I asked what we'd be paying now without the senior rate, after subscribing for decades. But she couldn't tell me.
So I'm confused. Is the senior discount actually a discount?

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

.@BostonGlobe A new subscription is $8.50/week, which is half off. So the regular subscription price is $17/week.
I have a senior subscription and it costs $28.75/week. Why is that higher than the regular cost?
I asked about this in a text chat with customer support. They …

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

.@facebook What is this? What do I do? Trying to give access to a pg that I have full control of.

In good design, error msgs explain the problem & how to recover. #Fail

The only good thing is that I got an error message at all! On my laptop, it just hangs.

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@tockify Is there a way to remove default values in the form for submitting calendar events? We just implemented a calendar, & having the date set to TODAY has already caused problems. People don't notice a field that's filled in and they skip over it, leaving the wrong date.

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

.@GoogleAds "Cannot edit removed entities"
What does that mean? #ErrorMessages should explain a problem, provide a solution, & not make the user feel at fault. No matter what I put in the keywords box, this happens. Even when I take your suggestions. #UX #UserExperience #Design

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail Yes, but only after a lot of work. Thanks for checking!

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

.@gmail Is it just me, or is everything that Google makes confusing? I just created an email account through Squarespace and I'm stuck in infinite loops trying to log in.

Y'all need to do some serious #usabilitystudies to figure out how confused you leave users.

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail So that's the story, or as much of it as I can remember.

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail And honestly, I dislike all of the Google software I use. I'm a UX designer, and I find the lack of attention to UX to be frustrating. Error messages that don't help, processes that are unclear, basic things that aren't to standards, etc.

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail I assumed that it would be a straightforward process, but it wasn't. You need to have a clear overview of the process so people know what to do. The first part of the work was done in Squarespace – does that make it their problem? I don't care, someone has to make it work right.

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail Where are we now? I created another email address, and it did work. But the first one doesn't. I'll get back to working on it, but I don't really want to -- it's so frustrating. Honestly, it makes me feel stupid and who needs that?

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail …I wound up at this page, which is obviously no help. If you all don't know what to do, what am I supposed to do?

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail … I tried existing email addresses, I created a new one – no good. Meanwhile, the person who I created the email account for couldn't log in. He tried numerous times, and wound up with a 404 page. Somehow, I got through this, but I cannot say how. He still couldn't log in…

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail …log in or use an existing account, but to no avail. Back to this same screen, over and over…

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail …I had to accept terms, which I don't think I saw the first time. I tried to, but it made me create an admin account. Or log in with one. My Qs: What is that? Could I use my own email address? And I was stuck in an infinite loop where I saw that demand to log in, I tried to …

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

@gmail I tried to create email addresses through Squarespace. Basically, I had no idea what I had to do to make this happen -- there's no overview, and it's not obvious. I created the first account, told the person to try it, but it failed. I went back to Squarespace and saw that …

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

There was no preview of what I was supposed to do, there was no help in getting through it, and (again!) I get a Google #errormessage that violates the basic rules -- don't make the user feel dumb, explain the problem, and provide a solution.
#UX #userexperience #design #help

[Hal Shubin @halShubin]

I have no idea what I did to get out of that loop, but finally I wound up with this. Gee, if you don't know what happened, how am I supposed to know?