CHIFOO, the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon, hosted a usability scavenger hunt for World Usability day 2011. In one day, hunters around the world captured a library of usability gems.

Everything around us provides clues about how our environment works. Some are more effective than others. The scavenger hunt gives all sorts of examples of the success & confusion that environmental cues can give. Usability is simply good logic, but it often takes a real live human to experience the user scenario and call out the issues, or success!

The hunt began on Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 6:00 am (PST) and continued through 6:00 pm (PST) on Thursday, Nov. 10.

What a reward! It’s exciting when your museum takes an add out in the New York Times to show your participation. Comment cards from the Museum of Modern Art, New York are published though newspaper advertisements. It’s a great way for them to embrace and communicate all kinds of visitor experiences at the museum, and that they don’t have to be high brow!

Talk about feedback mechanisms! Paul Cocksedge’s Kiss installation in Milan invites couples to kiss under a giant sprig of mistletoe. When two people touch the central leaves of the mistletoe branch a chain reaction occurs, sending a trickle of light up to the giant canopy overhead a central plaza. A small human gesture creates a spectacular illuminated reaction.

You should really see it through the video clips on Cocksedge Studio’s site, right here.

Photo credit: Mark Cocksedge, for Cocksedge Studio

Yikes! This handy rental car reminder serves as preemptive feedback, integrated right into the natural environment of use. Explaining rules can be so simple. And it’s pretty powerful incentive for me to not lose this key…

When creating experiences for others, we’re often asking participants to take a leap of faith – with the promise that a little mystery or effort will lead to a worthwhile reward. How do you create a sense of confidence in the user journey? That sense of confidence is a key tool in keeping all parties happy and motivated to continue the journey to the end. A couple of recent experiences demonstrate some worthy strategies.

On a visit to a friend who had just gone through the heroics of giving birth, I noticed this patient board. On the board are a set of hanging cards, each representing benchmarks which patients will achieve before they leave for home. The front has a label and picture to describe the benchmark. On the reverse is the same title but with a big ticked box. When tasks are completed the card is flipped over and the ticked box appears. Text on the board explains what these steps are all about – going back home.
This big visible record is a journey map – an illustrated reminder of the larger aim, what needs to happen, what has happened and what’s left to go. It’s a great (and low tech!) way of makings goals clear and to acknowledge the potential mass of confusing steps in a hospital journey, making that mess understandable and less of a scary thing. This improves the patient experience, encourages participation step by step, and I’m sure it also cuts down on the series of patient questions which staff would spend time on.

A similar sort of feedback device shows up in a very different place – while watching video content directly from media company websites, a countdown during commercial breaks reassures itchy viewers that they will not go on for ever. The countdown is a feedback mechanism, a simple but effective feature which acknowledges viewer concern in getting back to the video content. This greatly improves the chances of viewers staying put (which is what companies hope you to do), continuing to watch (which is what visitors want to do) and achieving the goal of all parties involved.

I recently bought a book online from Assembly New York. I didn’t come into contact with anyone personally through my transaction – it was completely automatic. However when I received my shipment, the first kind of physical contact I had with the company, I found a hand written thank you. It was my receipt – folded into the shape of a shirt and inside a little envelope, looking like a note rather than a billing notice. I don’t know who wrote it, maybe the folded shirt shape represents the unknown person who packaged up my goods, folded the receipt and sent it to me.

What’s interesting is that Assembly New York has found a way to make an impersonal transactions personal, without much more effort than standard procedures call for. The result is that I, the customer, have left the transaction feeling great about my experience.

It’s a great example of a company who has provided positive feedback – adding a reward to the customer’s participation in the transaction. And it’s an exercise any company or institution can do – by reviewing their standard processes, building on resources and procedures which already exist.

A large scale act of kindness, Here You Go! is an initiative by Julie Kresen (plus Geoff Barnes and Katy DeLancey) of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and funded by Kickstarter, the funding platform website (an interesting method of participation in its own right).

Here You Go! gives out umbrellas on rainy days and asks umbrella recipients to pay it forward by giving out their own kind acts. The free umbrella project has a staff of 50 volunteers whose job it is to commit random acts of kindness on rainy days by giving away umbrellas. Waterproof postcards attached to each umbrella encourage recipients to do something kind for someone else and record the act on the card before mailing it back to the Here You Go organization.

You can see the returned post cards here. And the original Kickstarter proposal here.

photo credit: Bill Wade/Post-Gazette

An excellent way of turning loyal customers into a visible community – This cafe does not have loyalty cards, they’ve got a loyalty wall. Located in Dalston, London Tina We Salute you is an extremely cozy cafe / gallery. They’re great for food, art, atmosphere and their loyalty wall is a reflection of their warm vibe.

How it works -

If you’re a coffee drinker you get your name on the wall and a star next to it every time you order a coffee. After 10 stars, you get a free coffee and graduate to a new round of red outlines, then blue, and it goes on… till there is the exclusive gold and the über exclusive platinum on the tiny section right near the coffee machine.

Why don’t they run out of space? Well they’re not precious. If you don’t show up for a while and just aren’t active, they’ve got a handy bucket of wall-colored paint and aren’t squeamish about painting over any slow movers for the newbies.

It’s a highly visible and endearing reward system with a hint of competition which gets people curious and wanting to join. With all of it’s patrons showcased, it’s something of a family picture.