Comments on: How not to design a menu

By: Farid Abdulhadi

Farid Abdulhadi — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:35:47 +0000

The design seems awful and it doesn’t seem user-friendly at all.
I think they could have got away with all the “My” if the design was better.

I can’t seem to find a way to contact you, I would have sent you a link to a iPhone web application I developed for the company I was previously working for.

By: borzoj

borzoj — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:31:50 +0000

i’ve been o2 pay as you go customer for two years. i’ve used the website to top up online and it’s an utter nightmare in terms of usability overall. menus are just the begining

By: Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Robert Hoekman, Jr. — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:45:17 +0000

Thanks for the kind words, Aral!

Indeed — simply getting rid of the “My” modifiers would help a lot. I think you’re dead on.

And yes, I look forward to speaking at Singularity. It promises to be a great event, and most certainly the start of something big. Cheers!

By: Aral

Aral — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:41:32 +0000

Hey Dan, I love the phone, although O2′s 3G coverage appears to be _very_ patchy (at least in Brighton). I hope it improves as that’s the main reason I got the phone in the first place.

@Iain, and yet Sentence Case Is Slower To Read Due To The Capitals, so I guess it’s a trade-off. I see your point, though :)

By: Iain

Iain — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:10:23 +0000

You’re absolutely right – these MY things are completely unnecessary, and if you’re going to do it, you should always say YOUR documents, otherwise it sounds like the things belong to the website/computer, not to the user.

The capitalisation being on the active word also makes a huge difference for scanability, that’s why you should have capitalised Services in “Tariff & Services”

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:39:13 +0000

what do you think of the phone Aral? and the apps you’ve tried out so far?

By: Lee McColl Sylvester

Lee McColl Sylvester — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:23:35 +0000

Ah, I’ve seen worse ;)

By: iheni

iheni — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:02:22 +0000

An awful menu indeed. Also a pain to listen to if using a screen reader via the web. You have to spend longer listening to the links when really all a screen reader users wants to do on a site that they are familiar with is just hear the first couple of letters on a link to confirm if it is the one they do or don’t want.

I wonder if 02 will pay attention and change it.

By: creacog

creacog — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:55:39 +0000

1st thing you read “Welcome back”
2nd thing you read “Sign out”

Could be worse. Could have been “My sign out”.