Chrome 17 loses the ‘plus’ from the ‘new tab’ button

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Now the cynic might say that the Google Plus brand team wanted to reduce confusion with their social network’s name. The result: the ‘new tab’ icon in Chrome 17 looks like it’s faulty.

It might sound like the most pedantic obsession over minutae, but stuff like this matters.

It matters not just for us user experience people who pore over every detail, but for ‘regular users’ who are forced to approach interface after interface: re-learning the basics over and over because of design decisions made without proper thought.

Here’s the new icon:

Chrome 17's new tab icon without the plus symbolInternet Explorer hasn’t had a ‘plus’ icon for years, but it’s part of the tab bar. In Firefox it’s tab-shaped and features a ‘plus’ symbol. The new button in Chrome is a different shape, location and colour to the tabs – how would a first-time user know that this opens a new tab? Even if they work it out, it’s an extra level of cognitive stress that should be totally unnecessary for the user.

If you’re interested in reading more about how complete novices use software, this is a fascinating read, from Jennifer Morrow’s blog:

I find Joe, a 60-year-old hospital cafeteria employee, in the food court looking suitably bored out of his mind. Joe agrees to do a user test, so I begin by asking my standard demographics questions about his experience with the internet. Joe tells me he’a never used a computer, and my eyes light up.

http://jboriss.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/user-testing-in-the-wild-joes-first-computer-encounter/

Do we value our laundry more than our privacy?

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Aaron says:

In the US, we have mandatory “Nutrition Facts” on food labels, couldn’t we implement something similar to convey age, privacy, affiliation, and payment terms for a site or service? Privacy issues are already hard to track and it isn’t getting any easier.

Here’s a startup idea for someone: Parse a website’s TOS to summarize in an easy-to-understand format.

http://clearsignal.posterous.com/do-we-value-our-laundry-more-than-our-privacy

Idea dump #5

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From time to time I come up with ideas which, for whatever reason, I can’t work on right now.

Rather than jealously guarding these ideas, I’m going to post them here in regular bursts, in case someone out there wants to run with them.

Most importantly, sharing your ideas triggers something unexpected: it forces you to come up with new ones.

 

AutoMarket – grocery shopping, rebooted.

Grocery shopping is a pain. Do it in real life and it’s a nightmare. Doing your shopping online is way more convenient, but once you’re using one supermarket website there’s a large ‘cost of switching’ to set everything up again on a rival site.

AutoMarket would be a managed, clever household grocery service – a layer on top of all the supermarket sites.

From learning your basket and learning the similarities between types of products, it could aggregate your shop over multiple retailers, taking advantage of special offers and delivery discounts, to give you the best possible price.

You could tap items on a tablet to say they’re used and AutoMarket would learn the general frequency of purchases and plan ahead for you. ‘Fire and forget’ shopping.

Revenue could come from retailers vying to be listed and offering promotions.

 

Peer-to-peer Insurance Exchange

Take on the world of insurance and make it fair, simple and equitable. This would be a platform for matching investors (insurers) with consumers (policyholders). The system could spread risk at both ends of the market.

Revenue could be substantial from just a tiny % of all transactions through the platform – plus the market would find the fairest price possible for customers.