Unleash Nerd Fury

One of the funniest skits I’ve seen in a while and the real reason why you need to keep your users in mind.

Ruben’s camera eludes me. It’s a skinny Sony Cybershot T33. A point and click. Should be simple, no?

Well. No.

We’re on our trip to CA, and I wanted to take a picture of the Siskiyou pass summit sign (on I-5 going southbound). I turn on his camera, and open and close the passenger side window of the car every time I think we’re hitting the summit. Finally we’re there, I open the window, the cold air hits, I position my finger, and I press…..

…the power off button.

Now my first thought was to blame myself for this. This is NOT the first time I’ve done this either (and I did it a second time on the trip further down the road). However as I’m sitting here and having a chance to process the day, I put on my User Experience Engineer hat and I realized it is most certainly NOT my fault. This is really bad UI design for this camera.

Why?

Well the power on off button is right next to the button tot ake the picture. In fact the power button just behind the button for taking the picture so if you’re holding the camera closer to the back (in order to avoid having your finger in the picture) you’re bound to hit the darn off button instead of taking the picture.

Definite thumbs (or forefingers) down on this one.