Google Maps recently announced an updated version of Google Maps India. Reading on how they went about fixing the problems with Google Maps India  brings me back fond memories of how we went about designing OfficeDrop’s user interface.

As noted in earlier blog posts, we take a lot of care about usability at OfficeDrop. Back in the early days of the company, we visited people’s homes to figure out how they handled paper, how they looked for information in paper (quick flipping through, with eyes gazing at prominent landmarks such as logos, headings etc,.) and what kind of organization and retrieval schemes were in play. We conducted dozens of interviews and tried to precisely understand how people perceive paper in their information life.

All this research, tons of experimentation and gallons of caffeine resulted in our “Snippet view”. The thumbnail (to the left) gives a telescopic/big-picture view of the page, and the snippet (to the right) anchors our vision to familiar logos, and patterns (such as Billing Date and Account number) mimicking what we do when we flip through stacks of paper. The labels and other metadata (below) provide the necessary context. All in all, they are discrete nuggets of information in perfect harmony. Our users love it. The same view extends very well during search and adds rich context to the search terms.

Snippet View Displaying Search results with visual context

So, as simple as it sounds, know thy user. It will help your product and they will love you for it. I am glad we got it right the first time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 27th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Customer Satisfaction, Document Management, Market Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.