Many large sites use member registration to give their members extended features. But a hell of a lot of them are not very usable. In the nice (Dutch) usability book Website Usability, written by Ward van der Put, I found five guidelines for login-screens and member area:

• Use for login-screens only user name and password combinations.
• Don’t use an e-mail address as user name, since people might think they’re gonna get spam.
• When personal details like addresses are being viewed, use a secure HTTP connection, SSL for instance. If you don’t, these details can be viewed by third parties like hackers.
• Give users the possibility to change their passwords. If strong security is needed, auto change the passwords when users don’t do it by themselves.
• Give logged in members the opportunity to log out. Technically it’s not needed, but it gives members a secure feeling.

Peter wrote a nice fairy tale, with usability as topic. For the usability-gurus among us, this is their Friday afternoon escape…

This story shows that usability doesn’t need to be perfect, but also solutions to alleviate the ‘pain’ are a nice start.

A few days ago I had some time and wanted to play with my PSP. But no game did interest me at that time, so I decided to check out the PSP Web site for some demo’s. The first thing I thought when I saw the new download center they introduced a while ago, was: wow!

The download center is very user centered and simple to use. It acts like a Web shop, and that was the main thing what was changed: paid downloads will be introduced soon. Nice games, music, videos and photos all available to download now for free, but soon also some where has tom be paid for.

I think thats a good way to go in the gaming industry. As far as I know this is the only download shop for a handheld game devices. I hope the downloads will not be very expensive, then I think I want to pay for those games via the Internet. Not a UMD anymore, only a file on my Flashcard. Luckily you can re-download games, in the case you delete it or something.

What I liked of the web shop, was the interface techniques. The AJAX interface was so developed that the back-button in my browser worked, very nice usability technique. The techniques not viewable for unregistered visitors -like the download applet- also work nicely.

So, what’s next?

The way Sony improved on this, I like. But other handheld devices can also have such thing in the near future. For a PDA you could think in terms like e-books, but also applications for download. In the near future I think -that can be 2007 but also ‘08 or ‘09- many more download stores like this will appear. Since web developers have more abilities (e.g. latest Adobe Flash), the technique for usable, accessible and not at least safety of download shops will grow tremendously the next years.

Do you also have some future predictions about download web shops?

Today I stumbled upon 30 accessibility tips. Real life examples and how-to’s explain how accessibility should make your web site better and prettier accessible.

On Steve Krug’s Web site a chapter from his book ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ is available to look up. The chapter is about how people use the internet:

• We don’t read pages. We scan them.
• We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.
• We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.