Stop asking!

It's really quite rude if your user tells you they don't want to be asked about downloading the current upgrade and you keep asking... iTunes. Please stop.

Technical Fields

I like that in TurboTax, they present "flags" and "notifications" that indicate something that user will need to come back to an look at. Good plan; if the field isn't critical at the moment, then the user can continue on with their process and return when they're ready to focus on the suggested task.

The problem I have in this example is the tech talk that is used: what is "service-1?" I have no context of what the issue is. I have to click on Fix in order to understand what the problem is so I can decide if I'm going to Flag or Fix it (of course, I've already clicked on Fix).

Better is to provide a more natural language of the field in question, or the title of the page.

Checking for solutions

I'm not a big fan of computers attempting to solve an interal problem for me. Like this:

In all the years I've worked on Microsoft's OS, it has yet to ever successfuly find a solution. So what is it really doing? I suspect it's just waiting for the program to respond to something. What, I don't know.

It's a useless dialog in this sense as well: it has only a single button, "Cancel." So now I have to take action which still won't do anything.

Here's my proposal, part of which is stolen from Apple. Actually, let me first suggest that computers should never have these types problems. It's a flaw in the OS to have applications lock up as often as they do on a brand new (as of August 2011) computer (yet they do. Get with it, computer maufacturers!). In lieu of that pipe-dream ever getting solved, I would like to propose that if an app is non-responsive, the OS takes it and hides it away, clearing up the desktop for us and not tempting us with thinking we can click on it. Then, a la Apple, have its task bar icon bounce up a couple of times, or glow red when I move my cursor near it. Then, if I actually click on the icon, have a message drawer extend out and tell me, "Sorry, this app is behaving badly. What would you like to do?" then have some options: "Force Close", "Ignore, for now", "Give it 10 secs, then force close" or similar.

Force close is the most common thing I'd imagine would happen. On my Mac, if an app freezes up (i.e. Firefox. What happened to you guys?), I have to force close it about 20% of the time. On my PC, if it freezes longer than 20 seconds, I have to end the process on it 100% of the time. If I have to do it that often, make it easy for me.

Funny how it takes a human to fix a computer's problem.

Simple things

From Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things:

"When simple things need instructions, it is a certain sign of poor design"

If not hyperlinked, at least copyable!

Got this error below (see image for the URL I'm talking about). The take away is this: If you're going to provide a link, make it a hyperlink. I most likely have an Internet connection, since I downloaded the app to begin with. And you're all ready assuming I'm Internet savvy by providing a link to begin with.

If you can't make it a hyperlink... than at the very least, make it copyable so I can paste into a browser!