User Experience Design Blog

Is That A Kiosk In Your Pocket? Electronic Airline Ticketing

The next step in electronic ticketing has arrived. While those print-your-own boarding pass kiosks have been around since 1995, and half a dozen airlines in the U.S. now allow passengers to check-in using mobile devices, Continental Airlines has begun testing an electronic boarding pass. The boarding pass displays a two-dimensional ‘bar code’ that looks like snow on a television, but on a mobile device, allowing airlines to scan the screen like it would a paper boarding pass. The New York Times reports that the TSA is expected to embrace the technology because the two-dimensional barcode contains more information and is harder to reproduce than traditional one-dimensional barcodes. Mark Bergsrud, Senior VP of Marketing Programs at Continental said, ‚ÄúWe kind of like the idea long term of having a kiosk in your pocket.” The International Air Transport Association announced standards for two-dimensional barcodes last September and expects all of its 240 members to use them exclusively by 2010. Foreign airlines that use electronic passes currently include Japan Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines and Spanair.

Usability Challenges in Web Applications

Early in March, the folks at UIE posted on three usability challenges of Web Applications. These were: 1) Finding the application, 2) setting the proper expectations, 3) and matching the user’s flow. Last week, UIE posted again on two more challenges: 4) Handle contingencies and exceptions. The specific example: If a user is cutting-and-pasting an account number, make sure the input field can accept the format the account number is displayed in. If the account page displays it with hyphens, make sure the input field can recognize those hyphens. 5) Live inside the browser. UIE highlights important features of sites that take user information, like ‘back’ and ‘forward’ buttons distinct from the browser ‘back’ and ‘forward’ buttons that can prevent data loss.

Problems for a Hyper-Connected World: Disconnect Anxiety and Internet Addiction

Solutions Research Group reports that “27 percent of the population suffers increased levels of anxiety when separated from their cell phones or the Internet, and that a further 41 percent suffer occasional anxiety due to communications blackout.” This is called “Disconnect Anxiety.” Last week, Ars Technica reported that the anxiety is age-related, and offers a brief list of questions at self-diagnosis. This week, Ars Technia points us to an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry that argues Internet and Gaming addiction should be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 6:19 pm and is filed under All User Experience Design, Current Events.