Tag Archive for 'usability'

New Skype contact

I’ve just set up a new Skype contact.

There was more than a slight hassle when I was creating an account in Skype. It only asks user name and password for mandatory information and email address is optional. If you typed your email address, you can retrieve your password with user name and email address on Skype’s homepage. I guess it is for easy registration and Skype provides at least a way to retrieve your password by email. Seems reasonable??

Here’s my hassle:

At first I didn’t enter my email address and somehow mis-typed my password, so I couldn’t log in. But I could not retrieve my password since there is no way to verify it’s me!! I just had to create a new one and the user name that I wanted was already taken by *me*.

Second time, I mis-typed my email address and Skype told me it’s wrong email address and turned me down. But it didn’t give me a chance to correct my typo and again and I couldn’t log in with the new account name & password. Again, the user name I entered second time became taken by *me*.

Third time, I made it finally. So now I have 3 Skype accounts: 2 out of 3 unaccessible. I guess, they never made use case scenario with which they could easily prevent this hassle caused by a simple mistake that anybody can make.

Or am I the only one who makes these stupid mistakes?? Wink

update: I think my best solution to this matter is asking two email entries to check if it’s correctly inputed. Just like we type our password two times. Still email address can be optional like now.

WordPress, User-friendly? yet a tough call to make.

So far I have spent several hours to make my blog easier for people to access but it�s not as easy as I expected. Most of us think about functionality first and then turn into usability matter later. I tried to find plugins which can provide functions that I need and found some and installed them. Yet I found out that they are not to be called user-friendly.

I am not sure that I should re-design the whole site including theme, which will be very much time-consuming, I�m afraid.

Hmmm, I guess, soon you will find out. ;-)